Three former workers for Plainville Farms pleaded guilty to charges of cruelty to animals on August 7 in the Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Entering guilty pleas were Francisco Lebron-Cruz, Bryiant Perez-Paez and Bryce Washington. All three suspects were sentenced to 12 months of supervised probation.
The trio is also forbidden from obtaining employment that involves the care of animals.
The guilty pleas from Lebron-Cruz, Perez-Paez and Washington follow the entering of guilty pleas from two other suspects, Juan Carlos Turi Baeza and Jose Enrique Turi Baeza, who received similar sentences in June.
The court action stems from criminal charges that were filed after People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) circulated a video in August 2021. That video depicted scenes of turkeys being thrown, kicked and picked up by their necks.
Charges against seven other former Plainville Farms workers are pending, with those charges filed in multiple counties.
Shortly after the video surfaced, Plainville Farms announced it was cooperating with law enforcement agencies and had launched its own investigation into the matter. The result of that investigation was the termination of 13 employees, as well as the purchase of body cameras for a third-party animal welfare specialist to monitor all live operations by employees.
The company also replaced catching employees with a third-party vendor to provide catching services.
Previously part of Hain Celestial’s Hain Pure Protein segment, Plainville Farms was acquired in 2019 by a newly-formed investor group known as Plainville Brands LLC.
Plainville Farms, according to the WATTPoultry.com Top Poultry Companies Database, processed 90 million pounds of live turkeys during the past year. It ranks as the 15th largest turkey company in the United States.
