IF you torture a single chicken and are caught, you’re likely to be arrested. If you scald thousands of chickens alive, you’re an industrialist who will be lauded for your acumen.

That’s my conclusion after reviewing video footage taken by an undercover investigator for Mercy for Animals, an animal rights group. The investigator said he worked for two months in a North Carolina poultry slaughterhouse and routinely saw chickens have their legs or wings broken, sometimes repeatedly — or, worse, be scalded to death.

“It made me sick to my stomach,” said the investigator, who insisted on remaining anonymous because he continues to work undercover elsewhere. He described it as torture.

Matt Rice, the director of investigations for Mercy for Animals, noted that federal rules on humane slaughter apply to cattle, hogs and sheep, but not to poultry — even though birds amount to 95 percent of farm animals killed each year in America.