Farmers Put Live Chickens in Wood Chippers (what the cluck?)

Reuters ^

[Dallas]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -

Two California poultry farmers who fed some 30,000 live chickens into wood chippers will not face criminal charges because they had permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture , prosecutors said on Friday.

But a spokesman for the Humane Society of the United States called the farmers "callous and barbaric" and disagreed with the decision not to prosecute them.

The farmers needed to destroy the chickens because they were "spent" -- or no longer able to produce eggs -- and could not make chicken soup out of them because the farms were under quarantine for the poultry virus Exotic Newcastle Disease, District Attorney's spokeswoman Gayle Stewart said.

Stewart said the men, who run a poultry farm near San Diego, asked a senior veterinarian with the Agriculture Department if they could employ the wood chippers and were given permission.

"Once they had permission we decided that they did not have any criminal intent," Stewart said.

Brothers Arie and Will Wilgenburg, who run Escondido-based Ward Poultry Farm, could not be reached for comment on Friday. Earlier, they told the San Diego Union Tribune newspaper that they were doing "what we thought we had to do" based on expert advice and stopped as soon as they learned otherwise.

Wayne Pacelle, a spokesman for the Humane Society, said that explanation was unacceptable.

"The act of feeding live chickens into a wood chipper is an extraordinarily callous and barbaric act and I can't imagine any person with a whit of common sense would use a wood chipper as a killing tool," he said. "No person with any experience in killing animals would sanction the use of this technique."

Pacelle said the District Attorney's decision not to prosecute the brothers rested on the "faulty assumption" that using wood chippers to kill chickens was an accepted practice.

[honeygrl]

"You'd never eat sausage if you saw the way it was made.... "

I once ate sausage made from pigs that I had bottlefed as babies.. doesn't that sound horrible? That sausage tasted SO good though.

[Matchett-PI]

"Two California poultry farmers .. fed some 30,000 live chickens into wood chippers. ... a spokesman for the Humane Society of the United States called the farmers "callous and barbaric"

True. What they did IS callous and barbaric.

But based upon polling results worldwide, it appears as if there are a lot of people who are more worried about stopping the "callous and barbaric" treatment of chickens than they were of stopping the "callous and barbaric" treatment of the people in Iraq.

"..other chilling details of Saddam's reign of terror in Iraq were revealed ... Researchers preparing an indictment of Saddam for crimes against humanity detailed evidence of torture, murder and ethnic cleansing .. Their horrific report included eyewitness testimony of prisoners being killed by being fed through industrial shredders and children being gassed in jail." HERE

[honeygrl]

"I'll bet lobsters would kill to die this humanely. "

Good point.. maybe the men should've boiled them to death instead in a giant pot.

[Freedom2specul8]

LOL actually, my question was answered since I wrote that.

[Freedom2specul8]

:-D

[Freedom2specul8]

good question. I'm sure there's "something". Too bad the article wasn't more informative. Investigative reporter he/she was not.

[honeygrl]

"Even freakier, was discovering that headless chickens can still squawk"

How THAT would give me nightmares.

[Stultis]

Aha! So that's how they make "McNuggets"!

[SquirrelKing]

"MMmmmm....Chicken Smoothies!"

[Jaded]

The former Eastern Airlines pilot?

[spodefly]

I feel compelled to respond in defense of the farmers. For one reason, I grew up on a farm, and while it was not a chicken farm, I did work summers at a chicken farm in my teens.

These we full grown chickens if they were egg hens. That is a LOT of chicken.

How are you going to "dispose" of 30,000 chickens?

1.) Running thru the yard and wringing the neck of all 30,000 would take months, and if you have ever seen a chicken have its neck ringed, you know that isn't very 'unbarbaric' either.

2.) Shoot them? Not likely, although throwning them up in the air first would at least make it sporting.

3.) Run them over with a car? Very messy, and best let to the pros like Lizzie Grubman.

4.) Drown them? Better have a big pond and a big net.

5.) Poison gas? This method, while approved by socialist dictators for people, would be frowned upon by bureaucrats and PETA for chickens. Also, too much potential for colatteral damage.

I am sure the farmers in question looked at their options, and the wood chipper was seen as fast (i.e., humane), efficient, and cost effective.

Besides, anyone that has ever been to a chicken processing plant knows the chickens that got fed thru the wood chipper are getting a good deal.

[Junior]

I've heard of chipped beef, but this is ridiculous.

[philetus]

It's got to be the farmers and chickens.

Nobody's protesting the people in the plastic shredder.

[Willie Green]

Time to call in an expert witness..

Do you need corroborating testimony from another woodchipper survivor?

[Tony Niar Brain]

Ha... I know what you mean. I guess I can sympathize; we all have that feeling to puree a screaming chicken when we've had one too many beers. You know, for a good time.

[WilliamWallace1999]

How many chicks could a woodchipper chip if a woodchipper could chip chicks?

Say that fast three times.

[Righter-than-Rush]

>>How many chicks could a woodchipper chip if a woodchipper could chip chicks?>>

Try this one:

How many chicks could a chickenchiiper chip if a chickchipper could chip chicks?

[demosthenes the elder]

well, THAT is gross.
I dunno how "cruel" and "barbarous" it may have been.
The chickens were marked for death, no matter what.
It seems to me the farmers chose an effective expedient method for mass slaughter.
That many chickens suggests a big-ass chipper, not one of the dinky ones you can rent. One that is top-loaded from a hopper, with a down-angled chute, with fittings for bags at the bottom. They are also FAST. Too fast for significant levels of pain to be reported to a creature's brain before the brain itself is mulched.
So, again, dunno about this "cruel" stuff.
Certainly paints a nauseating picture, though. ICK.

[demosthenes the elder]

point.

[Tribune7]

I don't know if it would be that cruel. I suspect death was very fast. Chickens aren't that big.