Skip to comments.
Farmers Put Live Chickens in Wood Chippers (what the cluck?)
Reuters ^
Posted on 04/14/2003 11:44:56 AM PDT by 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.
TOPICS: Business/Economy; News/Current Events; US: California
KEYWORDS: agriculture
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 101-120, 121-140, 141-160, 161-163 next last
To: Dallas
Why is this a big deal?
Where do we think Chicken McNuggets come from?
To: honeygrl
lol - now that's what I call TLC.
142
posted on
04/14/2003 3:37:36 PM PDT
by
Frapster
(*cough*)
To: ctlpdad
ooooo! omeletting that one go.
To: Spiff
A chicken retirement home?
Hows abouts a chicken shoot over yonder to the city dump.
144
posted on
04/14/2003 3:41:52 PM PDT
by
AdA$tra
(Tagline maintenance in progress......)
To: ctlpdad
Ted Kennedy just drowns the chicks that won't lay - uses his olsmobile
I had to read that twice to make sure you really said that... LOL!
145
posted on
04/14/2003 3:43:56 PM PDT
by
AdA$tra
(Tagline maintenance in progress......)
To: Dallas
Surely there was a more humane way than this.
Just unbelieveable, imo..
146
posted on
04/14/2003 3:44:50 PM PDT
by
Jhoffa_
(It's called "adoption" Perhaps you've heard of it?)
To: sharktrager
Now that's funny!
147
posted on
04/14/2003 3:45:37 PM PDT
by
dpa5923
(More than a man, less than a god.)
To: spodefly
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.
There: Now the truth has been spoken. I didn't even have to work there. I just had a friend who did for one day.
148
posted on
04/14/2003 3:46:37 PM PDT
by
AdA$tra
(Tagline maintenance in progress......)
To: Dallas
Unless I'm confabulating memories more than usual, dumping-into-chippers/grinders is standard operating procedure for dealing with unwanted chicks. Given a large enough chipper -- and we're not talking the kind of chipper Grandma uses to grind up fallen tree branches into decorative mulch, I'm guessing -- I don't see how putting bigger chickens into them is any crueller. My only concerns would be that the sound of the chipper and the smell of blood would cause panic in the birds as they waited to die, or that they wouldn't be rapidly pulled into the cutting mechanisms and might flop about bleeding to death.
To: thinktwice
Ditto on that, thinktwice. Also if you have ever operated a chipper you know that they run at such a high speed and are so efficient that there is not enough time between insertion and expulsion for a small animal such as a chicken to feel any measurable pain before death.
I suspect these guys thought for health reasons it was the least messy and contamination free way to do it. They may have been wrong in there thinking, but in California you can't simply burn unwanted things anymore, so cremation was probably out of the question. What else were they going to do? Gas the birds and then put them in a landfill?
150
posted on
04/14/2003 4:02:03 PM PDT
by
Pearman
To: Dallas
Um...They couldn't find a meat cleaver? That's how folks used to kill chickens, once upon a time before the rise of the slaughterhouse.
To: demosthenes the elder
a big-ass chipperWould that be the Jennifer Lopez model????
152
posted on
04/14/2003 4:23:50 PM PDT
by
Eaker
(64,999,987 firearm owners killed no one yesterday. Somehow, it didn't make the news.)
To: socal_parrot
153
posted on
04/14/2003 5:36:40 PM PDT
by
Dallas
To: freeper12
The guy that chopped up his wife in a wood chipper, All they found was a finger nail and a tooth, but it was enough to find him guilty.
154
posted on
04/14/2003 5:40:30 PM PDT
by
Lockbar
To: Dallas
You know what kind of racket a woodchipper makes when you feed it wood.
I wonder what sound it makes when you feed it a chicken?
155
posted on
04/14/2003 6:31:25 PM PDT
by
LibKill
(Nuke Berlin! Better late than never.)
To: Dallas
PETA is evil.
To: Eaker
no - the Rosie O'Donnel KMart Blue Light Special
We may have found another conservative tipping point.
Neos cry fowl.
Paleos laugh at the crying.
Libertarians cluck, & chuckle at both.
158
posted on
04/14/2003 7:58:07 PM PDT
by
P_A_I
To: ~Kim4VRWC's~; Dallas
Geeze louise..there was no other way?I suppose that the farmers could pretend they were baby seals and club them with baseball bats...
159
posted on
04/15/2003 8:12:12 AM PDT
by
Tolerance Sucks Rocks
(There be no shelter here; the front line is everywhere!)
To: k2blader
Did they actually find that at Mickey D's or something?
160
posted on
04/15/2003 8:35:04 AM PDT
by
Tolerance Sucks Rocks
(There be no shelter here; the front line is everywhere!)
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 101-120, 121-140, 141-160, 161-163 next last
Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson