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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 16, 2000 |
Contact: Karen Davis 757-678-7875
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Carnegie Science Center Promotes Animal Abuse, Child Abuse
With Proposed Chick Hatchery
Hatchery Cruel, Uncreative, Irresponsible;
Dishonest
Hatchery Should NOT Be Supported
The Carnegie Science Center has been flooded with mail from
animal sanctuary directors, humane educators, Pittsburgh
residents, and citizens throughout the United States urging the
Center not to install a perpetual chick hatchery as part of a new
"Exploration Stations" program. United Poultry Concerns sent a
letter to every CSC Board Member respectfully urging that the
hatchery be replaced with a technology that will not propagate
thousands of chicks, thereby teaching children that it is neat to
propagate baby animals that conveniently disappear, out of sight,
out of mind, after the "miracle of birth" is over.
The Center intends to lie to children, and to the public it
solicits for funding, about the true fate of these birds that no
one, sadly, is asking for--baby birds the Center will dump, week
after week, at auctions and anywhere else it can get rid of them.
There will, of course, be no accountability. The Center is going
to lie to the public by posting photos at this shameful exhibit
of "happy endings."
United Poultry Concerns has respectfully urged the Carnegie
Science Center, in express-mailed letters, to replace the
proposed live bird hatchery with an "exploration station" that,
while being fun, also incorporates mature and compassionate
values. The hatchery does not meet this standard. It is not
creative, it is not compassionate, it is not about "Nature." It
is an abuse of nature, because the birds are being hatched,
motherless, in a piece of mechanical equipment, and dumped
somewhere each week. The hatchery is an exhibition of sordid
politics and dishonesty. It is a betrayal of the public which the
Center solicits for funding.
The Carnegie Science Center, in doggedly going forward with this
irresponsible, inhumane chick hatchery display, despite local
and national public protest, based on incontrovertible
arguments, is saying that it not only doesn't care about the
chicks (many of whom will be born deformed and trashed alive,
where the public can't see). The Center is showing that it
doesn't care about children or about public trust either.
If we have any compassion in us for the innocent trust of
children, or for the helpless life of these baby birds, we must
tell Carnegie: "Install a computerized chicken program instead."
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