California Attorney
Holds Meeting, Files Petition Contesting Protest END Eradication
Program
“In an unscientific effort to prevent the spreading
of END (exotic Newcastle disease), the task force kills all birds
in an area where END has been allegedly located, regardless of the
bird’s status as a healthy, disease-free bird.” –
Attorney William H. Dailey in a Petition filed on March 24, 2003
“Laws are being broken by the teams every day.
From trespassing to abuse of power. Not to mention animal cruelty
acts.” – Mike and Sue Swallow,
Norco, CA, Email, 1/28/03
In January, California Gov. Gray Davis and the U.S. Department
of Agriculture (USDA) declared a state of emergency to protect California’s
$3 billion poultry and egg industry from exotic Newcastle disease
(END), a contagious virus that affects the respiratory, nervous
and digestive systems of birds and, while said to be harmless to
humans, “can cause pink eye in rare circumstances,”
according to Pima County, Arizona Sheriff’s Detective Mike
Duffey (KOLD-TV, Tucson, AZ, 2/19/03).
On February 13, 2003, UPC President Karen Davis joined a meeting
of animal protection groups, concerned citizens, journalists, and
government officials in Los Angeles to discuss the handling of the
situation. Hosted by attorney William Dailey, and Cherylynn Costner
of the Hillary Chicken Memorial Fund, the meeting also included
representatives of The Fund For Animals, the Humane Farming Association,
The Humane Society of the United States, Last Chance for Animals,
the Parrot Society of Los Angeles, Mike and Sue Swallow, and others.
On March 24, 2003, attorney William H. Dailey filed a Petition
with the Superior Court of California on behalf of 13 bird owners,
the Hillary Chicken Memorial Fund, the Association of Veterinarians
for Animal Rights, and amended in April to include United Poultry
Concerns, urging the court to order Gov. Gray Davis to rescind his
January emergency order calling for the eradication of exotic Newcastle
disease through the “expeditious disposal of poultry”
and to order Davis and government agencies to establish due-process
protections that prevent authorities from arbitrarily and capriciously
slaughtering companion or show birds. “We’re asking
the court to tell the government to do things differently and to
obey the constitution,” Dailey said. “Over 3 million
birds were slaughtered to date just in California and most of them
weren’t infected.” Dailey’s motion accuses Gov.
Davis and the CA task force of “repeated abuses of constitutional
rights and cruelty toward citizens and violations of animal anti-cruelty
statutes.” (Associated Press 3/31/03)
To read the Petition go to http://www.upc-online.org/poultry_diseases/4303petition.htm
For updates call Cherylynn Costner, Hillary Chicken Memorial Fund:
877-452-4425.
“Men in white suits come to your door to kill your precious
birds.” – Sue Swallow
So far the USDA and CA Dept of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) have
killed more than 3 million commercial, backyard, and companion birds
at a cost to taxpayers in excess of $40 million, including $12.8
million paid in indemnities to bird owners (Scripps Howard News
Service 4/1/03). Chickens, parrots, ducks, geese, pigeons,
turkeys, emus, peafowl, and other birds were, and are now being,
killed, the majority showing no sign of the disease and without
first being tested. If one bird tests positive in a flock
consisting of one bird or a million birds, all of the birds are
destroyed.
California residents Mike and Sue Swallow describe the treatment
of companion birds: “A vet shows up with a bunch of low paid
thugs and prison labor. In full view of a family, including the
children, they catch the birds they can catch, tape their legs together,
put each one in a plastic bag, and gas them with carbon dioxide.
The ones they can’t catch they shoot with pellet guns until
they are dead. Geese and emus they bludgeon to death with clubs.”
The Cockfighting Connections
“They place the blame for this situation, as well as
its being spread, directly in the hands of fighting cock breeders.
In fact, it is believed that the jumping [of the virus] from backyard
poultry flocks to the commercial egg production facilities was because
many of the employees of poultry farms owned infected chickens."
– Sandee L. Molenda, reporting on a meeting with CA State
Veterinarian Dr. Richard Breitmeyer in January 2003.
Though cockfighting has been illegal in California since 1905 –
as is raising roosters for fighting, participating in or attending
a cockfight and possessing fighting paraphernalia –there are
at least 3 million game birds in the state and 50,000 – 60,000
owners (Poultry Times, 2/17/03). A county detective explains,
“These guys have two to 400 roosters, on the pretext of raising
show birds. They’re tied to stakes, in the open, and go through
a training regimen to make them fighters” (Modesto Bee,
2/9/03). Cockfighters bring birds up from Mexico and move them
from state to state despite federal quarantines. They work on poultry
and egg farms, tracking the disease into chicken houses. Despite
the illegality of cockfighting in California and 47 other states,
USDA is compensating cockfighters whose birds are destroyed under
the END eradication program, as high as $1,850 per bird (The
Californian, 3/15/03). This compensation supports cockfighting
and encourages cockfighters to “find” END, kill their
birds, and introduce new birds in order to get paid. California
resident Mike Swallow told UPC (3/13/03), “They hide 5 or
6 dead birds and after depopulation sell those dead birds to other
cockfighters to infect their birds and get the big payoff.”
The Poultry and Egg Industry: Culpability and Reward
“END spreads rapidly among birds kept in confinement,
such as commercially raised chickens.” USDA Fact Sheet
(1/6/03)
“It’s a public record when the federal government
pays a farmer to grow cotton or rice; so why isn’t it so when
the feds pay a rancher to euthanize [sic] a chicken? The reason,
says the task force, is that the market value of any given chicken
is propriety information. . . . Chicken ranchers should be thrilled
that the government has such a generous program to shield them from
financial ruin.” – Scripps Howard News Service
(4/1/03)
In addition to END’s being transmitted through infected birds’
droppings and secretions from the nose, mouth, and eyes, a USDA
Fact Sheet (1/6/03) explains that the disease “is often spread
by vaccination and debeaking crews, manure haulers, rendering truck
drivers, feed delivery personnel, poultry buyers, egg service people,
and poultry farm owners and employees.” And while the mass
killing of birds to eradicate END is being done to protect the poultry
and egg industry, there is another side to the slaughter, exemplified
by the egg rancher who killed 100,000 of his hens, not because they
had END but because they were “spent.” Since he couldn’t
truck them to slaughter due to the quarantine in his area, he was
reimbursed for every hen piled on his truck “pouring over
the side of the truck,” whereupon he told the Los Angeles
Daily News (2/15/03), “For a guy who’s been losing
money for three years this could be the first sizable check in a
long time.”
That’s because the state is paying egg companies $2 to $5
per bird for losses incurred under the END eradication program,
an exchange welcomed by an industry that’s been trying to
reduce the U.S. flock size for years and normally gets –0
to 10 cents per unwanted hen. U.S. egg companies normally
suffocate their “spent” flocks in dumpsters and sell
them to renderers, having no other market for their “product.”
“They’d be crying all the way to the bank,” if
their chickens were stricken, one poultry producer told the Los
Angeles Times (1/8/03). It is thus reasonable to suppose that
many egg-laying flocks are intentionally being “stricken”
and that END has to do not only with cockfighting but collusion
between the egg industry and the government to consolidate the industry
and eliminate the smaller guys, who are killing their birds, taking
the money, and selling their land to real estate developers.
What Can I Do?
- Urge U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman to endorse,
and your Members of Congress to support, the Ensign-Allard-Cantwell
(Senate) and Bartlett-Andrews (House of Representatives) legislation
that increases interstate commerce in birds intended for cockfighting
from a misdemeanor to a felony. Tell Secretary Veneman to stop
reimbursing cockfighters as part of the END eradication program.
Tell her and your Members of Congress you do not want your taxes
used to benefit cockfighters but to support a vigorous federal
program to uphold federal and state laws that prohibit cockfighting.
|
United
Poultry Concerns, Inc.