Dear Friend,

When the San Diego County, Ca. district attorney refused to prosecute a company that threw thousands of live chickens into woodchipping machinery last February, United Poultry Concerns launched a successful campaign to identify the culprits "behind the scenes."

After months of effort, we obtained the file showing that two veterinarians, Drs. Gregg Cutler and Doug Kuney, told the company to shred the hens to death.

A witness watched the shredding from her porch: "They [the workers] tossed the live chickens into the shredder by hand and by tractor bucket. This went on all day."

As soon as we obtained the file through a California Public Records Act request, we mailed it to animal protection groups around the country. And we sent out a press release proclaiming our intent to get Gregg Cutler, who sits on the American Veterinary Medical Association's animal welfare committee - representing bird welfare! - off that committee.

The result was a powerful article in the Los Angeles Times on November 22, 2003. In "Wood-Chipped Chickens Fuel Outrage," Jia-Rui Chong wrote: "United Poultry Concerns has been circulating the San Diego County documents and vowed that animal groups would continue to nettle the American Veterinary Medical Assn. until it removed Cutler from the animal welfare committee."

The wood-chipper campaign is one of the many campaigns UPC works on each and every day, week after week, year after year. As of this writing, we're completing our investigation, begun last February, of the student killing of a chicken in an art class at the University of California, Berkeley - a butchery whitewashed by the campus Animal Care and Use Committee. (More on this in an upcoming issue of our quarterly newsletter PoultryPress.)

And we're intensifying our effort to expose and eliminate the egg industry's inhumane practice of starving hens, known as forced molting. In November, philosopher Peter Singer thanked UPC:

"for the information you and your website provided, which was the basis of my 15-minute presentation to the AVMA on forced molting."

UPC is a core member of the Coalition that is pressuring the AVMA to oppose forced molting. Our 2003 report to the AVMA on "The Animal Welfare and Food Safety Issues Associated with the Forced Molting of Laying Birds" is available online at http://www.upc-online.org/molting/52703.htm.

The need for a law to cover poultry is critical. Birds represent 99 percent of animals slaughtered for food in the United States - 25 million birds a day, 9 billion birds each year. Shocking revelations by the former chicken slaughter plant worker, Virgil Butler, added to the wood-chipping episode, show how cruelly chickens (and turkeys and ducks) are treated by the poultry & egg industry, in part because birds have no federal humane slaughter protection in this country.

Help us fight this oversight. Please make a major contribution to United Poultry Concerns today. It takes funding to fight a billion-dollar industry! But together, we can do it! Please look at Sugar, so beautiful, safe and beloved here at our sanctuary, and help us help her brothers and sisters. Our goal is to stop the slaughter (please go vegan!) and to reduce the agony of billions of chickens, turkeys and ducks who need relief now.

Karen Davis, PhD
President

To donate by using your credit card, just click on the PayPal donate button at the bottom of our homepage at upc-online.org. It's that easy!

$125 $250 $300 $150 $_______

UPC has pledged $1000 for a full-page Coalition ad targeting the AVMA in a major newspaper this spring. Please check here to give an additional donation to support our advertising program: $______.

UPC is a nonprofit organization. Federal ID: 52-1705678. All donations are tax-deductible. A financial statement is available on written request to the Office of Consumer Affairs, PO Box 1163, Richmond, VA 23218.

United Poultry Concerns * PO Box 150 * Machipongo, VA 23405 * upc-online.org * 757/678-7875