Machipongo, VA, USA – On Thursday, April 18, a student at the Alberta College of Art and Design, in Calgary, killed a chicken with a knife in the school cafeteria in front of other students at lunchtime.

An eyewitness said the student, an unidentified male, “decided to slowly slit [the chicken’s] throat while it’s wiggling, wriggling and screaming,” according to CBC News April 18, 2013.

The killing was said to be a “performance art” for a school project called “Fact or Fiction” that was supposedly approved by the teacher.

“We are joining Canadians for Ethical Treatment of Food Animals (CETFA) to urge investigation and prosecution of this deliberate act of animal cruelty,” said Karen Davis, President of United Poultry Concerns, an organization that promotes compassionate treatment of domestic fowl.

“We have written to the Chief Crown Prosecutor, the Chief of Calgary Police Service, the Alberta SPCA, and the Calgary Humane Society urging that charges be laid upon the student under Section 2 of Alberta’s provincial Animal Protection Act, which prohibits causing an animal to be in distress, including animals who are injured, in pain, suffering, abused or subjected to undue hardship,” Davis said. “We are not looking at a bylaw for prosecution, but at the provincial animal welfare act where there would be a higher likelihood of prosecution.”

“We have also joined CETFA in urging the president of the Alberta College of Art and Design to discipline the student and to adopt a formal policy prohibiting the use of animals, including hurting, confining, and killing animals for exhibition or performance purposes.” Davis added that “students who witnessed the slow killing and suffering of the bird expressed dismay at what they heard and saw– animal cruelty posturing as ‘art.’”

“The school and law enforcement together must take a stand against cruelty to animals and hold this student accountable,” Davis said. “Society expects its prosecutors, police chiefs, and humane societies to uphold the law and not give lawbreakers a pass, especially when the offense is one of extreme violence and gratuitous cruelty to a defenseless animal, as it was in this case.”

United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. http://www.upc-online.org

This News Release has been distributed to news media in the U.S. and Canada through PR Newswire and Broadcast Interview Source.