The Humane Society of the United States and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals yesterday asked the District Attorney's Office to reconsider its decision not to file animal cruelty charges against the owners of poultry ranches where thousands of live chickens where thrown into wood chippers.

Last week, the District Attorney's Office decided that brothers Arie and Bill Wilgenburg, who own the Escondido-based Ward Poultry Farm, were not acting with criminal intent when they instructed workers to destroy chickens with wood chippers.

The Wilgenburgs were following the advice of a veterinarian, and wood chippers are one of many methods of mass euthanasia used by the poultry industry, Deputy District Attorney Elizabeth Silva said.

"Across the country, this is just one of the ways they do it," said Silva, who specializes in agricultural crime.

She said the Ward farm, prohibited from moving old unproductive hens from its ranches in Valley Center and Potrero due to a quarantine for exotic Newcastle disease, a deadly avian virus, faced few options for destroying them. "It's cruel and it's callous, but it's part of any animal husbandry operation," Silva said.

But in a letter to District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of the Humane Society, and Eric Sakach, director of the society's west coast regional office, said the use of a wood chipper to destroy chickens was not an acceptable means of euthanasia.

"Let me say emphatically that no reputable animal welfare authority could possibly condone such a barbaric and reckless method of killing," the two wrote. "Neither the HSUS nor the American Veterinary Medical Association endorses this conduct.

" . . . A determination from your office that it is not illegal to throw live hens into a wood chipper could put millions of animals in California's egg farm industry at risk."

Cem Akin, a PETA research associate, said grinding or maceration of poultry should only be used on chicks up to 72 hours old. In a letter to Silva, Akin said its use on older chickens "results in extreme pain and suffering for animals who do not die instantly due to overcrowding or jamming and have to endure the horror of having body parts go through the grinder while still fully conscious."

Wood chippers, typically used by tree-removal companies, have blades on rapidly spinning disks or drums that cut branches into small chips.

Silva said her decision came down to whether a jury could be convinced that the ranchers acted with criminal intent. In an interview, Bill Wilgenburg has said he was simply following expert advice.

Silva said the Wilgenburgs were given permission to use the wood chippers by a veterinarian working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and assigned to its exotic Newcastle disease eradication effort. USDA officials, however, said last week the veterinarian was not working for or representing the agency. Silva and the county Department of Animal Services maintain that he was working with the USDA.

James Gill

The new federal law against transporting gamecocks across state lines may cramp Louisiana's style, but the fights will continue here for the foreseeable future.

Louisiana will probably soon be the last hold-out. Cockfighting has been voted out in an Oklahoma referendum, and continues only pending a legal challenge, while legislators in the only other state where it remains legal, New Mexico, are moving ever closer to banning it.

Anti-cockfighting bills have a very short life expectancy in Louisiana, however. If you want to learn how not to lobby for a cause, go to a committee meeting in Baton Rouge and listen while a New Orleans animal rights advocate explains to Cajun legislators that cockfighting is a barbarity and a disgrace to the state.

The battle over cockfighting gave rise to one of our greatest political myths when then-attorney general Billy Guste opined well over 20 years ago that it was not covered by state laws against animal cruelty. Word got about that Guste had saved cockfighting by declaring that chickens were not animals.

This is up there with the yarn that the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of casinos by inventing a distinction between gambling and gaming. That never happened, and neither did Guste conclude the chickens were not critters. What he did say, quite correctly, was that when legislators passed the humane laws, they intended to protect only quadrupeds.

Legislators have remained indifferent ever since to bipedal slaughter in the cockpit, but dogfights will get you arrested pronto.

Cockfighting has long been too grisly a spectacle for other states -- Massachusetts was the first to make it illegal in 1836 -- and it is possible that our singular stance will create the impression elsewhere that Louisiana is maybe not all that progressive. Really. It could happen.

Strapping gaffs to roosters' spurs for a bloody fight to the death strikes most people as too depraved to be called a sport, or, as Congressman Chris John, D-Crowley, puts it, "a social and cultural event." Sure, it's just like going to the opera.

When the federal ban on rooster trafficking takes effect next month, gamefowl breeders in other states may go out of business, unless they choose to flout the law, which may not be so hard to do. Others may relocate here, proving that Louisiana is capable of attracting new businesses after all. Maybe the federal law is the key to economic development we have been seeking for so long.

Cockfighting, according to its apologists, already pumps $205 million a year into the Louisiana economy, and it is not hard to believe. People come from far and wide for the main, and they bitterly resent federal intrusion.

Gamecocks are natural fighters, they say, which, thanks to selective breeding, is true. Unable to claim any natural excuse for the gaffs, cockfighters suggest that they ensure a quicker death. This "just speeds the process to where it is more humane," one explains. See, they are just sensitive guys.

There is no denying that they are correct, however, in claiming that life is much sweeter for a gamecock than a battery hen. The gamecock is pampered, with roomy quarters and the best in nutrition and health care. If a sudden and gory death is a strong possibility, it is an absolute certainty for the chickens we eat.

Other animals raised for food are subjected to unspeakable cruelties that a gamecock breeder would never contemplate. Public animal shelters, meanwhile, are little more than extermination centers. Cockfighters do not understand why, in the midst of so much cruelty to animals, they are singled out for federal opprobrium when they are preserving the admirable qualities of ancient bloodlines.

It is simple enough. They have no pretext for inflicting cruelty beyond its entertainment value. That won't wash in an age that has bestowed so many rights on animals that such outfits as PETA can oppose their use even in medical research.

To the rest of America, cockfighting is a relic of less enlightened times, but chances are that will just make Louisiana more determined to preserve it.

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James Gill is a staff writer. He can be reached at (504) 826-3318 or at jgill@timespicayune.com.

Source: http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1050040634131100.xml

Courtesy: Marc R.