COK Investigation Update: Penn. Court Finds Animal Abuse on Egg Farm is Legal
On June 1, 2007, more than one year
after the trial began—a trial that received
national as well as extensive local media
attention—a Lancaster County (Penn.)
court quietly acquitted the owner and
manager of Esbenshade Farms, one
of the state’s largest egg factory farms,
of criminal animal cruelty. There is
no published opinion explaining the
decision, nor did Judge Jayne Duncan
present her ruling in a courtroom.
The decision to acquit the two
defendants, despite clear video evidence
of appallingly inhumane conditions,
begs the question: if confining birds in
decrepit wire cages, causing them to
become impaled on loose wires and then
starve to death isn’t cruelty to animals,
what is?
Johnna Seeton, a state-certified
humane officer, filed the charges, a
total of 70 counts of criminal animal
cruelty, in January 2006 after viewing a
shocking undercover video provided by
Compassion Over Killing. The footage
was gathered by a COK investigator who
was employed at Esbenshade Farms in
late 2005. While there, he painstakingly
documented the miseries forced
upon hundreds of thousands of hens
kept in deteriorating wire cages. Scenes
from the video include birds impaled on
loose wires, birds struggling to free their
wings, toes, or beaks from the wires of
their cages, and live hens forced to live
with and walk upon the decomposing
bodies of their cage mates.
This court may have acquitted these
two defendants, but the court of public
opinion is certainly turning against the
egg industry and its cruel practices.
What You Can Do:
The best way each of us can help laying
hens is to simply leave their eggs out of
our shopping carts. Visit
VegRecipes.org
for egg-free recipes and to order your
free Easy Vegan Recipes booklet.
Is This Animal Cruelty? You Be the Judge.
This hen died after her beak got caught on a
wire hook near the water dispenser.
Unable to access food or water, this hen was
found dead after she became trapped under
a feeding rail.
Watch our undercover
video footage inside Esbenshade
Farms in Mt. Joy, Penn., where more
than 500,000 hens are forced to spend
their lives inside tiny wire cages.
Previous Page | Contents | Next Page
|
