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The Jury is Still Out

Sheez…Tamarix Poultry Pty Ltd. want to build a mega battery egg factory right smack on the South Gippsland Highway on Tooradin’s doorstep! Not only don’t they care about the suffering of the hens but they obviously have no hesitations plopping their stinky business literally on a local township by the sea. Well the locals are rightly up in arms and ALV is right there with them in trying to do all we can to stop this horror from going ahead.

The small township quickly gathered 42 objections and numerous signatures on petitions against the proposal. When ALV found out about this we widely circulated news of it and the objections swelled to 361 (thanks to all of you who so quickly acted on this - well done guys!!) And then in December at the monthly Tooradin market concerned locals and ALV had a stall where a further 207 objections were quickly signed up - mostly by local residents - swelling the total number of objections to 568 and counting!

The local Casey Council voted unanimously against the proposal after the then mayor, Colin Butler spoke passionately for his motion not to allow this planning permit to be approved. So off it was to VCAT (Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal), for a three day hearing (Jan 21-23) after the applicant, Tamarix Poultry appealed the decision (and the failure of the Council to make it ‘in time’). ALV was refused standing by the Vice President of VCAT to participate in this hearing (more on this in a later post!), but we still attended as public observers and had to sit still and not say a word…. hhhhmmmmmmmmm that was so hard, I truly felt like I wanted to put a piece of black tape over my mouth the whole time I sat there. Or better put, I felt like a battery hen where they had no voice at all, even though it was ALL about them.

But the local residents (who had standing) and the solicitor for the Casey Council did a great job in putting their case forward against the application. The two Members hearing the matter said after hearing all the evidence they will visit the site and reserved their decision. This is expected to be handed down in the next two weeks. You will be notified of the result on this blog FOR SURE… as there is no way we can allow yet another animal torture concentration camp be built in our community. You can start writing letters to the papers now, Click here for background information and while you’re at it, please sign up for the ALV writers group. Carmen does an excellent job circulating items that need your fingers pumping on the keyboard. together for the hens!

A young chick nests on the corpse of another hen at Parkhurst Farm

More rescues at Parkhurst Farm

ALV supporters are aware of the longstanding undercover investigations at Parkhurst Farm in Little River, twenty minutes west of Melbourne, where ‘broiler’ chickens are raised for their flesh. Eight sheds hold a total of 320,000 chicks - five times a year. 40,000 birds are crammed per shed for eight weeks after which time these babies weigh more than an adult laying hen and are sent off to slaughter - they still have blue eyes and chirp. 1.6 million babies ‘live’ and die every year at this one chicken factory farm alone. The birds are selectively bred for rapid growth and routinely fed antibiotics (not hormones) which act as a growth promotant and helps to keep them alive in the putrid conditions.

Between January 2004 and March 2005 our rescue team conducted 17 undercover openrescues at this animal factory removing a total of 219 sick and dying birds for veterinary care and rehabilitation. Video footage, photographs, veterinary statements and a written report clearly documenting the ongoing cruel and illegal conditions were presented to the Wyndham City Council, the Police and the RSPCA. NOTHING whatsoever was done to help these animals.

It is now four years since ALV began this Parkhurst Farm investigation and 6,400,000 chicks have suffered and died during this time… Our team again visited Parkhurst Farm on January 12 and 14, a couple weeks ago. Everything was exactly the same… it was filthy, putrid, stinking, hot, and rotting bodies littered the floor. Frail chicks were unable to access food or water, we found chicks in their death throes and filmed chicks pecking and roosting on corpses oozing pus. We were surrounded by the sick and dead and carried out as many as we could - a total of 33 chicks on the two visits. Only eight of these babies have survived. The vet euthanased the rest due to their appalling condition, and then told me he would never be eating chicken again!

I don’t think people have a clue who they are eating when they put chicken inside their mouth. Anyone who eats chicken is chewing pitiful baby birds who are sickly and can hardly walk or support their abnormal weight. I’ve seen enough of these chicks in enough sheds and nursed enough rescued ones to know exactly what I am talking about.

It’s a time bomb ticking, not only for each and every one of the BILLIONS of ‘broiler’ chicks globally who die every year but also for our environment that is groaning under the weight of supplying food and water for such large numbers of animals and of course - for human health.

Bird flu epidemic in India has seen culling teams in Bangladesh / West Bengal working around the clock to slaughter over 2.5 million chickens. The official human death toll from bird flu in Indonesia reached 100 over the weekend, and Vietnam recorded its first human bird flu death. Another outbreak of the disease has occurred amoungst poultry in China (western Xinjiang region) and recently it was announced that Tibet has an outbreak of bird flu amoungst poultry causing over 1000 birds to die from the H5N1 strain of the virus, while more than 13,000 others have been culled in a bid to stop the spread of the disease.

What the world needs now is an end to animal agriculture; we can live so much better without it and they can live.

Rescue Images: January 12th 2008

Rescue Images: January 14th 2008