SANTA CRUZ, Calif- A vegan activist group says a Santa Cruz hatchery is breaking the law and they say that they have the video to prove it. The group called Compassion Over Killing says that they sent in an undercover camera to get the video and it shows graphic images of baby birds being tossed aside by workers.
Cal-Cruz Hatcheries has been in the Live Oak neighborhood for nearly 60 years and in all that time they have only had one complaint of animal cruelty and that was in February of 2009.
The activist group says that the follow up investigation by the Santa Cruz Animal Services, which is located across the street from the hatchery, cooberated their evidence. Animal Services would not comment on the undercover video but they did say that they did seize some of the the birds from the hatchery because they were left in incubators too long.
The video showed decapitated and mangled hatchlings caught in machinery, sick and gravely injured ducklings left to suffer for hours, one duckling drowning in a bucket of liquid waste, unwanted hatchlings treated like trash, and baby birds being tossed into buckets up to six feet across a room. According to Compassion Over Killing, the Santa Cruz District Attorney's office held the case for several months before declining to prosecute the hatchery for violations of state animal protection laws.
"If kittens or puppies were treated this way, animal cruelty charges would have been brought in this case a long time ago," stated Leanne Cronquist, Farm Sanctuary's California shelter director.
The following statement was released by the District Attorney's Office:
"We have a history of aggressively prosecuting animal rights cases, and we take this issue very seriously. We share the public's revulsion at the abuse of animals. However, our job is to carefully ensure that we can build and prove a criminal case against specific individuals."
Brian Collins, who owns Cal-Cruz Hatchery, says that he was upset when he found out about the video, "I feel it was somewhat cowardly that they had to do it that way. If he's got some ideas, something we should do differently, then he should have shared that."
Collins says that 350 thousand chicks are hatched each week and 99% of them survive, but due to illness or injury some of the birds can't be sold. He agrees killing them or letting them die is inhumane but said it's part of the business and he isn't doing anything illegal.
"It is gruesome and there are different ways that are allowable by law. One of them is to chop them up into little bitty pieces by a meat tenderizer. The other is to gas them through a high speed vacuum with a kill plate and that's what we use," said Collins.
Farm Sanctuary has found adoptive homes for many of the ducks rescued from the Cal-Cruz Hatchery in 2009 through the organization's Farm Animal Adoption Network and continues to care for eight of the ducks.
