Undercover video shows dying chicks, ducklings at Live Oak hatchery
SANTA CRUZ — An animal rights group Wednesday released a video of workers processing ducklings and chicks at a Live Oak hatchery, focusing on the maimed casualties, as they sought to prompt the county District Attorney's Office to file animal cruelty charges against the company.
The District Attorney's Office released a statement late Wednesday intimating they had insufficient evidence to prosecute.
The four-minute video was shot by an undercover employee at Cal-Cruz Hatcheries during a three-week period last year, said Erica Meier, director of Compassion Over Killing, a Washington D.C. nonprofit that advocates for humane treatment of farm animals and vegetarianism.
It shows workers treating the
chirping small birds as commodities, seemingly without notice of their pain, and allowing them to flail around where they fell, after being chewed up by machinery or otherwise fatally mangled.
The company president said he plans to make some changes to avoid suffering.
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