AR-News: (UK) Poultry firm fined for cruelty

[cathy goeggel]

      British poultry firm fined for chicken cruelty

      by Ann Bagel on 3/29/04 for Meatingplace.com

      One of the biggest poultry production companies in the United Kingdom
has been fined and prosecuted for the death of thousands of chickens, the
Press Association reported.

      Grampian Country Chickens of Suffolk was found responsible for an
incident in which nearly 2,500 chickens died of heat stress last July. They
were being transported approximately 13 miles from a farm to a processing
plant in temperatures approaching 28 degrees Celsius (82.4 degrees
Fahrenheit).

      A spokesman for the Suffolk County Council's Trading Standards
Department said the dead birds constituted almost half those being
transported. He said this was the fifth time a large number of birds died
due to heat while traveling from the same farm.