Pennsylvania Battery Egg Producer Charged with Animal Cruelty |
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January 10, 2006
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| Compassion Over Killing |
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At Esbenshade Farms, dead birds are taken from cages and dumped in shopping carts. |
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A Pennsylvania humane officer, working with The Humane Society of the United States, filed criminal animal cruelty charges on January 9 against the owner and manager of Esbenshade Farms, a Mount Joy-based egg factory farm. The charges allege that the two individuals are responsible for keeping laying hens in cruel and inhumane conditions.
The criminal charges stem from videotape evidence provided by the Washington, D.C.-based animal advocacy organization Compassion Over Killing, showing deplorable conditions in a facility that confines approximately 600,000 laying hens in decrepit battery cages. The video shows birds impaled on cage wires; others trapped amid decomposing corpses, unable to reach food or water; and some left on the floor to die slowly.
After reviewing the videotape and interviewing an eyewitness, Pennsylvania humane officer Johnna Seeton filed cruelty charges in the Magisterial District Court in Lancaster County. The evidence documents repeated violations of the state's animal cruelty law, which prohibits neglect, abandonment, and other abuses. Working with lawyers from The HSUS and local attorneys in Pennsylvania, Seeton filed 35 separate criminal counts against each of the two defendants. Esbenshade's owner and manager could face up to a $750 fine for each count of cruelty alleged, possible forfeiture of the neglected animals, and even jail time.
"This is why we have cruelty laws—to prevent the abuses we see here. These animals were treated like garbage and suffered horribly as a result," said Carter Dillard, staff attorney with The HSUS's Animal Protection Litigation Section.
While conditions at most battery-cage egg facilities are inherently inhumane—confining laying hens in barren, wire battery cages so restrictive the birds don't have room to spread their wings—the videotaped footage at Esbenshade shows an egregious neglect and abandonment of animals. Unlike the majority (80%) of U.S. egg producers, Esbenshade does not even participate in the egg industry's voluntary animal welfare program. While this program still allows many cruelties, including intensively confining birds in cages so overcrowded they can barely move, it at least sets forth the barest of minimum guidelines for battery-cage factory farms.
The charges filed against Esbenshade mark the second time in six months that state authorities have filed cruelty charges against a battery egg company. In July 2005, MOARK, the country's third-largest egg producer, was videotaped throwing hundreds of live hens into a trash Dumpster at its Neosho, Missouri facility. Acting on a written request by The HSUS's lawyers, a prosecuting attorney in Newton County, Missouri filed criminal animal cruelty charges against MOARK. The charges were eventually dropped after the company agreed to donate $100,000 to a local humane society and to improve its spent hen slaughter practices.
Most eggs produced in the United States come from industrialized factory farms like MOARK and Esbenshade, confining approximately 95% of the roughly 300 million laying hens in the United States in battery cages.
See the Video
Factory Farms Slideshow
Related Links
'No Battery Eggs' Campaign Exposes the Hard-Boiled Truth about Laying Hens
MOARK Must Pay $100,000 and Overhaul Its Spent Hen Procedures to Settle Animal Cruelty Charges
