Rare Bird: Missouri County D.A. May Be the First to File Animal Cruelty Charges against an Egg Producer

August 10, 2005


	Rick Bussey

The video camera zooms in, across a busy highway and through the bars of a white fence, and focuses on a black metal container, which is partially hidden by an 18-wheeler with MOARK painted on the side. A conveyor belt, tilted at nearly a 45-degree angle, unceremoniously ends at the massive truck container parked at MOARK's Hathaway Farm site, just east of Neosho, Missouri. The camera pans right, left, then pulls back before zooming in again on the garbage container, where some "trash" appears to be moving. The time stamp on the video reads: JUL 7 2005.

Then it happens: A single-file line of white chickens rapidly ascends the conveyor belt as if the hens were forced to walk some automatic gangplank. As the birds literally reach the end of the line, almost every one flaps her wings, desperately and wildly, trying in vain to escape their inevitable tumble and death in the container. The man videotaping the scene, Rick Bussey, can no longer contain himself. "There's a Dumpster full of live chickens. There they go! Live chickens thrown in a Dumpster," he says on camera, clearly disgusted. "How cruel."

The prosecuting attorney of Newton County, Missouri, agrees. On Friday, July 29, Scott Watson filed criminal animal cruelty charges against egg producer MOARK Industries, the company's Midwest regional manager, and two subcontractors. Based in part on Bussey's video, Watson filed the class A misdemeanor charges against the defendants for purposely killing chickens "in a manner not allowed by the law," according to the filing. The HSUS has offered Watson legal and expert assistance with the case.

"Based on our preliminary research, we believe this case to be the first time a district attorney has charged an egg-producing corporation with cruelty to animals," says Carter Dillard, attorney for The HSUS's Animal Protection Litigation Section. "Although the leveling of charges in this case may be exceptional, Missouri law is absolutely clear that all animals enjoy the same legal protection, and it also specifically holds corporations responsible for abusing animals in the name of profits."

Cracking the Egg

Rick Bussey and his wife were driving their 14-year-old daughter to softball practice on Thursday, July 7, around 6:30 p.m. when they drove by the MOARK operation outside Neosho. Out of the corner of his eye, Bussey noticed something that looked "out of place"—chickens, apparently live ones, were being tossed into a garbage container. The family paused long enough to note the activity, then dropped the daughter off at her practice.

Bussey then quickly stopped at home, grabbed his video camera, and returned to the MOARK facility to tape the event. Bussey shot about five minutes of video on July 7. He says he would have shot more, but he wasn't entirely sure if the Missouri legislature had passed a bill this year prohibiting unauthorized videotaping of an animal facility. (H.B. 666, incidentally, never made it to the House floor and died when the session ended.) Still, he saw enough to form a strong opinion. "This was cruelty," he says nearly a month after the videotaping. "I can't go for that, and I don't even consider myself an animal person."

After picking up his daughter from softball practice, Bussey stopped by the MOARK facility again, around 10 p.m. While it was dark and hard to see, Bussey says the conveyor belt was going strong, still sending what looked like live chickens into a truck container. Bussey returned to the MOARK operation on Friday afternoon, July 8, after his older, driving-age daughter told him that she saw live chickens being dumped into a container. Bussey took more videotape of the event.

That's approximately when Newton County Sheriff's Deputy Kevin Stephenson arrived on the scene. County Sheriff Ken Copeland had dispatched the deputy after receiving a call from The HSUS, which had earlier been tipped off by Mark Adams, a Neosho resident who knew about Bussey's videotape.

Stephenson began examining the MOARK facility, but didn't find anything immediately amiss. He did, however, meet with Midwest Regional Manager Dan Hudgens, who drove over from a nearby office to talk with the deputy. Hudgens apparently explained that the birds were routinely gassed with CO2 in sealed barrels before being placed on the conveyor belt for transport to a rendering plant. When Stephenson asked to see the gassing operation in practice, Hudgens "looked to me to be starting to get nervous," according to the deputy's report.

Stephenson decided to leave, but while returning to the Sheriff's Office, he received a call from Bussey, who offered to show the deputy the videotape. Stephenson agreed to see the tape at Bussey's home. The videotape changed the deputy's mind. "As I was watching this, you could see that the tractor trailer was getting full and that birds were trying to jump out. You could still see their wings flapping and also their heads moving up and down in the truck," Stephenson wrote in his report.

The deputy immediately returned to the MOARK site and observed the conveyor operation for another 10 to 15 minutes while still sitting in his car. This time, Stephenson witnessed some live chickens being dumped in the container. When approached by a MOARK employee, Stephenson asked if he could see how many live chickens were in the container. The employee allegedly told the deputy that he couldn't show the deputy the container without Dan Hudgens' approval. The approval never came, and Stephenson left again.

Corporate Animal Cruelty?

The modern egg industry is arguably the most abusive one in all animal agribusiness. Egg-laying hens are intensively confined in barren battery cages, wire enclosures that afford each bird less floor space than the area of a single sheet of notebook paper. Inside the restrictive cage, the hen can never stretch her wings nor engage in nearly any other natural behavior, including dustbathing, nesting or foraging. Every day, each one of the approximately 300 million egg-laying hens in the United States suffers immensely due to the routine abuses inflicted upon them by the egg industry.

But despite the number of animals abused, authorities have filed few, if any, cases targeting this form of agricultural cruelty.

Part of the problem is that no federal laws apply to the treatment of chickens and other animals on the farm. To make matters worse, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has interpreted those few federal humane laws that do concern transport and slaughter—the Twenty Eight Hour Law and the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act—as not applying to laying hens, chickens raised for meat, turkeys, and other poultry. State laws are also generally inadequate since many states exempt most routine agricultural practices from their animal cruelty laws. Add it all up, and law enforcement officers and prosecutors often have little inspiration to go after alleged animal cruelty in corporate agribusiness. Watson, in choosing to uphold Missouri's law, is in effect just doing his job.

Missouri animal cruelty law protects all vertebrate animals, including chickens, from abuse and neglect. Specifically, the law prohibits intentionally or purposefully killing an animal or causing injury or suffering. If convicted, the individuals face up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. MOARK could face penalties.

"In bringing charges against MOARK, Scott Watson has shown that egg-laying hens, among the most abused animals in agribusiness, deserve proper treatment," says Paul Shapiro, manager of The HSUS's Factory Farming Campaign. "We applaud him for not tolerating cruelty to any animal, whether raised for food or our companions.”

In taking on MOARK, Newton County is facing an egg-industry giant. Headquartered in Chesterfield, Missouri, MOARK LLC is jointly owned by a MOARK investment group and Land O' Lakes, the agricultural behemoth with annual sales of more than $6 billion. MOARK, the nation's third largest egg producer, sells eggs and egg products in at least 29 states. In 2003, Hoovers reported that MOARK had sales of $317 million. MOARK and its numerous subsidiary egg-production operations provide eggs to several major U.S. supermarket chains.

MOARK is also a member of United Egg Producers’ Animal Care Certified (ACC) program, which hardly lives up to its lofty name. ACC eggs come from intensively confined battery-cage hens who are unable even to flap their wings. The Better Business Bureau has ruled twice that the Animal Care Certified logo is false advertising, and has requested that the Federal Trade Commission take legal action against egg producers using the logo. A case challenging the ACC logo is also pending in the District of Columbia courts.

Miyun Park, director of The HSUS's Farm Animal Welfare section, says the MOARK case provides consumers with yet another reason to discount the ACC logo found on egg cartons from coast to coast. “The videotape showed birds who were clearly alive, flapping their wings, crouching, and attempting to move as they were dumped on those below. Disposing of hens like trash and dumping them in this manner likely caused broken bones, bruising, joint dislocations, pain, and panic. The abuse inflicted on the still-live hens at MOARK is inexcusable.”

The laying hens' pain, Park notes, was likely compounded by physical infirmities. Studies have shown that the majority of caged egg-laying hens suffer from bone weakness and osteoporosis due to their unnaturally high egg-production rates and their inability to exercise inside barren battery cages. "By dumping the already fragile birds, MOARK's action could easily lead to fractures and acute pain," Park says. "Those hens first to fall into the Dumpster were almost certainly crushed and asphyxiated by those birds falling on top of them."

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