14 DAY TRIAL // Just yesterday, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) sent a letter to Jackson County Sheriff's Office, asking that the people in charge of managing a Rose Acre Farms facility close to Seymour, Indiana are held responsible for violating animal rights.
More precisely, the organization asks that legal measures are taken immediately, as said egg-farm is supposedly responsible for the death of about 300,000 hens. It seems that all these animals died over the course of just three days.
PETA's Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations, Daphna Nachminovitch, explains how, “PETA would like the Sheriff's Office to ensure that those responsible for these hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths recognize that birds are covered under Indiana's cruelty-to-animals law.”
Apparently, in spite of the heat waves that recently took their toll on several regions in the US, nobody bothered to look into how these animals were coping with the extreme temperatures.
Therefore, although Indiana's anti-animal cruelty legislation clearly states that the hens should have been provided with some kind of relief from the scorching weather conditions, proper cooling devices were not installed and the animals were left to fend for themselves.
PETA also argues that the death of these 300,000 hens cannot be passed off as ignorance, as the very same farm admitted to the fact that, back in 1995, other of its animals died under similar circumstances.
As Daphne Nachminovitch puts it, “This isn't the first time that Rose Acre Farms essentially sentenced hens to a slow, painful death.”
PETA's letter to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office states that, as commanded by law, all animal farms operating in warmer climates must install cooling devices in order to keep health conditions and death caused by heat stress from occurring.
Since this law targets vertebrate animals, as chickens obviously fall into this category, the organization now wishes the case is brought to trial and the culprits are held responsible for their actions.