Chicken farmers won't face aimal cruelty charges

April 14, 2003

Friday, April 11, 2003

(04-11) 14:12 PDT VALLEY CENTER, Calif. (AP) --

The owners of ranches where employees tossed live chickens into wood chippers

won't be prosecuted on animal cruelty charges.

The District Attorney's Office announced Thursday that Arie and Bill

Wilgenburg, brothers and owners of Escondido-based Ward Poultry Farm, didn't

commit a crime because a veterinarian from the U.S. Department of Agriculture

gave them permission to use wood chippers to destroy the birds.

" Once they asked and were given permission, there was no criminal intent, "

said Gayle Stewart, a district attorney's spokeswoman. " It's an industry

standard to get rid of hens like this. "

Bill Wilgenburg said he was doing what experts told him to do with the old,

unproductive hens.

" As a farmer, we did what we thought we had to do to the best of our ability

based on what industry experts told us, " Wilgenburg said.

He said he thought he was doing the right thing, until county Animal Services

investigators arrived at his ranches.

Those investigators were called in February to a Ward ranch in Valley Center

by a neighbor who said workers were dumping loads of live chickens into a

wood chipper. Investigators also learned another Ward ranch in Potrero was

destroying hens in a chipper.

The two ranches used chippers to destroy at least 30,000 hens at each of the

two ranches, authorities said.

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