PETA shows Abbotsford chickens in squalor

The Chilliwack company whose employees were filmed stomping on and mangling chickens in a 2017 undercover video is again under investigation by the B.C. SPCA.

Horrific footage released by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals from three Abbotsford egg farms shows what appears to be live chickens caged with the dead while others were trapped in pools of manure.

The footage, filmed in April, shows chickens in small wire cages, many of them grouped with the decomposing corpses of other chickens.

The video also included scenes of chickens being extricated from clumps of brown sludge, which PETA identified as manure.

“Dying by drowning in a manure pit isn’t how most people picture hens on an egg farm,” PETA’s director of evidence analysis, Daniel Paden, said in a statement. “PETA wants shoppers to consider the gentle birds entombed in feces and caged with rotting corpses and leave eggs on the supermarket shelf.”

One of the three farms featured in the video was identified by PETA as Jaedel Enterprises. A call to Jaedel Enterprises was redirected to Katie Lowe, executive director with B.C. Egg Marketing Board.

Lowe said they have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to animal abuse. “The images in the video are not representative of our industry,” she said.

Marcie Moriarty with the B.C. SPCA confirmed the organization is investigating the footage and the farms. She also identified Elite Farm Services as being among those being probed.

The maximum punishment violators of B.C. Egg ’s standards face is having their licence revoked.