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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: SEPTEMBER 2006

California animal transport exemption leaves livestock to cook

SACRAMENTO--The California legislature on August 14, 2006 sent to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill to criminalize leaving pets unattended in weather that puts the animals' health at risk--but specifically exempted "horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, poultry or other agricultural animals in motor vehicles designed to transport such animals," a clause excluding from protection more than 99.9% of all the animals who die in transit from either excessive heat or cold.

Violators of the California bill could be punished by fines of up to $500 and up to six months in jail. The bill specifically empowers animal control officers to break into cars to rescue animals in distress.

But Virginia Handley of Animal Switchboard, the senior animal advocacy lobbyist in California, did not join other humane leaders in claiming an apparent victory. She pointed out that many California agencies have already successfully prosecuted people who left pets in hot cars under the state anti-cruelty statute--which permits stiffer penalties.

The livestock exemption, however, most concerned her. Wrote Handley to state senator Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont), the bill author, "It is preferable to not include something rather than to exempt it. The agricultural lobby is very strong, and could have killed SB 1806. I am not advocating the inclusion of livestock because of the political reality. But rather than exempt livestock, SB 1806 should limit itself to companion animals. The exemption gives the incorrect impression that if the animals are transported in vehicles 'designed to transport' them, they are fine.

"If we cannot do anything to help farm animals in transport under SB 1806, the bill should be silent on the subject," Handley judged. "While other states exempt farm animals from their anti-cruelty laws, California does not, and we should resist every effort to specifically separate them."

The Figueroa bill moved toward passage while the Peninsula Humane Society, of San Mateo, sought cruelty charges against Northwest Airlines and possibly also the Fresno turkey hatchery Zacky Farms and Air Canada.

"Hybrid Turkeys, a commercial breeder in Canada, shipped 11,520 turkey chicks on Northwest from Detroit. The chicks, a few weeks old, were to be picked up at the San Francisco airport by Zacky Farms," explained Hong Dao Nguyen of the San Jose Mercury News.

"Hybrid instructed Northwest to divide the birds between two flights to California," Peninsula Humane Society spokesperson Scott Delucchi told Nguyen. "Instead, Northwest stuffed all 144 boxes of fowl onto one four-and-a-half-hour flight," leaving more birds competing for oxygen in the airliner hold.

"Nearly 2,000 chicks made it to Fresno," Nguyen continued, "but a day later," on July 14, "Northwest called Peninsula Humane to pick up 168 others who were left at the airport. All but 40 of them died. Less than a week later, Hybrid shipped 9,360 chicks to San Francisco, this time via three Air Canada flights. "When one plane made a pit stop in Las Vegas, the chicks were unloaded in 108-degree heat."

"Zacky Farms left boxes containing an estimated 3,240 dead and dying birds at the San Francisco airport," said Farm Sanctuary, picking up the account. "By the time the Peninsula Humane Society arrived, Northwest Airlines cargo workers had already thrown 26 of the 28 boxes into a trash compactor. In the two remaining boxes, investigators found 22 of 62 chicks still alive. Sadly, however, all but one died."

The Farm Sanctuary facility at Orlands, California, took in 11 of the turkeys who survived the earlier incident.

"Such deaths are routine but seldom publicized," said United Poultry Concerns founder Karen Davis. "Newborn birds are shipped by the U.S. Postal Service and the airlines as 'perishable matter' and treated like luggage. Millions of baby birds are delivered dead and dying each year, and postal workers who find boxes of suffering birds are forbidden by law from intervening. Northwest Airlines announced in 2001 that it would no longer carry chicks as mail, but the hatcheries persuaded Congress to force airlines to carry birds as mail, and Senate Bill 2395," pending, "would force the U.S. Postal Service to continue carrying birds through connecting flights in temperatures between zero and 100 degrees Fahrenheit."