From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000--

And a word for ducks

ATLANTA--Actress Hayley Mills, in person, and rock-and-roll star
Paul McCartney, via videotape from London, on September 14 helped the
British group Viva!--International Voice for Animals to bring their
anti-duck meat campaign to America with a press conference in Atlanta and
simultaneous protests at shopping centers in 20 other cities.
In Britain, according to Viva! representative Lauren Ornelas, the
Viva! campaign against duck meat caused every major supermarket chain to
stop selling duck meat, and, she said, "The industry has promised to
undertake a major review of duck farming conditions."
"In the U.S.," Ornelas stated, "almost 24 million ducks were
slaughtered in 1999, up from almost 22 million in 1997."
Ninety-nine U.S. farms produced ducks for the American market,
along with several dozen in Canada.
"Ducks, like other animals raised for food, are excluded from the
Animal Welfare Act," Ornelas continued. Accordingly, she explained,
"There are no standards set forth by the U.S. government as to how these
animals are housed, fed, or treated."
Some abuses of factory-farmed ducks and geese, such as
force-feeding them by means of pipes thrust down their throats to produce
engorged lives to make foie gras, are relatively well-known.
But other abuses, Ornelas noted, are not. For example, as Viva!
undercover video taken at Maple Leaf Farms, Grimaud Farms, and Culver
Farms facilities in California and Indiana shows, "Intensive confinement
sheds house thousands of ducks on wire mesh," over sloping cement drains.
But, Ornelas charged, "Keeping ducks on wire results in painful
abrasions, bruises, and tears of the hock, shank, and foot pad.
Infections result.
"Intensively reared ducks have no access to water for swimming,"
Ornelas added, "and often they are unable to even immerse their heads,"
contrary to the image conveyed by the largest Canadian brand name: Brome
Lake Ducks. Although the duck barns are beside Brome Lake, in Knowlton,
Quebec, the ducks reared there never even see the water.
"Ducks are aquatic birds. In nature they spend 80% of their time
in water," Ornelas reminded. "Denied this fundamental requirement, they
can't preen properly and find it difficult to keep warm. Without water,
they also often develop eye problems that can result in blindness."
Like hens, intensively raised ducks are often debeaked--but to
control stress-induced feather-pulling rather than pecking.

Stunning failures

Also like chickens, ducks are shackled upside down and dragged
through an electrified trough of water before being killed--not to pre-stun
them so much as to induce paralysis, to keep them still as their throats
are cut. About one duck in two dozen is still conscious when killed,
Ornelas said. "USDA data shows that thousands are still alive when they
are submerged in scalding water to be defeathered," she finished.
Viva! on August 26 issued similar charges about British
slaughterhouses of all kinds, based on statistics obtained from the Meat
Hygienc Service [the British equivalent to USDA meat inspection], the
European Commission's scientific veterinary committee, and independent
research.
A Viva! report entitled Sentenced to Death alleged that each year
in Britain, five million sheep, 1.6 million pigs, 230,000 cattle, and
8.4 million chickens, turkeys, and ducks regain consciousness after
electrical stunning, before they are killed.
"Viva! investigators filmed pigs being briefly stunned," wrote Tom
Robbins of the London Times. "At one abattoir in Wales, they saw two pigs
regain consciousness as they hung by a hind leg, being bled. The animals
struggled so violently that they fell out of the shackles."
The Humane Farming Association released similar footage from a
cattle slaughtering plant in Washington state in May, and SHARK released
similar video from a pig slaughtering plant in St. Paul, Minnesota, in
1999.

[The new Viva! U.S. headquarters may be contacted at P.O. Box
49023, Atlanta, GA 30359; 404-315-8881; fax 404-315-8685;
<info@vivausa.org>; <www.vivausa.org>.]