Day 289 - 29 Oct 96 - Page 03
1 is one. So in fact in man the perception is pungency. It
2 is a mild pungency by my personal rating. The second
3 feature is that prior to the loss of consciousness there is
4 a rather, I would say, profound sense of breathlessness
5 experienced. Actually I am not sure if that reference is
6 right.
7
8 He went on to say: Putting those two together there has
9 been research work which has shown that carbon dioxide gas
10 is aversive to poultry and also to pigs. If that reference
11 is not correct, it will be ----
12
13 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I will find it somewhere nearby, obviously.
14
15 MS. STEEL: On 19, 13, 12, he said: It took in the order of
16 two to three minutes for the chicks to die from carbon
17 dioxide gassing, and that is the time to cessation of
18 physical activity, including gagging movements. He went on
19 to say that it would not surprise him if cardiac function
20 persists for longer; however, it depends obviously on how
21 you define death. An important feature from a humane point
22 of view is firstly time to loss of consciousness and,
23 secondly, time to cessation of breathing. Obviously, we
24 would say that it takes a long time for the chicks to die
25 and that it is completely inhumane.
26
27 On page 14 of day 19 he described how the chicks were
28 tipped or dropped by the handful into a dustbin-sized drum
29 where they are stacked up until the drum was up to about
30 two-thirds full and then the drum was sealed and left for
31 ten minutes. He agreed that as well as getting doses of
32 carbon dioxide, the ones at the bottom were getting
33 squashed by all the other chicks. That was 19, 14, 21.
34 Obviously, that is something that we would also say is
35 completely inhumane and cruel.
36
37 Still in the breeding units rather than the broilers
38 themselves, I raised this yesterday with the evidence of
39 Mr. Pattison about the restricted feeding and just really
40 that Dr. Gregory confirmed that in order to reproduce
41 effectively broiler breeders have to be kept on severely
42 restricted diets. That was on day 19, page 14, line 26.
43 And if they were fed to appetite, they would suffer high
44 mortality from obesity-related diseases such as heart
45 attacks, fatty livers and kidneys and prolapse. And
46 obviously, we would say that this is yet another example of
47 the way that chickens are being designed or bred for quick
48 profits rather than for concern for the welfare of the
49 animals.
50
51 Then he went on, that as a result of the restricted
52 feeding, he said, one can make an informed guess as to
53 whether they are hungry. I think this is highly likely.
54 They spend a lot of their time foraging, looking for feed.
55 One example where that occurs is if aggression occurs in
56 these blocks, which it can do. The way of overcoming that
57 is sometimes to scatter feed, that is put food on the
58 ground. The birds spend an inordinate amount of time
59 looking for food rather than resting. In addition, birds
60 kept under these conditions, whether scatter fed or not,
