Cruelty to chickens charges dismissed
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MIDDLETON (Lanes) Magistrates dismissed summonses against the Premier Poultry Packers Ltd., Fir Street, Heywood, and two drivers alleging that they failed to protect against the weather hens they were transporting.
A further summons that the firm failed to give unimpeded access and adequate ventilation to the birds was also dismissed.
The summonses resulted from an RSPCA inspector being alerted by police concerned about hens on two lorries parked at the firm's premises one winter's evening. The lorries were under shelter but exposed at the sides and the premises were not due to be opened until Sam the following day.
The inspector found some of the birds dead and some unconscious.
The firm and the two .drivers, Barry Warmold, of Gorton, and Colin Cooper, of Heywood, denied all the summonses.
Mr I. Wallis, a specialist in poultry medicine for the defence said that it was normal for one or one and a half per cent of hens being transported by this method to die.
He said that there had been no need for the lorries to be sheeted up when they left Hull for Heywood and that there was a greater danger when moving hens that they would die of heatstroke rather than cold.
Alan Abram, managing director of the firm, stopped Charles Mantel, defending. Mr Mantel told the magistrates: "Mr Abram has sympathy with the aims of the RSPCA and is not asking for defence costs."