Originally published October 11 2005
Irish food company in trouble over mistreatment of ducks
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Vegetarians International Voice for Animals (Viva) claim that a Kerry Foods farm in Norfolk keeps its ducks in squalid conditions.
BRITISH animal rights activists are targeting the Kerry Group, Ireland's largest food company, over the alleged mistreatment of ducks at a farm in Norfolk.
Vegetarians International Voice for Animals (Viva) claims that conditions at the farm, which supplies supermarket chains Sainsbury's, Tesco, Co-op and Morrisons, are squalid, cramped and filthy.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) brought a case against Kerry Group's subsidiary Kerry Foods last year, following reports of mistreatment made by Viva and Hillside Animal Sanctuary, another animal rights group.
The case failed, partly because allegedly incriminating video footage was obtained by trespassing.
The company denies that it mistreats animals but activists say they will not let up in their campaign to expose the "prison-like conditions" of ducks at Kerry Foods' UK farms.
The claims were aired in a Channel 4 Dispatches programme in August in which footage of dying, dirty and sick birds in overcrowded sheds was shown.
The activists claim that they made the film on farms run by Kerry Foods.
The case failed and the company was exonerated, partly because the judge ruled that the footage had been obtained illegally by activists trespassing on the farms.
The company has since said that it has improved conditions and is reapplying to the RSPCA for the accreditation.
Last week Justin Kerswell, a campaigner at Viva, said that Kerry Foods had made claims about improving standards in the past but repeated filming had found little change.
The problems in duck farming are endemic," he said.
"We found ducks crammed into dirty, stinking sheds in their thousands, many incapable of walking, dragging themselves along by their wings, unable to right themselves, with filthy feathers, infections and sores, and dying and dejected birds surrounded by corpses."
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