Stop Cruel Roundup and Gassing of Feral Chickens in Honolulu
Action Alert from All-Creatures.org

FROM

United Poultry Concerns (UPC)
July 2015

feral chicken
Feral chicken

ACTION

Hawaiian activists are urging people to contact Kirk Caldwell, mayor of the city and county of Honolulu, and demand that he stop the round-up and gassing to death of feral (free-living) chickens in Honolulu.

Exposure to concentrated CO2 causes panic, pain, nausea, vomiting and severe respiratory irritation. Shooting cold CO2 through hoses into the gas chambers freezes and burns the birds’ eyes and lungs.

Urge Mayor Caldwell to use birth control instead of trapping and gassing the chickens. Tell him you are outraged that his administration would trap and torture these birds to death when contraception is available for the purpose.

Please sign the online petition here.

And/Or better yet, make direct contact:

Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell
phone (808) 768-4141
[email protected] 
twitter.com/mayorkirkhnl
www.facebook.com/MayorKirk

INFORMATION / TALKING POINTS

Hawaiian activists are urging people to contact Kirk Caldwell, mayor of the city and county of Honolulu, and demand that he stop the round-up and gassing to death of feral (free-living) chickens in Honolulu. An article in the Honolulu Star Advertiser on July 11 explains that the city has hired Sandwich Isle Pest Solutions to remove the chickens – roosters, hens, and chicks – at 70 city facilities using wire traps. The article cites a customer services director saying the CO2 gas will be applied to chickens in sealed containers “so the chickens will go to sleep and not feel any fear or pain in the euthanizing process.”

But as Animal Haven President Frank DeGiacomo says in the article, ‘The animals will still be suffering regardless.” The trapping of the chicken families is traumatic, and death in a carbon dioxide chamber does not put chickens “to sleep.” Exposure to concentrated CO2 causes panic, pain, nausea, vomiting and severe respiratory irritation. Shooting cold CO2 through hoses into the gas chambers freezes and burns the birds’ eyes and lungs.

Chickens exposed to CO2 try desperately to escape. They take deep breaths trying to expel the gas and the sensation of slow suffocation but the deep breaths cause them to inhale even more gas. Death by CO2 is a horrible, brutal way for chickens to asphyxiate to death.

Humane Alternative:

According to Animal Haven’s Frank DeGiacomo, a birth control bait called Ovo Control would reduce the chicken population effectively. An alert posted on ar-news notes that the city of Honolulu has been trapping chickens for over a decade “using a variety of hunters, trappers and exterminators,” knowing full well that the trapping is futile, whereas birth control works.

Letter from UPC to Honolulu Star-Advertiser
July 25, 2015

Asphyxiation cruel to chickens
UPC Letter in Today’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Feral Chickens
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, July 15, 2015

Animal Haven president Frank DeGiacomo calls killing the chickens on Oahu with carbon dioxide (CO2) inhumane (“Initiative targets feral fowl overrunning city facilities,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, July 11). He’s right. That this method meets American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines means nothing. CO2 is used to kill animals because it’s cheap. Since “euthanasia” means a merciful death, the term does not apply to CO2 asphyxiation of chickens in a lethal chamber.

CO2 activates brain regions in birds that activate pain perception. Chickens’ chemical receptors are extremely sensitive to CO2, causing them to breathe rapidly and deeply to expel the poisonous gas. Sadly, this only increases their intake, and their death is protracted and cruel.

DeGiacomo urges the city to use Ovo Control, a contraceptive he says would reduce the number of chickens on Oahu. If a truly humane method of controlling the chicken population exists, it should be used instead of subjecting these birds to a horrible death.

Thank you for everything you do for animals!

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