Maple Lodge Farms fined $6K for suffering of frozen spent hens
TORONTO — A Canadian meat processor must pay a $6,000 penalty for allowing thousands of free-range hens on their way to slaughter to suffer in frigid conditions, the Federal Court of Appeal has ruled.
In its decision, the court sided with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and a review tribunal that Maple Lodge Farms — already on probation for a similar offence — had violated anti-animal suffering laws as well as its own procedures.
“Maple Lodge Farms held compromised spent hens in unheated lairage as part of their transportation for 12 hours,” the Appeal Court said. “The spent hens experienced prolonged, undue suffering due to Maple Lodge Farms’ omissions.”
The case concerning 7,680 spent hens — those no longer of use for their eggs — arose on a frigid January in 2013 when an organic egg farmer in Chazy, N.Y., south of Montreal, shipped the birds to Maple Lodge Farms in Brampton, Ont.