Cape Town, South Africa (AP)-Animal well-being agents were faced with the macabre task of euthanasia of more than 350,000 chickens in hand after being hungry and cannibalized when a South African public poultry company lacked money to feed them, officials announced on Tuesday.
The National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty towards Animals, or NSPCA, said that he was unable to say with certainty how many other chickens had already died when his officers reached several neglected poultry agriculture sites due to “mass cannibalism” which took place among birds.
The NSPCA has managed to save more than 500,000 chickens, he said.
“It was a painful scene,” said NSPCA in a statement. “The skeletal chickens have snuggled together, chickens eating, bare bare food lines.”
The chickens belonged to Daybreak Foods, a large poultry supplier belonging to the state -owned state management company in South Africa Public Investment Corp.
NSPCA officers were first alerted from a crisis on a farm on April 30. The organization discovered at least five other northern farms in South Africa with several sites on each farm where birds had been left to starve, he said.
Daybreak Foods was denied permission to take the birds to a slaughterhouse because they were too small.
There was no immediate response to an email asking for comments from Daybreak Foods on Tuesday evening.
Company spokesperson Nokwazi Ngcongo told Daily Maverick News Outlet that birds have been impregnated for a period due to financial challenges affecting food delivery. She declared that efforts had been made to limit the suffering of animals as much as possible.
Nazareth Appallsamy, the director of the NSPCA animal protection unit, told the Associated Press that mass slaughter had started last Wednesday and was completed until Monday. About 75 animal protection officers were responsible for euthanizing the chickens that have not been able to recover one by one, said Appallsamy.
“The slaughter has wreaked havoc on the staff, exposed to such extreme measures,” he said.
The NSPCA said that chickens had not been fed for more than a week and have committed to depositing a legal case against Daybreak Foods under animal protection laws for abandoning its responsibilities.
The South African government said it was in talks with Daybreak's food leadership on its financial problems.
___
AP Africa News: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
