Wood-Chipped Chickens Fuel Outrage

San Diego County's Animal Services Department has filed a complaint against a veterinarian who allegedly authorized a Valley Center egg ranch to kill 30,000 hens by dumping them alive into a wood chipper.

Reports by the county, recently obtained by The Times, recount workers at the ranch feeding squirming birds by the bucket into the pounding machine, then turning the mashed remains with dirt and heaping the mixture into piles.

The complaint centers on Gregg Cutler, a veterinarian who is also on the animal welfare committee of the American Veterinary Medical Assn.

Last winter, Cutler attended a meeting of poultry ranchers, veterinarians and state and federal officials to discuss how farmers should deal with chickens and other fowl during the outbreak of exotic Newcastle disease. During the meeting, the group discussed using a wood chipper to destroy birds that could not be moved because of a quarantine.

A few weeks later, in February, Ward Egg Ranch rented a wood chipper to destroy hens which, though not infected with the Newcastle disease, had stopped laying eggs. San Diego County authorities received a complaint about the killing, and operators of the ranch said they got the idea from Cutler and others at the meeting.

Cutler denies he came up with the idea, but said he doesn't have a problem with using the machine for that purpose.

"No idea was too crazy to throw out at these meetings," said Cutler. "We were in desperation trying to deal with this disease."

Feeding chickens into a wood chipper, he said, "seemed like it was instantaneous and there was no suffering

Cutler said he's being unfairly targeted by animal welfare activists. In the last three weeks, four national animal advocate groups have called for his removal from the animal welfare committee.

In the county's report into the incident, Arie Wilgenburg, one of the ranch owners, is quoted as saying that several veterinarians, including Cutler, said wood-chipping was an "approved method" to kill hens that were no longer producing eggs.

An egg ranch manager, Ken Iriye, told officials that the ranch preferred using the wood chipper to the usual methods of gassing by carbon-dioxide or snapping chickens' necks because it was "less traumatizing." He said it was easier for the staff to "cram the chickens in a chute than to chase them around and break their necks."