Media Release: Auckland Animal Action
Friday December 23rd 2005
Auckland Animal Action Launches Website Exposing Tegel's Chicken Cruelty

Auckland Animal Action (AAA) has registered the domain www.tegelchicken.co.nz and has set up a website as part of a campaign to expose the cruel facts behind Tegel Foods Ltd.

All photographs and video footage on the website are from Tegel chicken farms and was obtained during an undercover investigation by Auckland Animal Action. The footage and photographs expose the shocking conditions on Tegel farms and shows chickens clearly in distress, unable to walk or stand.

AAA spokesperson and owner of the domain name, Suzanne Carey, says “We set up this site to expose to the public everything that Tegel doesn't want them to know. Tegel promotes its chicken as ‘healthy’ and ‘barn raised’. They also say that they use ‘no added hormones’. We believe this to be misleading advertising.

During our undercover investigation, it became very obvious to us that Tegel chickens are far from healthy. Their bodies are pushed to their very limits because of selective breeding for fast growth. This causes all sorts of leg disorders and health problems for these chickens.

Tegel ‘barns’ are more like gigantic factory buildings. Not the idyllic old-style country barns that they would have you imagine.

Tegel may not feed actual hormones to their chickens, but they do feed them a cocktail of anti-biotics, which have a similar growth promoting effect.”

A Wellington activist who has been threatened with legal action over a similar website criticising a bacon company says he is pleased the anti-Tegel website is online. Mark Eden says people often forget that Christmas means the deaths of millions of chickens, turkeys and pigs.

"Most of the animals killed for the Christmas season spent their entire lives in a factory farm. People need to realise that Christmas hams, turkey and chicken, are all products of massive cruelty. I’m pleased that Auckland Animal Action have put up a website highlighting the cruelty behind Tegel’s products. I'd like to tell all the companies involved in factory farming that we will not shut up and we will not be silenced by legal bullying".

Ms Carey says, “I’m fully prepared to face any legal action that Tegel may throw at me for setting up this website. This site is so important for educating the public about the suffering and exploitation that millions of chickens endure each year at the hands of Tegel. Any legal action that I may face is nothing in comparison to this.”

For comment and more info, contact us:

Auckland Animal Action Email: aucklandanimalaction @ yahoo.com

www.tegelchicken.co.nz

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