Grand jury refuses to indict employees who sadistically abused chickens

Back in January, I wrote about West Virginia prosecutor Ginnie Conley, who decided not to prosecute the Pilgrim's Pride criminal case, which involved the truly horrifying torture of factory farm chickens. Although chickens and other fowl are exempted from the Humane Slaughter Act, what the Pilgrim's Pride employees did to these chickens was in clear violation of any imaginable animal cruelty law. Louisiana does not define roosters as animals so that it can continue to allow cock-fighting, but I can't imagine such a crazy exemption existing anywhere else, and besides, if there were no relevant cruelty laws, Conley would not have eventually caved and decided to prosecute the case.

She prosecuted it, she said, because she obtained "additional evidence," which is a joke if you examine (and you need either a strong stomach or no heart to do so) the mounds of evidence supplied to her before. She blamed PETA for "pressuring" her, but someone had to pressure her or the case would never have been prosecuted.

A lot of good it did. Yesterday, after examining the grisly evidence, a grant jury refused to indict any Pilgrim's Pride employees. The employees kicked chickens, stomped on chickens, and ripped off chickens' beaks. For a grand jury to see the video and not indict the perpetrators is nothing short of evil.