PETA has a busy week

It's been a busy week (so far) for PETA.

UPI reports that KFC Canada has bowed to five years of pressure ... from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals ... on the way its chickens are slaughtered:

From its headquarters in Norfolk, Va., the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has pressured the global chain since 2003 to end the practice of slaughtering the fowl using electric shocks, the Canwest News Service reported.

After seven months of talks with the food retailer at its headquarters north of Toronto in Vaughn, KFC Canada president Steve Langford said the company had agreed to have its suppliers switch to a system in which oxygen is replaced with other gases to render the birds unconscious before slaughter, the report said.

In the meantime, those wacky folks of PETA have an idea for folks who are distressed about the concept of boiling and eating lobsters.

PETA would like to turn a century-old county jail in Maine into a “lobster empathy center.” According to MaineToday, the county jail is up for sale as the sheriff, staff and inmates prepare for a move to a new, modern facility this summer.

And finally, PETA is urging prosecutors to bring animal cruelty charges against Eight Belles' trainer, Larry Jones. In the photo at left, Eight Belles is examined after breaking both front ankles at the Kentucky Derby.

--Alice Short

Lobster photo: Karen Tapia/Los Angeles Times

Eight Belles photo: Charlie Riedel/Associated Press

South L.A. backyards are becoming barnyards

Residents of South Los Angeles are discovering that roosters -- and other farm animals -- are joining their neighborhoods. Times staff writer Jessica Garrison reports that not everyone is happy about it.

For many, the image of South Los Angeles is that of a paved, parched, densely packed urban grid. But increasingly, it is also a place where untold numbers of barnyard animals -- chickens, roosters, goats, geese, ducks, pigs and even the odd pony -- are being tended in tiny backyard spaces....

The cacophony of cock-a-doodle-doos south of the 10 Freeway is one of the louder manifestations of a demographic change that has transformed South Los Angeles in the last few decades.

Once primarily an African American community -- and still the cultural and political heart of the state's African American population -- the area has absorbed tens of thousands of immigrants from Mexico and Central America and is now predominantly Latino.

Apparently, one person's comfort (a rooster in the backyard) is another's headache. And in a related story, Times Foreign Editor Marjorie Miller explores some of the wildlife in her Koreantown neighborhood.

-- Alice Short

Photo: Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times

Was that undercover video of abused chickens a staged event?

Last week, the Associated Press reported that Trader Joe’s announced it will stop carrying eggs from a Central California farm where an animal rights group shot undercover video showing chickens being mistreated by workers. But it seems this story isn't over.

Now the AP is reporting that the farm is accusing an animal rights group of staging an undercover video that shows its workers mistreating chickens.

A statement released Monday by Gemperle Farms claims an activist affiliated with Chicago-based Mercy for Animals coerced Gemperle employees into violating the farm's animal welfare standards.

Footage released last week by the group showed hens confined in crowded metal cages with rotting bird corpses. Monrovia-based Trader Joe's announced after the video was released it would stop carrying Gemperle eggs. Mercy for Animals executive director Nathan Runkle told The Modesto Bee the video was authentic and said the group would sue Gemperle for libel if it did not retract its statement.

Trader Joe’s stops carrying eggs from California farm

Trader Joe’s announced Thursday that it will stop carrying eggs from a Central California farm where an animal rights group shot undercover video showing chickens being mistreated by workers, the Associated Press reports:

Footage released earlier this week by the Chicago-based nonprofit Mercy for Animals showed hens at Gemperle Enterprises’ farms confined in crowded metal cages with rotting bird corpses.

The chain decided against carrying Gemperle eggs because "it is of utmost importance that all of our vendors abide by industry-established animal care practices," Trader Joe’s spokeswoman Alison Mochizuki said.

Previously, the chain’s Northern California and Northern Nevada stores had sourced conventional eggs from NuCal Foods Inc., which also distributes eggs from Gemperle and dozens of other farms to Raley’s and SaveMart Supermarkets.

Mochizuki said the Trader Joe’s ban on Gemperle eggs was indefinite.

Raley’s plans to continue to carry all eggs from NuCal, but "does not condone any acts of cruelty to animals," said spokeswoman Nicole Townsend. A SaveMart Supermarkets spokeswoman did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

-- Francisco Vara-Orta

Photo: Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times

Animal rights group seeks probe of poultry firm

An animal protection organization is throwing back the curtains on the West Coast's largest distributor of eggs, releasing a hidden-camera video that shows chickens being mistreated by handlers and locked in cages so small the birds can't spread their wings, The Times' Eric Bailey reports:

The footage, shot covertly by an undercover investigator with the group Mercy for Animals, shows workers kicking and stomping on chickens and snapping the necks of sick hens. It also shows birds left with untreated wounds and crowded into cages, sometimes amid rotting corpses.

Officials with the animal protection group said the video was shot this year at Gemperle Enterprises, a Turlock farming outfit that supplies giant NuCal Foods Inc., the biggest supplier of eggs in the western United States.

The company's response?

[Steve] Gemperle said it was unclear whether the new footage truly was shot at one of his family's farms, but said the mistreatment violated his company's policies.

The video comes on the heels of an effort to get a measure on the November ballot to outlaw the kinds of cages that the chickens in the photo above are contained within.

-- Francisco Vara-Orta

Photo: Mercy for Animals