Transporter guilty of chicken abuse

Robert Laplante, a chicken transporter, has failed in his bid to have a Canadian Food Inspection Agency finding quashed by the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal.

Tribunal member Emily Crocco said Laplante should have known It would be cruel to truck wet chickens in temperatures of minus 27 Celsius at the farm where they were loaded and minus 22 at the slaughter plant where they were delivered.

And she said it was irrelevant when Laplante argued the chickens were sick.

There was testimony that the farmer knew the barn was humid and some areas of the litter were wet, yet decided the chickens should be delivered for slaughter.

But Crocco said that did not absolve Laplante of his responsibility in transporting the chickens under conditions that were cruel.