Judge postpones hen hearing until September

A judge Tuesday ordered a three-month delay in the preliminary hearing for two people charged with leaving hens without feed at a Carpenter Road egg farm.

The action by Judge Thomas Zeff came after a third day of testimony in Stanislaus Superior Court on conditions at the farm, where authorities said about 50,000 hens were found in February 2012. Andy Yi Keunh Cheung, 42, and Lien Tuong Diep, 37, face felony charges of animal cruelty.

The prosecution and defense attorneys indicated that they need one or two more days for the hearing, but they and Zeff could not fit it into their schedules until Sept. 9. The judge will decide at the conclusion whether Cheung and Diep should stand trial.

The farm, A&L Poultry, was a small part of the egg industry in the Northern San Joaquin Valley. It was half a mile south of Fulkerth Road and consisted of two large henhouses with cages inside for the birds.

Most of Tuesday’s testimony was from Randy Anderson, a veterinarian in the Modesto area for the California Department of Food and Agriculture, who was among the responders.

“There were numerous dead birds on the walkways (between the cages), where you could not walk on it without stepping on birds,” he said.

Anderson described how he and other responders removed the dead hens and chose 4,000-plus survivors that were fit for rescue by animal sanctuaries. The remainder were so far gone that they had to be put to death with carbon dioxide in a covered bin, a standard industry practice, he said.

“We started to euthanize the birds pretty rapidly because we didn’t want any more of them to die the way they were dying,” he said.

Diep’s attorney, Marlon Simon, asked Anderson whether it was “ethical” to not feed the hens that awaited euthanization. The witness said they already had lost function in their kidneys and other organs, and feeding them would have made them suffer even more.

Anderson said testing determined that disease was not the cause of the hens’ emaciated condition.

This story was originally published June 2, 2015 at 6:07 PM with the headline "Judge postpones hen hearing until September."