"United Poultry Concerns is demanding my expulsion form the AVMA Animal Welfare Committee position. Their own Web site demonstrates how they are advancing their agenda by attempting to connect this atrocity to AVMA's position on induced molting. I am nothing more than a poster child under attack."

"Cutler speaks out on his own behalf," DVM Newsmagazine , January 2004

Machipongo, Va. - The January issues of Veterinary Practice News and DVM Newsmagazine emphasize the leadership of United Poultry Concerns in pursuing the case against, and publicizing the role of, Dr. Gregg Cutler, a member of the animal welfare committee of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), in a California egg company's decision to throw tens of thousands of unwanted live hens into wood-chipping machines last February.

The episode prompted a 65-page report by the San Diego County Department of Animal Services showing that Cutler authorized the use of wood chippers as a "painless and humane" method of killing adult chickens. Even before obtaining the report, UPC "demanded in March that the AVMA remove Cutler from its animal welfare committee" based on the information then available (VPN).

Though Cutler was part of a team of veterinarians, poultry producers, and government officials that recommended killing chickens in wood chippers during last year's Exotic Newcastle Disease epidemic, and for three years previously according to the egg company's manager, United Poultry Concerns is targeting Cutler because of his position on the AVMA's animal welfare committee, where he supports the egg industry practice of starving hens, known as forced molting, and because he epitomizes the AVMA, which as a body actively opposes every effort to improve welfare standards for birds and other farmed animals, while calling itself "the leading voice for humane and proper care of animals."

Cutler not only authorized the use of the wood chippers; he lied to the AVMA about doing so, and he is still changing his story. In Veterinary Practice News , he says, "I did not advise them to do it." In DVM Newsmagazine he says: "My only regret is speaking as a scientist to county representatives and consumer media who misconstrued my openmindedness for new alternatives to euthanasia during a crisis."

Both magazines state that the AVMA claims to be gathering facts for an AVMA judicial hearing this month to decide if Cutler "breached ethical standards and the Veterinarian's Oath." Meanwhile, United Poultry Concerns has joined the San Diego County Department of Animal Services in urging the California Veterinary Medical Board to investigate Gregg Cutler's role in the wood-chipper episode with a view to revoking his license to practice veterinary medicine in California.

United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. www.upc-online.org