New York Lawmaker Seeks to Ban Chick-Hatching Projects in the State

A dismal beginning for a baby bird. Where are the parents? Where is the natural world?

“This is a barren, sterile experiment which is miserable for the chicks.”
– Karen Davis, United Poultry Concerns,
Times Union, Albany New York, January 3, 2019

• If you are a New York State resident, please contact your state assembly members and urge them to support Assembly Bill A00058 (https://tinyurl.com/y46jbe74). Proposed by Assembly Member Linda B. Rosenthal, the bill relates to “prohibiting school districts, school principals, administrators, or teachers from requiring, permitting, or conducting a lesson or experimental study using an animal in a hatching project.”

  NYS Assembly Bill A00058 Justification:

  Many primary school teachers use chick-hatching projects as a way to teach their students about life cycles in the classroom. However, schools do not have the proper resources to care for baby chicks during or after the incubation phase.

  During the incubation process, eggs may hatch on weekends when teachers and administrators are not in school, effectively allowing a baby chick to go unfed for a period of days once it is born. Heat lamps may also be turned off over the weekend, which can cause chicks to die in their shells or become immobile. In other instances, baby chicks die when eggs in the incubator are constantly handled.

  Schools rarely make accommodations to care for the surviving baby chicks, many of whom are born sick, once the hands-on experiment is complete. Baby chicks are left in cardboard boxes without food or water. They are given to overburdened shelters that do not have the capacity to care for sick chicks, and most are simply discarded. In an effort to curtail the inhumane use of baby chicks, this bill would prohibit school districts, school principals, administrators or teachers from utilizing animals in hatching projects. The bill is formally supported by the New York City Bar Association’s Animal Law Committee. To read the committee’s report and more, go to www.upc-online.org/hatching.

  Express your support to the bill’s sponsor:

  Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, District 67

  230 West 72nd Street
  Suite 2F
  New York, NY 10023
  212-873-6368

  LOB 627
  Albany, NY 12248
  518-455-5802M

  Email: RosentL@nyassembly.gov
  www.nyassembly.gov/mem/Linda-B-Rosenthal

  This bill has the potential to stop the use of thousands of chicks throughout New York State and could set a precedent for other states as well.

Thank you for taking action!