Animal-rights activist who filmed egg farm acquitted of burglary
 5/4/2006
The Press

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) An animal-rights activist who sneaked into an egg factory to videotape multitudes of egg-laying chickens clumped together in small wire cages was acquitted Thursday on felony burglary charges but convicted of criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor.

Adam Durand, 26, denied on the stand that he broke into the egg farm during three nighttime visits in 2004 --he said he climbed in through a hole in a building wall-- and maintained he had no intention of removing any birds.

Fellow activists took away 11 hens "because in every case they were sick or dying and there was just this feeling that they needed veterinary care," Duran testified Wednesday.

A jury in Wayne County found Durand not guilty of third-degree burglary, which is punishable by up to seven years in prison, as well as three counts of petit larceny. Durand freely admitted entering the building where 700,000 hens produce more than a half-million eggs a day and was convicted on three counts of criminal trespassing.

"I think six months would be the maximum sentence in jail, but we don't expect any jail time," defense lawyer Len Egert said. "It's just usually not given for a low-level offense like this."

Sentencing was set for May 16.

Two friends who accompanied Durand to the farm operated by Rochester-based grocery store chain Wegmans in Wolcott, 50 miles east of Rochester, pleaded guilty to reduced charges of trespassing and petit larceny, both misdemeanors.

The trio were arrested last summer when Durand, a graphic designer and director of a consumer-advocacy group called Compassionate Consumers, produced a 27-minute documentary entitled "Wegmans Cruelty" that was screened at a Rochester movie house.

The film contains footage of hen corpses lying in cages with other live hens, a few that had fallen into deep manure pits running the length of the building or others with their heads apparently caught in the wire.

About 95 percent of the nation's eggs are produced at caged-hen egg farms, and Durand's group wants to alert the public to a practice it considers cruel and neglectful.

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