Kokua Line

By June Watanabe

Thursday, February 19, 1998

Highway chicken deaths
certainly not intentional

There is a chicken-processing factory that transports live chickens from Nanakuli-Waianae to Kalihi in dilapidated cages.

One day I observed the same truck dropping live chickens at two locations. Today, Jan. 21, was the worst! It happened at the viaduct east-bound, just before the Hickam-Pearl Harbor exit around 9:40 a.m. It dropped about eight chickens and all were hit or run over by cars! The driver pulled to the shoulder to retrieve the carcasses. Aren't there agencies to check up on this business?

Also, I notice employees, sometimes on early Saturday mornings, cooking the chickens right next to Nimitz and smoking the neighborhood. It is just like someone burning trash. Does this business have a permit to do that and annoy motorists and its neighbors?

"It has happened from time to time," Jaren Hancock, vice president of operations for Pacific Poultry Co., said of chickens falling on the roadside.

But "we're in the business to sell chickens, not to drop them all over the freeway," he said. "It's not like we're hauling garbage to the dump."

Hancock said the company's farms are all in the Waianae area. Part-time workers are hired to catch the chickens and load them into cages for transport to the plant at 1818 Kanakanua St., near Nimitz and Mokauea.

"For one reason or another, they might not latch the cages down properly," Hancock said. "When that happens, the truck hits a bump or something and the cage will come open.

"It's just a human error," he said. Drivers try to catch the live ones and pick up the dead ones, "which is very dangerous for our drivers to do," he said.

As for the cooking of chickens, "I've never heard of the smell of 'Huli-Huli' chicken being referred to as 'burning trash,'" he said.

"Secondly, we're not cooking down here all the time."

When the chickens are cooked outside the plant, it's because a fund-raising group does not have an adequate place of its own to do it, Hancock said.

"This is a light industrial area down here and for the most part, when we're cooking, nobody is even around," he said. Still, the company tries to keep smoke down to a minimum: "We work with the Board of Health on any complaints we receive and try to remedy them," Hancock said.

Neighbors are usually forewarned and asked to bear with any inconvenience for three to four hours because it's for a fund-raising event, Hancock said. "That's usually all it takes."

The Department of Health's Sanitation Branch requires a temporary food-establishment permit to cook chickens outdoors, said branch chief Brian Choy. The concern is for sanitation, as well as "the nuisance of smoke," he said.

But because there are no standards regarding the resulting smoke, "basically, it's a nuisance law," Choy said. "So when we receive a complaint, we can only tell (the group involved) to stop."

Meanwhile, federal regulations govern poultry processing through the wholesale level, requiring healthy animals, a sanitary plant, and proper labeling and packaging, said Dr. Richard Lawton, circuit supervisor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Auwe

To the Building Industry Association and First Hawaiian Bank. They advertised their Home Building Show at the Blaisdell Center a number of times, but nowhere in their ads did they mention there was a $3 admission charge! -- D.K.

Auwe

To the cab driver in a white Cadillac, who nearly ran me down at Kawaiahao and South streets 8:30 a.m. Jan. 21. You saw me in a crosswalk, yet didn't stop. The worst thing was that you flipped me the bird when you passed by. It's regrettable you have such little respect for pedestrians. -- D.W.