Two brothers who were directors of a Thomastown chicken feed processing company have been banned from poultry farming for a combined total of 17 years.
Gerry and Chris Apostolatos were sentenced in the Melbourne Magistrates Court last week for failing to sufficiently feed more than a million chickens at six commercial farms between December, 2011, and February, 2012. The brothers were directors of Tip Top Livestock, which operated a farm in Lipton Drive, Thomastown among others, before the company went bankrupt in 2012.
They pleaded guilty to charges of cruelty and aggravated cruelty and were sentenced to a combined total of 300 hours of unpaid community work. Gerry was disqualified from being in charge of poultry for 10 years while Chris was disqualified for seven years.
Magistrate Joanne Metcalfe said “financial or business difficulties don’t relieve animal-related commercial enterprises of the responsibility to provide humane care to animals”.
The Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources’ leading animal health officer, Lachlan King, said an investigation found evidence of starvation and multiple breaches of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986. The farmers failed to provide enough feed, resulting in cruelty to 1,092,000 broiler chickens and the deaths of more than 86,000.
Lexi Cottee
