PETA offers $5K reward for help finding culprit in chicken deaths

An animal rights group that normally would be fighting against animal farms has offered a reward for help in solving the case of the killing of hundreds of thousands of chickens being raised in local farms for slaughter.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has offered as much as $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for killing more than 300,000 chickens in Clarendon and Sumter counties.

This is a rare reward from the animal rights organization, whose motto reads, in part, that "animals are not ours to eat" and which actively fights similar laws, such as "ag-gag" laws that limit access to factory farms and target PETA's eyewitness investigations.

Since mid-February, someone has apparently tampered with the temperature and ventilation controls on at least 16 factory farm sheds in the two-county area, causing approximately 300,000 chickens to die of apparent hypothermia or suffocation or even by being "roasted" alive in a 115-degree shed.

Read more in Friday's edition of The Sumter Item.