Taxpayers may have to quack up $1M for slaughtering 100K ducks at Long Island farm in virus scare: documents
A Long Island duck farm is asking for the federal government to quack up $1 million after it euthanized 100,000 of its flocks over bird flu fears, documents show.
Crescent Duck Farm, which supplies 4% of the nation's duck meat, has already received $150,000 from the USDA and is asking for more after it put down tens of thousands of birds — and now animal activists are slamming the cost and the carnage.
The farm used carbon dioxide foam, then snapped the necks of surviving birds with a handheld scissor-like tool called the Koechner Euthanizing Device, according to USDA documents.
'If you see videos of it, it looks like a scene from a horror movie,' Ben Williamson, the executive director of Animal Outlook, told The Post of the foam. 'It doesn't knock them out, it doesn't stun them. They essentially will suffocate, and will be conscious while they're suffocating … and then the ones who survive have their necks rung by these devices.'
But Crescent Duck Farm owner Doug Corwin told The Post the UDSA ended up using a different killing method, and the farm 'had nothing to do with whatever was decided upon.'
'This was a heartbreaking thing,' he added. 'We had no standing in that.'
A request for comment from the USDA was not immediately returned.
The 116-year-old farm on the North Fork estimated it was owed $811,635 from the government due to the mass culling after 700 Peking ducks died from the virus in January, records show.
The requested funds were used for sanitization, disposal and replacement of roughly $166,365 in losses, the farm said. Corwin told The Post the USDA has reimbursed to date 'about 10%' of what the flock was worth,' or about $150,000, and is expecting more.
Long Island animal activists weren't taken by the sob story — or use of government cash.
'New Yorkers don't go to work with the intention of spending our hard-earned money on a multimillion-dollar enterprise that kills a million 6-week-old ducklings a year while they're still peeping,' said John Di Leonardo, executive director of animal rights group Humane Long Island.
Poultry farms and live markets are mandated to kill inventory when highly-contagious bird flu is detected, and dozens of outbreaks have torn through New York State in 2025, according to the USDA website.
The first case of bird flu in the U.S. was detected in 2022 and has since resulted in the deaths of an estimated 166 million birds. Toxic carbon dioxide foam is used in culling about half of the time, per a USDA report, and require secondary measures to kill surviving ducks about 29% of the time.
Despite the culling at Crescent, The Post reported in February that more than 3,700 new ducklings hatched at an off-site location.
The ducks can return to the North Fork once barns are found to be free of any active avian flu DNA, Corwin said, adding the barns were last tested Monday.
'The ducks are nine weeks old and in good shape,' Corwin said. 'We're hoping to bring them home when we can – when its 100% safe to do so.'
Williamson told The Post he will be presenting an offer to the farm on Thursday to help the business transition to crop production instead, which he deems more 'humane and sustainable' than duck farming.
'While we recognize Crescent Duck Farm's historical significance to Long Island, the documents we've obtained reveal not just the financial cost to taxpayers, but also the grim reality of how these birds met their end,' he said.
Corwin, however, balked at the idea of scrapping his beloved ducks for farming lettuce and other vegetation.
'It's going to take me a year and a half to get any income off of this place [after the culling],' he said. 'I'd be better off to bulldoze every barn we have and put it up for sale, but I'm a farmer at heart.'
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