Here's an unfortunate ruling from Scotland, courtesy of Doug Powell at Kansas State University's Animal Network, an international agricultural food safety listserv. This is the link to the original story, although I cut-and-pasted the article in its entirety since I was having some problems getting the link to work at first:
News.Scotsman.com
08 October 2008
The High Court yesterday upheld the legality of new rules allowing chickens to be killed in their thousands by slow suffocation in the event of a widespread bird flu outbreak. A judge ruled that the government was entitled to use "ventilation shutdown" as a last resort.