Exclusive | Taxpayers may have to quack up $1M for slaughtering 100K ducks at Long Island farm in virus scare: documents

Taxpayers may get their gooses cooked paying for a duck massacre.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 ente...