This whole debacle was another example of poorly veiled anti-antisemitism.

They had some good points...many of the kapparos locations are not equipped to humanely handle and process thousands of birds. But instead of using animal rights as a shield for their real goal, which was to ban a religious practice, they should have urged the judge to not issue a permit unless the permit holders could demonstrate that they had the intent and resources to humanely treat and clean up after the animals.

The religious communities could have taken the higher ground and done that anyway, which would have had the happy side effect of hopefully cutting down on court costs and head-aches next year...but many didn't. In crown heights, they sorta did by moving the location (I don't know if they improved on the water/shade issue). I don't have a huge problem with the big crates because they were never really much worse than anywhere else in the food industry. I don't like using the argument of "but they're worse," but in this case, we're comparing apples to apples...food industry to food industry. Chickens meant for slaughter are kept in crates.

I have other issues with the protesters though. AFAIK it's not considered a pagan practice. Some Rabbis didn't like it because it "looked" like a pagan practice. And even it it is...who cares. That's for people within each community to decide, not for outsiders. For the Jews that say doing it with chickens is pagen, but doing it with money isn't, means that they don't understand why we do kapparos, and they don't understand what "darchei HaEmori" means.
Nobody older than 5 believes that the chicken is "singing," but if that's what a parent wants to tell his kids, don't overstep your bounds into parenting by telling him otherwise. I don't care if they are lying..that's their prerogative for a parent to tell their kid that santa exists, or replace their pet fish in the middle of the night, or say that flushing it down the toilet is really freeing it.

ahh, and most ironic of all are the protesters that hold up sighs saying "I want to live" ...most of them probably just came back from fighting for pro-abortion.