DxE filed a lawsuit today against Whole Foods supplier Diestel Turkey Ranch for deceiving the public with misleading animal welfare statements such as "range-grown" and "humanely-raised." The suit, which was based on DxE's groundbreaking investigation of a "best of the best" turkey farm, may be the first of many, as more and more consumer protection firms are reaching out to express interest in challenging the humane fraud. Read more and sign the petition here. Here is the PRESS RELEASE.
Activists from Direct Action Everywhere release another investigation into a Whole Foods "humane & cage-free" egg farm. You can read about the investigation and see the VR video of the "farm" here. DxE found sickening abuse at Jaindl Farms, turkey supplier to the White House and Whole Foods, including birds whose faces were disfigured from debeaking. Read more about the investigation here.Despite emphatically exclaiming on its website that birds are “NOT FACTORY FARMED!!!” Culver Duck Farms Inc., a supplier to Whole Foods, crams up to 4,000 ducks into massive, dark sheds, giving each bird only about 2 to 3 square feet of floor space. A supervisor told the eyewitness that Culver was experimenting to see if ducks could be raised on just 1 square foot of space per bird. Others were kept isolated in 1.5-square-foot wire-floored cages for weeks before being slaughtered.
Ducks often suffered from what workers called ammonia burns, which left them with raw-looking skin and missing feathers. A supervisor admitted to the eyewitness that the stagnant, ammonia-filled air would blind some ducks whose eyes were sealed shut with mucus, yet Culver assures customers that ventilation and fresh air are “critical” to its farming operations. Ducks were denied any opportunity to swim or bathe, which are vital to their welfare. The grated flooring under their only water source, which the observer never saw cleaned, was caked with feces. Read more about the investigation by PETA here. Whole Foods’s animal-welfare violations show how hollow the rhetoric of corporate responsibility is.
Read the story from Jan Dutkiewicz in Jacobin here. Whole Foods shareholders were in for a surprise when they arrived for the grocery chain’s annual meeting this week. PETA members—including PETA’s pig mascot—were on hand outside, along with members of Direct Action Everywhere, to remind shareholders that Whole Foods’ “humane” pork, chicken, turkey and other animals is nothing of the sort, while inside, a PETA staffer asked the critical question “When will Whole Foods stop misleading customers and stop marketing meat as ‘humane’?” Story from PETA here. In an open letter to Whole Foods from Priya Sawhney, she explains why they disrupted an event at Stanford by the CEO. "A corporate executive genuinely concerned with integrity should be grateful to activists for exposing fraud and misconduct. Yet, to date, Mr. Mackey has refused our repeated requests for dialogue and hidden behind the walls of corporate power." Read more at the Stanford Daily.
In light of recent investigations featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, the undersigned animal rights organizations condemn Whole Foods Market’s animal welfare standards and the Global Animal Partnership’s (GAP) “5-Step” animal welfare rating system. Read the letter signed by PETA and others here.
"...wild horse advocates started to document the BLM round-up with photos and written reports. These accounts highlight the hidden brutality of mustang capture, a brutality induced by the panic that horses experience when being corralled, often by helicopters working in tandem. On November 19, for example, “there were 5 deaths on this day,” including “one 8 year old mare with old break in right hind leg and one 4 month old colt with old break in left hind leg.” By November 22, “the death toll climbed to 16 horses.” One report observed: “The most heartbreaking [scene] of the day involved the foals. The helicopters are running these horses from very long distances, and often foals just can’t keep up for as long as the rest of their herd.” Read the full story from Pacific Standard here.
The nine-month investigation by the Oakland, CA-based group revealed that turkeys live in “horrific conditions” at Diesel’s Jamestown facility, where hundreds of thousands of turkeys are raised each year, including those marketed as “humanely raised” by Whole Foods. Read the report by Michael Goldberg at The Daily Pitchfork here.
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