On Saturday, around 120 volunteers and members of the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) moved in to occupy facilities at Petaluma Poultry, a Northern California farm which supplies chicken and turkey products to Amazon and other food retailers. The activists began live-streaming their actions at the farm early in the afternoon, and staged a medical intervention for birds carried out of the farm's housing.
According to the group, which secretly documented some graphic scenarios at the farm in pictures and video, Petaluma Poultry fowl still endure malnutrition, disease, and dangerous over-crowding, despite marketing materials that promote products as low-cruelty and "free range." Read more from forbes here. Gizmodo reported today that a leaked 45-minute training video for Amazon managers takes an "aggressive" stance on quelling interest in organized labor at its facilities. According to Gizmodo, the video was sent last week to Team Leaders at the Whole Foods grocery chain, which Amazon purchased last year, and where employees have reportedly been considering union membership for themselves.
Read more from Forbes here. Former law professor Wayne Hsiung and the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) that he co-founded, along with dozens of unnamed individuals and affiliates, were sued in Alameda County Superior Court yesterday by Whole Foods Market California Inc. in a complaint seeking to restrain protests against the company.
Hsiung says internal memos from Whole Foods that were secretly passed to DxE by insiders at the company, as well as personal correspondence with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, demonstrate the company’s intolerance to criticism. The company’s acquisition by Amazon, DxE activists say, has led to a new strategy: stopping activists through litigation. Hsiung says the internal memos show the company’s efforts to characterize peaceful protests as violent. He is currently facing prosecution in three separate matters relating to investigations of Amazon or Whole Foods suppliers. Read more from Indy bay here. Here is a moveon.org petition asking the CEO to stop their attempt to silence activists. Amazon is also wreaking havoc on the environment, and its delivery vehicles are generating untold amounts of greenhouse gases, ozone and particulate matter. California environmental advocates are taking on this challenge to protect the air quality in communities living with these warehouses in their backyards. Read more from truth out.org here.
"In February of this year, Norbest was purchased by Pitman Farms of California, a supplier of Whole Foods. As The Intercept reported last September, Pitman itself has its own struggles with accusations of abuse of animals at its farms.
But now that Norbest is part of Pitman, this appears to be a case where a corporate supplier of Whole Foods — which touts itself as selling the healthiest and most organic products — is pressing charges against people who exposed animal abuse and threats to the public health." Read more from The Intercept here. The residue of a FDA-prohibited antibiotic has appeared in tests done by the United States Department of Agriculture [USDA] on Diestel Turkey Ranch birds.
The company's meat products are sold in Whole Foods stores, as well as other 'natural' food shops across the US. Read more from Plant Based News here. When Amazon purchased Whole Foods last month, it didn’t just get the retail locations. It picked up Whole Foods’s baggage as well. Among the bigger issues inherited by Amazon appears to be a four-month investigation from the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere that challenges Whole Foods’s core selling point of healthy and humane food.
The group reported that it found no indications of outdoor living, such as feathers or fecal matter. Twenty-four hour surveillance cameras attached to six separate locations revealed no outdoor birds either, the activists said. Instead, chickens were packed shoulder-to-shoulder inside dusty sheds with degraded air quality, forced to challenge one another for access to food and water. Read more from The Intercept here. A DxE investigation of a free-range, slow-growth chicken farm found thousands of birds crowded in filthy sheds. Undercover cameras placed outside the barn show that the animals were never allowed outside.
Lauded for its supposed humane treatment of animals, Pitman Family Farms is the most prominent supplier of free-range, slow-growth chicken to retailers like Whole Foods. Read the full report here. Please visit the freerangetruth.com for more info. A Whole Foods Market Group policy that bars employees from recording is unlawful and could create a “chill” for workers to express their rights, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a National Labor Relations Board decision that said instructions in the national grocer’s handbook violated the National Labor Relations Act, which guarantees workers the right to engage in protected concerted activity, including the discussion of terms and condition of their employment. Read more from The National Law Journal here. After Advocacy groups urge Commonwealth Club to cancel Whole Foods CEO John Mackey in conversation with Dean Ornish, Mr. Ornish berates a volunteer with the advocacy group. Read more in Nancy Levine's post here.
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