Animal Welfare Concerns
In 2011, Mercy for Animals, a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing cruelty to farmed animals and promoting compassionate food choices and policies, uncovered appalling animal abuse at a Sam’s Club egg supplier.
Hidden-camera footage shot at Sparboe Farms – a significant egg supplier to Sam’s Club, McDonald’s, Target, Supervalu, and Hy-Vee – revealed hens crammed into filthy wire cages, unable to fully stretch their wings or engage in most other natural behaviors. The investigation documented workers burning off the beaks of chicks without painkillers, alleged torturing of animals, and throwing live birds into plastic bags and leaving them to suffocate. Dead hens were left to rot alongside birds who were still laying eggs for human consumption.
The investigation received unparalleled international media attention – airing first on ABC's Good Morning America, World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer, and 20/20. As a result of the investigation and the public outcry that followed, Sam’s Club immediately discontinued its relationship with the company.
Read more about this topic: Sam's Club
Famous quotes containing the words animal, welfare and/or concerns:
“When we reflect upon the cruelties daily practised upon such of the animal creation as are given us for food, or which we ensnare for our diversion, we shall be obliged to own that there is more of the savage in human nature than we are aware of.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“You can’t talk about a kind of democracy unless those who are affected by decisions make those decisions whether the institutions in question be the welfare department, the university, the factory, the farm, the neighborhood, the country.”
—Casey Hayden (b. c. 1940)
“Our ideal ... must be a language as clear as glass—the person looking out of the window knows there is glass there, but he is not concerned with it; what concerns him is what comes through from the other side.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)