Archive: Farmed Animals

Advocacy organizations and their supporters demonstrated at Olive Garden restaurants across the United States today to urge the chain and its parent company, Darden Restaurant Inc., to improve food-sourcing and labor practices. The demonstrations took place in New York, Washington, DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco and include the delivery of a petition signed by more than 130,000 people. The actions were a part of the “Good Food Now!” campaign supported by a coalition of environmental, social-justice and animal-welfare organizations.

“While Olive Garden claims to be sourcing its food responsibly, serving meat and dairy produced in polluting factory farms with routine antibiotics is anything but responsible,” said Kari Hamerschlag, deputy director of Friends of the Earth’s Food and Technology Program. “To stay competitive, Olive Garden must give food-conscious families what they want: healthier, local and organic options — including more plant-based entrees and more humane meat raised without routine antibiotics.”

Darden is the leading casual-dining operator and employer in the United States and earns $6.7 billion in sales at more than 1,500 restaurants worldwide. Olive Garden is its biggest brand.

The “Good Food Now!” campaign is a partnership of Friends of the Earth, Restaurant Opportunities Center-United, the Food Chain Workers Alliance, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, Green America and the Animal Welfare Institute. Key petition supporters include CREDO Action, Sum of Us, Food Democracy Now!, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Organic Consumers Association, the International Labor Rights Forum and Fair World Project.

The petition specifically urges Darden to reduce meat and dairy purchases by 20 percent; source meat from producers that adhere to verifiable, higher-than-industry animal-welfare standards; improve worker wages; and increase local and organic options.

“As the world’s largest employer of tipped workers, Darden could be a leader in advocating for a fair wage for all workers but instead spends millions lobbying to keep the minimum wage for tipped workers at $2.13,” said Saru Jayaraman, cofounder and co-director of Restaurant Opportunities Center-United.

“As a major player in the restaurant industry, Olive Garden and its parent company, Darden, can spearhead reforms that not only improve working conditions for their employees, but can help shift practices across the entire industry,” said Phillip Hamilton, associate for Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s Economic Justice program.

In addition to demonstrations in six major cities, the campaign has been gathering support online from across the country with social media messages using the hashtag #GoodFoodNow.

“Darden’s response so far has been to restate its commitment to responsibly-sourced food, supporting employees and protecting the environment’ without addressing the concerns about its environmental footprint,” said Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s time for Olive Garden and all Darden restaurants to move beyond the rhetoric and take concrete steps to create a more sustainable menu by serving smaller meat portions, adding plant-based options and increasing organic foods.”

After the launch of the campaign, Darden announced it will phase out gestation crates that severely restrict the movement of pregnant pigs by 2025 and battery cages for egg-laying hens by 2018 from its supply chain.

“Darden’s commitment to phase out gestation crates and battery cages is a step in the right direction; however, the company still has a long way to go to meet consumer expectations for higher-welfare meat and dairy foods,” said Michelle Pawliger, farm animal policy associate at the Animal Welfare Institute. “We are urging Darden to source 20 percent of its meat and dairy from producers who are third-party certified to verifiable higher welfare standards.”

More than 50 organizations signed onto a letter calling on Darden to improve its labor practices and commit to better food sourcing. The campaign has reached out to the company directly in an attempt to meet, but Darden has failed to address these requests.

“As the largest restaurant employer with a workforce of more than 150,000, we are urging Darden to raise millions of workers and their families out of poverty by raising wages and providing sick leave for its many frontline employees,” said Jose Oliva, co-director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance.

“Consumers are increasingly concerned about where their food comes from and how it was made, and restaurants are no exception,” said Elizabeth Jardim, director of consumer advocacy at Green America. “Olive Garden needs to meet consumer demand by sourcing more ingredients from local farmers and paying all workers, including those in its supply chain, fairly.”

For more information on the campaign, visit Good-food-now.com.

A coalition of animal, environmental, and consumer protection organizations submitted a joint comment today to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on its proposed rule to amend animal welfare requirements under the Certified Organic label. In addition, the coalition gathered more than 120,000 comments from its supporters who want to see a stronger organic program.

The coalition commends the department for its long-awaited efforts, and believes the proposed rule will ensure a more transparent and consistent organic program. According to the coalition, the USDA’s proposed rule is desperately needed to establish a clear, uniform standard of care for organically raised animals and to provide consumers with a more reliable label. “Under the proposed rule, animals raised organically will have enrichments, more meaningful outdoor access, and the opportunity to live more natural lives,” said the coalition in a joint statement. “While the proposed rule will not create a perfect organic program, it will create the first comprehensive federal standards for the raising of farmed animals, and that in itself is a significant win for animals and consumers. Thus, we encourage the USDA to finalize the rule expeditiously.”

The new rule aims to fill gaps in the current rules, which were first enacted in 2001. Under the current regulations, there are paltry standards for animal welfare, allowing for inconsistencies in the quality of care among producers of organic animal products. For instance, animals at some organic farms are raised on pasture, while those at other organic facilities are raised indoors under conditions nearly indistinguishable from their conventional counterparts. This inconsistency leaves the organic label ripe for misuse—allowing for consumer confusion and misleading claims.

While the coalition urges the USDA to finalize the proposed rule, it identifies key areas where the USDA should improve its proposed standards. Specifically, the organizations are asking that the USDA require

• pain relief for certain physical alterations,
• minimum space requirements for pigs,
• a prohibition of manual blunt force trauma as a form of euthanasia,
• access to vegetation and an increase in the minimum outdoor space requirements for birds, and
• perches and better lighting for birds.

As stated in the coalition’s comment, these changes would “increase both animal welfare and uniformity and bring the standards more in line with consumer expectations.”

The coalition is composed of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Animal Welfare Institute, Compassion in World Farming, Compassion Over Killing, Farm Forward, Farm Sanctuary, Food Animal Concerns Trust, Friends of the Earth, Green America, The Humane Society of the United States, Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Mercy For Animals, and Organic Consumers Association.

Comments on the proposed rules are being accepted until July 13 and can be submitted online. For more information, visit https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=AMS-NOP-15-0012-0001.

In a letter sent today to Nation’s Restaurant News, a coalition of 15 environmental, animal welfare and worker justice organizations with over 10 million supporters expressed dismay over the publication’s decision to honor Gene Lee, CEO of Darden Restaurants, as one of the recipients of its Golden Chain Award. The award, which will be presented on October 24 during the Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators (MUFSO) conference, “celebrates industry veterans for their outstanding leadership, solid company performance and dedication to giving back.”

“Darden Restaurants CEO Gene Lee deserves the ‘Golden Greenwashing’ award, not the Golden Chain award,” said Kari Hamerschlag, deputy director of the Food and Technology program at Friends of the Earth. “Darden consistently misleads the public and the media with its empty rhetoric on responsible business practices. There is nothing responsible about serving meat and dairy produced in polluting factory farms with routine antibiotics or paying paltry wages to the majority of its restaurant staff.”

Within the letter, the groups stated that “Lee is undeserving of this award” and “has failed to show excellence in leadership in terms of improving conditions for employees, protecting the environment, fostering humane treatment of farm animals or promoting the health of Darden Restaurants’ customers.” The letter detailed reasons why Lee should not be given the award. Among these reasons:

• Darden undermines public health by buying meat from suppliers that routinely use antibiotics for nontherapeutic purposes in order to compensate for unsanitary practices. Darden subsidiary Olive Garden recently received an “F” grade for its weak antibiotics policies in “Chain Reaction II,” a report released last month by a number of public interest groups.
• Approximately 20 percent of Darden’s hourly workforce is paid a paltry $2.13 per hour. Tens of thousands of Darden workers are paid only the minimum wage and are employed part-time with no sick leave, while Lee reportedly received a 46 percent boost in salary to $6.1 million per year.
• There is a major gulf between Darden’s rhetoric on environmental and animal welfare stewardship and the actual impacts of its food sourcing practices. For instance, Darden purchases poultry products from Simmons Foods and Sanderson Farms, companies which have numerous U.S. Environmental Protection Agency violations. Additionally, both companies have multiple citations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for egregious acts of cruelty, such as boiling birds alive and improperly desensitizing them before cutting their throats.

“In an era when corporate social responsibility is on the rise, Nation’s Restaurant News’ award committee should consider more than just profits when evaluating corporate excellence, said Michelle Pawliger, farm animal policy associate with the Animal Welfare Institute. “Rewarding Mr. Lee’s false rhetoric gives a silent nod to Darden’s problematic practices—which include a continued reliance on suppliers that abuse animals. It also ignores the thousands of consumers who have spoken out against Darden for not implementing real improvements.”

“Instead of marking progress, Nation’s Restaurant News’ honor encourages more restaurant chains to use misleading rhetoric instead of meaningful action to address the serious social and environmental issues facing our food system,” added Anna Meyer, food campaigns manager at Green America.

Additional details on the gaps between Darden’s promises to be a good corporate citizen and its actual practices were identified in a January 2016 letter sent to Lee from members of the Good Food Now! coalition. In May 2016, the Good Food Now! coalition and its allies delivered 130,000 petition signatures calling on Darden to improve its labor and sourcing practices.

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) late yesterday filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its unreasonable delay in responding to an AWI petition—filed in May 2013—to amend the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA) to prevent incidents of inhumane handling and the needless suffering of animals at slaughter.

AWI is asking the court to order the USDA to answer its petition, which requests that the USDA require that all slaughter establishments follow clear procedures to address animal welfare to prevent inhumane handling and slaughter. The animal welfare organization—represented by the Public Justice Advocacy Clinic at The George Washington University Law School—is suing the USDA under the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires agencies to respond to citizen petitions for rulemaking within a reasonable time.

“The USDA is shirking its duty as a regulatory agency by refusing to initiate rulemaking to amend the HMSA, particularly when many of the causes of inhumane slaughter are well known and easily addressed,” said Dena Jones, farm animal program director at AWI.

The USDA has not amended the HMSA regulations for the purpose of improving animal handling at slaughter in nearly 40 years, since the original regulations were adopted. In the intervening time, tens of thousands of incidents of inhumane handling at slaughter have been observed and documented by inspection personnel at federal and state slaughter establishments.

In 2013, AWI analyzed a sample of more than 1,000 of these incidents to identify the most common causes of inhumane slaughter. This review found that the most frequent causes of inhumane incidents (not adequately addressed by current regulations) are (1) lack of worker training in humane handling techniques, (2) use of inappropriate stunning devices, (3) improper shot placement, often in connection with inadequate restraint, (4) lack of routine testing and maintenance of stunning equipment, and (5) lack of a backup stunning device.

For example, in September, a federal slaughter plant in Pennsylvania was unsuccessful in three attempts to render a boar unconscious with a rifle, with the animal vocalizing after each shot to the head. The plant did not have an appropriate backup stunning device available, so one of the employees drove to his home to retrieve another rifle, returning 10 minutes later to finally put the animal out of his misery.

AWI’s petition requests that the USDA amend the HMSA regulations to address the lack of backup stunning devices, as well as the other identified causes of inhumane slaughter. AWI estimates that up to half of all inhumane handling violations could be avoided by improvements to the HMSA regulations.

“Prudence and common sense dictate that commercial slaughter establishments should not be allowed to slaughter animals unless they possess a humane handling plan, trained employees, and properly functioning equipment,” said Jones. “The USDA is well aware that these requirements are completely reasonable and would prevent a tremendous amount of animal suffering.”

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) applauds the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for releasing its final rule to improve the welfare of animals raised under the Certified Organic label.

Dena Jones, AWI farm animal program director, provided the following statement in response to the regulations:

This is a historic moment, as there are currently no substantive federal standards for the raising of farm animals under the law. The final rule reduces inconsistencies in the animal care provided by organic producers, and helps farmers who raise their animals in accordance with higher welfare standards. Such farmers—whose practices are more in line with consumer expectations for organic products—are currently at a competitive disadvantage to industrial operators who cut corners and treat their animals poorly.

AWI urged the USDA to make several improvements to the proposed rule released by the department earlier this year. The USDA heeded our recommendations that birds have access to vegetation and that the practice of euthanizing piglets by manual blunt force trauma be prohibited. The final rule also creates minimum space requirements for chickens raised for meat and for egg-laying hens, restricts physical alterations such as tail docking of pigs, and provides requirements for the more humane handling of animals during transport. Additionally, this rule marks the first federal law to consider the welfare of birds at slaughter.

While the final rule will significantly improve the welfare of animals, it does fall short in some areas. It does not, for instance, “ensure … that all organic animals live in pasture-based systems,” as the USDA claims. For instance, the final rule does not require that pigs have access to soil or vegetation, and does not provide minimum space requirements for pigs or turkeys. In addition, the outdoor space requirements for chickens are inadequate to provide a pastured environment. While the final rule does not create a pasture-based system, it does ensure that all organically raised animals at least have some access to the outdoors—a significant improvement from the current organic regulatory requirements.

To read the full regulations, visit https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic-livestock-and-poultry-practices.

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) released today a new report, “Humane Slaughter Update: Federal and State Oversight of the Welfare of Farm Animals at Slaughter.” Key findings of the report—which examines Humane Methods of Slaughter Act enforcement by federal and state departments of agriculture—include the following:

• Federal and state humane slaughter enforcement continues to rise, but the level of enforcement varies dramatically by state.
• Repeat violators present a major enforcement problem.
• Federal and state inspection personnel continue to demonstrate unfamiliarity with humane slaughter enforcement rules, as evidenced by their failure to take appropriate enforcement actions, particularly in response to egregious violations.
• Humane slaughter enforcement remains low in comparison with other aspects of food safety enforcement.

The report assigns a grade, from A to F, to each of the 27 state-operated meat inspection programs, based on how well it enforces the federal humane slaughter law. AWI is providing each of the state programs a copy of the report and specific details about the program’s standing. Louisiana, which received an F, stands at the bottom of the rankings due to its failure to take any enforcement action for inhumane slaughter in over 12 years. In light of this failure, AWI is urging the USDA to revoke its cooperative agreement with the state.

AWI further recommends that the USDA and/or the state departments of agriculture

• significantly increase allocation of resources to humane handling and slaughter activities;
• establish a policy of escalating penalties to address repeat violators;
• cooperate with state and local law enforcement agencies in the pursuit of criminal animal cruelty charges for incidents of willful animal abuse;
• make additional slaughter plant inspection records, including noncompliance records, available to the public on its website; and
• revise the federal humane slaughter regulations to address the most common causes of violations.

This report presents the findings of a survey of federal and state enforcement of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act conducted by AWI covering January 1, 2010, through December 31, 2015. The data used to analyze humane slaughter enforcement was obtained from numerous public record requests submitted to federal and state departments of agriculture and from records posted on the USDA website.

To view the full report, visit http://awionline.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/AWI-FA-HumaneSlaughterReport-2017.pdf.

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) today criticized guidelines proposed by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) that permit the use of inhumane killing methods, including the use of water-based foam, ventilation shutdown, and live burial, for farm animals.

The proposed “depopulation” guidelines apply to the large-scale killing of farm animals for disease control purposes—such as the elimination of birds infected with, or exposed to, avian influenza (“bird flu”)—or in response to a natural or human-caused disaster. The draft guidelines

• allow for the use of water-based foam—which acts in a manner similar to drowning or suffocation—to kill certain classifications of poultry;
• approve, in some situations, of the killing of poultry and pigs by “ventilation shutdown,” which involves turning off the ventilation, causing animals to die by heat stress and suffocation; and
• authorize live burial for the killing of some classifications of poultry.

“The AVMA is proposing to subject animals to the most gruesome deaths imaginable,” said Dena Jones, AWI farm animal program director. “Intentionally inflicting death in a manner that causes elevated and prolonged distress is unacceptable. It is particularly insupportable for a professional scientific body representing veterinarians—who are sworn to protect animals—to propose killing methods that have never been researched for their impact on the welfare of animals.”

The AVMA is proposing that these methods only be allowed in “constrained circumstances,” but less inhumane methods exist, even for exceptional cases. AWI and ASPCA are concerned that over time, use of these methods will become routine, making their availability a disincentive to use or research more acceptable methods.

The animal welfare organizations emphasized that, because the AVMA is only accepting comments on the depopulation proposal from its members, the American public will have no input in the ultimate outcome of the process. While the US Department of Agriculture is not required by law to do so, it typically relies on AVMA guidelines to determine killing methods for depopulation events. The USDA has not indicated that it will solicit public comment before deciding whether to use the AVMA guidelines.

AWI and ASPCA also noted that none of the contested methods—water-based foam, ventilation shutdown, or live burial—are allowed by the depopulation standards of the World Organization for Animal Health, the international authority on animal diseases.

Unfortunately, depopulation is often tied to poor welfare. “Modern industrial agriculture routinely packs animals by the tens and even hundreds of thousands cruelly together in stressful, unsanitary environments that facilitate the rapid spread of disease and suffering,” said Suzanne McMillan, content director of ASPCA’s farm animal campaign. “When crisis inevitably strikes, the AVMA’s depopulation guidelines should still uphold the veterinarian’s oath to prevent and relieve animal suffering and should not provide an ‘easy out’ at the cost of unthinkable cruelty for the sake of perpetuating a dangerous, inhumane, and unsustainable system.”

The animal welfare organizations recognize the need for appropriate biosecurity measures and urge the USDA to give thorough review to the option of vaccination. However, until underlying welfare is seriously addressed by animal agribusiness, outbreaks of animal disease are likely inevitable. Consequently, the organizations believe it is imperative that the AVMA, the USDA, and the animal agriculture industry at the very least invest resources in the development of less inhumane means of mass depopulation.