From SeaWorld to Whole Foods, animal advocates shake up big biz
Whether for entertainment or for food, corporations are changing their stance on how animals are treated in the face of consumer demand and ongoing campaigns by animal-welfare advocates.
"Companies are continuing to increase the attention they pay to farm animal welfare," according to the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare 2015 Report. "The proportion of companies with a published farm animal welfare policy has increased from 46 percent in 2012 to 69 percent in 2015, and the proportion with published objectives and targets for farm animal welfare has increased from 26 percent in 2012 to 54 percent in 2015."
SeaWorld (SEAS) and Whole Foods Market (WFM) are the latest examples of companies bending to pressure over how creatures are treated. On Thursday, the former announced it would stop breeding orcas, and the latter committed to a new chicken welfare standard by 2024.
The developments come nearly a year after Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus pledged it would phase out its use of elephants in traveling acts and follow a trend that has seen companies like Nestlé, the world's largest food company, and McDonald's (MCD), the globe's biggest fast-food chain, commit to using cage-free eggs by varying time frames.
In capitulating in the face of a multiyear campaign that ultimately involved animal rights activists, lawmakers and regulators, SeaWorld gave itself credit for helping foster the concern that led to the undoing of its shows involving killer whales.
"When the first SeaWorld Park opened in 1964, orcas, or killer whales, were not universally loved," Joel Manby, the entertainment park's CEO, wrote in an editorial Thursday in the Los Angeles Times. "Half a century later, orcas are among the most popular marine mammals on the planet. One reason: People came to SeaWorld and learned about orcas up close."
In October, the California Coastal Commission banned the breeding of orcas in captivity, a decision that SeaWorld was challenging in court.
On Thursday, SeaWorld said it was partnering with a longtime adversary, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), to work against what Manby called the "real enemies of wildlife," including commercial whaling and seal hunts, shark finning and ocean pollution. SeaWorld also plans to support the Humane Society's efforts to raise awareness of animal welfare by offering "humane food options and serving only sustainable seafood."
"The HSUS has long been critical of keeping orcas and dolphins in captivity, and has clashed with SeaWorld for more than two decades," Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society, said in a statement. "Today's announcement signals that the era of captive display of orcas will end and that SeaWorld will redouble its work around rescue and rehabilitation of marine mammals in crisis and partner with us to tackle global threats to marine creatures."
Applauding SeaWorld's move was Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who had sponsored a measure that would have banned the breeding, capture, import and export of orcas for public display. He called SeaWorld's partnership with the Humane Society "an exciting new direction for the company."
Not all, however, were appeased, with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) calling for SeaWorld to release its 29 orcas. "SeaWorld must open its tanks to the oceans to allow the orcas it now holds captive to have some semblance of a life outside these prison tanks," Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's president, said in a statement.
The effort to get egg-laying hens out of battery cages was taken to another level with the announcement by Whole Foods, which said it would replace all fast-growing breeds of its broiler chickens with healthier, slower-growing breeds and to ensure its chickens are raised in natural light with more space.
"For decades, the industry's focus has been on producing a chicken as big, as fast, and as cheap as possible," Leah Garces, U.S. director of Compassion in World Farming, which advocates against factory farming, said in a statement applauding the step. "But there have been disastrous unintended consequences for the birds -- lameness, heart conditions, and immune function problems, to name a few."
Chickens marketed as "natural" and antibiotic-free" are often inhumanely raised in overcrowded warehouses without natural light and fresh air, where they are bred to be so large they can barely stand, claims the London-based group, which cites Perdue as an offender. A video on its site shows conditions at a farm that had supplied chickens to the company.
"We were alarmed and disturbed by the chickens that were shown," said Julie DeYoung, a spokeswoman for Perdue. The conditions violated Perdue's animal welfare standards, and the farmer in the video shot about a year-and-a-half ago terminated his contract with the chicken processor in December, she said. "Our birds are not raised with outdoor access," DeYoung added, explaining that keeping chickens housed protects them from the elements as well as predators.
The cage-free movement came amid a campaign by the Humane Society, which in June released undercover footage allegedly showing the mistreatment of birds and unsanitary conditions at a Pennsylvania supplier of eggs to grocery retailer Costco (COST). The group followed with a steady stream of appeals from celebrities including Ryan Gosling, Bill Maher and Brad Pitt.
Matt O'Hayer, founder and chief executive of Vital Farms, a national distributor of pasture-raised eggs, says going cage-free isn't all it's cracked up to be. "In a commercial sense, we're talking about birds crowded into a colony house, or a warehouse, shoulder-to-shoulder with other birds, standing in their own manure," O'Hayer said.
"What the consumers thinks cage-free is doing is what we do," said O'Hayer, who contends eggs laid by chickens raised on pastures who eat grass in addition to corn taste better.
"The Denny's ad that ran, that should be referred to the Federal Trade Commission," given it implied the cage-free chickens would be raised outdoors, O'Hayer added of the tongue-in-check commercial, which displayed an array of clucking chickens, with voiceovers of the birds conversing about what they'll do with their new-found freedom.