NEWSFACTORY FARMING

In a joint press release with The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), fast food giant McDonald's announced that it wants its pork suppliers in the U.S. to phase out the use of sow gestation crates. They've asked all of the suppliers to outline plans for the switch by May.

McDonald's believes that gestation crates are "not a sustainable production system for the future," while HSUS adds that it's "wrong to immobilize animals for their whole lives in crates barely larger than their bodies." This announcement is the most recent success in the growing movement against factory farming, including commitments from Smithfield (a McDonald's supplier) and Hormel agreeing to phase out the crates that confine the smart, sensitive animals in spaces barely larger than their bodies.

Mercy For Animals revealed the findings of its latest undercover investigation today. The expose offers a rare look into a Butterball turkey facility in Shannon, North Carolina.

According to Dr. Temple Grandin, the world's leading expert on farmed animal welfare, the investigation documents "abuse and cruelty" to turkeys, and Mercy For Animals has video footage which seems to support such a bold claim. Workers were caught kicking and stomping on turkeys, dragging them by their wings and necks, and throwing birds onto the ground or into transport trucks in view of company management. You can learn more at ButterballAbuse.com.

If Ryan Gosling, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Deschanel, Alicia Silverstone, Maria Menounos, Kristin Bauer, Ed Begley, Jr., Wendie Malick, Bryan Adams and Steve-O all signed and sent you a letter, you'd probably read it very closely. Today, Jim Skinner, CEO of McDonald's, got just such a letter as part of the Mercy for Animals (MFA) campaign to pressure the company to step up and make a difference for chickens suffering for McMuffins and other foods at the restaurant chain.

When MFA broke a shocking undercover investigation into a McDonald's egg supplier last month, the news hit hard everywhere from television to local stores across the United States. Many consumers got their first glimpse into a factory farming system where animals are often crammed into cages so small they can hardly spread a wing for their entire lives. The video evidence of chicks left to suffocate in plastic bags and live hens being swung around by their legs was not only an education for people, but also a call to action to treat animals more kindly as a society.

Nearly 7,000 people have signed on to student Marina Bolotnikova's petition asking Harvard University to switch to 100 percent cage-free eggs.

Although she started the petition on Change.org, Bolotnikova says she can't take credit for how far the movement has come. "The campaign has been successful because the push for cage-free eggs is so basic and so uncontroversial that there is no segment of the student body that does not support it. We have gathered thousands of undergraduate and graduate student signatures, endorsements from many student organizations (including the Undergraduate Council), and nearly 7,000 supporters on Change.org."

Even the university's top administrator is on board. Earlier this week, Bolotnikova and a group of students met with Harvard President Drew Faust. She says President Faust was supportive and "encouraged us to continue working on this important issue and engaging with the Harvard Community."

As California moves to prohibit production and sale of foie gras, Animal Legal Defense Fund is calling on the United States Department of Agriculture to require a consumer warning label on all foie gras products carrying the USDA seal of approval.

Come July 2012, California will join several countries around the world that understand that the delicacy of foie gras is not worth the price of animal cruelty. Farm Sanctuary estimates as many as 500,000 ducks are slaughtered for foie gras each year in the United States. The ducks live in confined cages, have a tube placed down their throat and are force-fed for weeks until their stomachs expand 6 to 10 times normal size.

By that time, the ducks have developed liver disease from the process. Many die before they are sent to slaughter. In essence, dining on foie gras means eating diseased duck liver. And paying a premium price for the opportunity.

Earlier this month, The Humane Society of the United States submitted a shareholder resolution asking Hormel Foods, producers of Spam and other pork products, to come clean about how many breeding pigs are confined in gestation crates and whether the company has made any progress toward more humane housing methods.

Gestation crates are cages so small that sows can't stretch their limbs or turn around. The extreme confinement causes physical and mental distress to the animals, and, with producers like Hormel Foods, the pigs spend nearly their entire short lives in these inhumane conditions.

Several major fast food companies and supermarkets have begun shifting toward producers who don't use gestation crates. Hormel's competitors have also started to change: Maxwell Foods is gestation crate-free, Cargill has phased out 50 percent of their crates, and Smithfield has moved 30 percent of their pigs to group housing.

Adolfo Sansolini, Coordinator for the 8hours campaign, shared with me the story of Antoine, a young bull on a recent transport truck from France to Morocco. The itinerary covered a total of three trucks, one with 60 bull calves and the other two with 4 or 5 adult bulls for breeding. The route would take a travel time of over 62 hours, or 2.5 days.

A day after departure, the trucks reach the first control post in Spain. Despite adequate space, fresh water and food, many of the calves were suffering from respiratory problems. Antoine was observed lying down and foaming at the mouth.

Arriving 1.5 hours late, the veterinarian quickly determined that Antoine was not fit for travel and would remain at the control post for observation. The vet also noted that Antoine was most likely not fit for transport at time of departure. Ten minutes later, Antoine was dead.

Antoine’s story is only one of 50 billion animals slaughtered each year. Across the European Union, an alarming number of livestock still travel for days at a time to reach the slaughterhouse. The 8hours campaign aims to change current EU legislation to limit transport of animals for slaughter to eight hours. "[The campaign] has the potential to bring to an end additional and easily avoidable suffering of millions of farmed animals in Europe,” said Adolfo. 

Do or Dine, a new restaurant in Brooklyn, has added foie gras-filled donuts to their menu, and has thus quickly made it onto the map as the worst place for pastries. The restaurant plans to have the goose-liver donuts on its menu Wednesday through Saturday, charging a whopping $11 for each cruelty-filled donut.

One recent Do or Dine diner called the restaurant "heaven," but foie gras donuts mean a real-life hell for birds. Foie gras, which literally translates to "fatty liver," is produced by force-feeding waterfowl with pounds of grain and fat. This force-feeding process is known as "gavage," and it involves thrusting a metal feeding tube down the bird's throat several times a day.

The gavage process sometimes results in holes in a bird's sensitive neck, and the bird's engorged liver often becomes diseased. The birds are kept in filthy, crammed conditions while they wait to be force-fed.

This week, Mercy for Animals released their latest undercover investigation, which took place at an Iowa Select Farms facility in Kamrar, Iowa. The company is one of the nation's largest pork producers, supplying major grocery chains like Costco, Hy-Vee, Kroger and Safeway.

The investigator documented the all-too-common trauma of sows confined to gestation crates barely larger than their bodies, unable to turn around or lie down comfortably, suffering from untreated sores from the cages, and going insane from the confinement. In addition, baby piglets were castrated without any painkillers and were thrown around, which management claimed was fun for the animals, like a "roller coaster ride."

(It's important to note that this type of investigation is what Iowa legislators are trying to outlaw, when they should be focusing on the real issue: the shocking everyday treatment of farm animals.)

There have been many of the usual reactions from the facility and industry, claiming that the abuse was staged or edited. But here's the red flag: They aren't saying that the extreme confinement of gestation crates or the practice of castrating without anesthesia are anything but business as usual.

Top Chef Canada’s first episode scored the highest ratings ever for a Canadian premiere, but the show is on thin ice with animal lovers. The first season of the Canadian cooking show has already dished up horse meat, seal flipper, and several foie gras dishes.

"I didn't think [the horse meat] was that big of a deal," Top Chef contestant Dale Mackay shrugged in his video blog, after waxing poetic about his foie gras poutine. "Obviously some people feel completely differently, and don't want to see horse meat on Top Chef or on TV in general."

Indeed, over 3,000 Change.org users have signed Animal Law Coalition's petition demanding Top Chef Canada never to serve horse meat again, and over 6,200 Facebook users have joined a boycott against the show.