A string of Hollywood celebrities including Ryan Gosling, Zooey and Emily Deschanel, Alicia Silverstone and Bryan Adams have signed an open letter to McDonald’s imploring the company to implement chain-wide animal welfare policies following an investigation that exposed the abusive practices of a former egg supplier in the US.
The letter, penned by animal protection organization Mercy For Animals, was sent this week to McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner and points out that while the company has a 100 percent cage-free purchasing policy in Europe, US restaurants "continue to support egg factory farms that confine hens for most of their lives in cages so small they can’t even spread their wings."
Last month, the company dropped its egg supplier Sparboe Farms facilities in Iowa, Minnesota and Colorado, after the animal rights group captured footage showing dead hens left to rot in cages, workers burning off birds’ beaks without painkillers and carelessly tossing them into cages, a worker swinging a hen around in the air, and live chicks thrown into plastic bags to be suffocated.
The video footage, which broke on ABC's Good Morning America and 20/20, prompted the company to drop the company as their egg supplier.
The letter, meanwhile, urges McDonald's to implement wider animal welfare policies and drop all egg suppliers that confine hens in wire cages.
"As the largest egg buyer in the entire country, McDonald's has the power -- and the moral responsibility -- to ensure that the eggs in its Egg McMuffins don't come from rotten egg suppliers,” concludes the letter.
Meanwhile, Sparboe said they conducted an internal investigation and fired four workers who were caught on camera. The farm also received a warning letter from the Food & Drug Administration citing serious violations that included failure to develop Salmonella prevention plans, inadequate rodent prevention and inadequate monitoring of chicks.
KFC is also a major target for animal rights groups like PETA, which mounted an aggressive campaign in recent years called Kentucky Fried Cruelty. The group accuses the fast food chain of similar abusive practices, and has enlisted the star power of celebrities like Pamela Anderson, Paul McCartney, Pink and the Dalai Lama for their campaign. -- AFP RELAXNEWS