Natural Shoppers Affiliation, with Richman Regulation & Coverage, sue Foster Farms Over Deceptive “5 Freedoms” Rooster Welfare Claims

March 19, 2024 – Washington, D.C. – Natural Shoppers Affiliation and Richman Regulation & Coverage filed a grievance towards Foster Farms on XXX within the District of Columbia Superior Courtroom. The grievance alleges that Foster Farms, in violation of the District of Columbia Shopper Safety Procedures Act, deceptively markets its hen merchandise with claims regarding animal welfare.

Foster Farms, the grievance alleges, misleads shoppers by claiming that, “The chickens we increase benefit from the 5 freedoms.” Natural Shoppers Affiliation doesn’t take challenge with Foster Farms’ claims that its chickens have freedom from starvation and thirst and from cages, but it surely does problem these freedoms Foster Farms claims its chickens have:

Freedom from discomfort;
Freedom from damage, ache, or illness; and
Freedom from concern and misery.

As well as, Foster Farms’ claims every of the chickens underneath its care that every of its birds “has the house to roam and act like a hen” and has “sufficient room to run round, sit, scratch, roll round, scratch, and run some extra.”

Regardless of these claims, the indoor house that Foster Farms allocates to the its chickens underneath its care is minimal—lower than one sq. foot per hen, or, concerning the measurement of a sheet of normal printer paper—which doesn’t give its chickens room to precise their pure behaviors. And, along with this excessive confinement even when they weren’t so constricting, Foster Farms services doesn’t present adequate the out of doors entry or indoor enrichments obligatory for his or her chickens to forage, nest, peck or perch.

The truth is that chickens underneath Foster Farms’ care chickens  usually undergo discomfort, damage, ache, illness, concern and misery their complete lives.

These chickens are bred to develop unnaturally quick to proportions that forestall their tiny legs from supporting their immense our bodies, making strolling painful or inconceivable. They reside out their brief lives packed into windowless sheds the place they’re continually lined with, and inhaling, their very own waste. This causes quite a lot of pores and skin infections, together with contact footpad dermatitis, a painful situation the place the hen’s pores and skin turns into infected, inflicting lesions and deep ulcers.

At slaughter, chickens are imagined to rendered unconscious killed, usually by electrical gorgeous, earlier than they’re slaughtered with a lower to the throat. They’re imagined to be bled out and not respiratory by the point they’re de-feathered in a scalding vat of water. However, quite a few investigations of Foster Farms have discovered that it isn’t uncommon for his or her chickens to overlook the gorgeous and even the slaughtering and enter the scalders alive, totally aware, and capable of expertise ache.

In 2018, Foster Farms was issued Noncompliance Experiences for what the USDA’s Meals Security and Inspection service described as “egregious, deliberate mistreatment of poultry” and an “ongoing sample of birds dying in any other case than slaughter.” Birds entered scalders alive, totally aware, and conscious slightly than being slaughtered first as required by legislation and or have been trapped or crushed as they moved by way of dump shoots in direction of slaughter.

Foster Farms advertises and markets its hen with animal welfare representations, which mislead affordable D.C. shoppers into believing that the chickens “get pleasure from” freedom from damage, ache, illness, concern, and misery, can specific pure or instinctive behaviors, and have “sufficient room to run round.” In actuality, Foster Farms chickens spend their lives in situations of maximum confinement. They’re farmed and killed utilizing inhumane practices that topic these chickens to damage, ache, illness, concern, and misery.

Natural Shoppers Affiliation and Richman Regulation & Coverage are preventing to finish the sort of misleading advertising directed at D.C. shoppers.
Foster Farms’ hen is produced and offered all through the nation together with in Washington, D.C.

To view the complaint, follow this link.

Press Contacts:

Natural Shoppers Affiliation:
Alexis Baden-Mayer
alexis@organicconsumers.org
202-744-0853

Richman Regulation & Coverage:
Phoebe Gittelson
pgittelson@richmanlawpolicy.com