If you’re a socially-conscious consumer, you might be surprised to learn that some of your purchases may indirectly support animal cruelty without your knowledge.
Take Dave’s Killer Bread. Dave’s is known for being vegan, organic, and GMO-free. But Dave’s parent company, Flowers Foods, still supports animal cruelty by using eggs sourced from hens who spend their entire lives packed into barbaric wire battery cages.
What’s Wrong with Battery Cages?
As domesticated jungle fowl, chickens have many deeply ingrained instincts and behaviors critical to their well-being, such as perching when they rest, dust bathing to keep bugs off, pecking to forage, and nesting in particular spots. And like all birds, they need to stretch, walk, and flap their wings.
Sadly, about two-thirds of egg-laying hens in the U.S. live in tiny wire battery cages in dark, dirty industrial facilities designed to churn out eggs. Each bird spends their life in a crowded space about the size of an iPad, unable to fully extend their wings or even raise their heads. Everything vital to them, and everything it means to be a chicken, is denied, resulting in intense psychological and physiological suffering.
Consumers are Demanding an End to Cages
Fortunately, thanks to consumer demand, more than 400 restaurant chains, retailers, manufacturers, hospitality, and foodservice companies — including the largest egg producer in the U.S. — have responded by making public commitments to eliminate caged eggs from their supply chains. However, some of these companies aren’t keeping their promises which brings us back to Flowers Foods.
Flowers Foods
In addition to Dave’s Killer Bread, Flowers Foods is the parent company of Nature’s Own, Tastykake, Wonder, and Canyon Bakehouse, and is highly profitable, with sales of $4.3 billion in 2021. In 2016, Flowers Foods publicly committed to sourcing all eggs from cage-free hens and received significant publicity for doing so. However, the company has since removed the commitment from its website and won’t share details about its plans. As the second largest baking company in the US, Flowers sources about 100 million eggs per year and impacts approximately 356,000 hens in supply chains who spend their lives in cages.
The Humane League, a nonprofit pushing companies to source cage-free eggs, is calling on Flowers Foods to produce a roadmap detailing how it plans to meet its cage-free goal for hens in its supply chain.
How You Can Help
You can help hold Flowers Foods accountable to its promise and free hundreds of thousands of hens from cages by visiting FlowersFails.com to sign the petition, send a letter to their leadership, or call the company. Thank you for helping the animals!
