Cruelty to food animals

As a consumer who cares deeply about animal welfare, I was elated to see your recent article, "Billionaire investor takes on McDonald's over pig welfare." I have seen first hand the misery of mother pigs confined in tight metal enclosures (gestation crates), so small they cannot turn around, walk a step, or stretch their legs for months on end. Thanks to Carl Icahn, awareness of this inhumane practice finally made it into mainstream media, giving hundreds of thousands of consumers a glimpse into the sad realities of life on industrialized feeding operations.

Factory farmed animals lead lives of quiet and unrelenting misery, hidden from public view. In terms of sheer numbers, they are the most exploited and least protected group of animals on the planet. Part of the problem is lack of consumer awareness about the extreme confinement these animals live with. Even among animal-loving consumers, there is a often huge disconnect between that shrink-wrapped package of pork on the grocery shelf and the living animal behind it.

An important part of the solution lies in asking the decision-makers at our favorite grocery chains and fast food restaurants to use their buying influence on pork producers to transition away from extreme confinement practices. Case in point is Batavia-based Aldi, a major chain that still permits this practice in its pork supply chain. For over two years my nonprofit organization has been asking Aldi to commit to phasing out gestation crates within a specified time frame, but Aldi remains resolutely silent on this issue.

My hope is that Icahn's widely covered campaign will motivate more consumers to hold retailers to higher standards of animal welfare, and ask them to help make the brief lives of the animals they profit from a little more humane.

Jessica Chipkin

Huntley