Letter: Cruelty to food animals

As a part of the animal welfare community, I appreciate the recent front page coverage about the fate of the "inhumanely" confined coyote, Rocky. The prime real estate given to this article shows that the Daily Herald recognizes how much people care about the well-being of animals - but it doesn't stop at wildlife and domestic animals. It also extends to animals raised for food.

Rocky is one animal living in a space that is too small and solitary for him to live the life nature intended for him. But what about the millions of farmed animals who live in cages too small for them to even turn around and are deprived of natural behaviors for their entire lives? By numbers alone, isn't this just as important?

I can only imagine the public uproar if Rocky were kept in a cage 24/7 that was only slightly larger than his body. Unfortunately, the dark side of animal agriculture normalizes this kind of extreme confinement and prefers to keep it out of public view. That's why it is so important to call on our favorite grocery stores that strive for sustainability to take a serious look at these practices within their own supply chains.

For more than three years, my organization Crate Free USA has been trying to get Aldi to commit to eliminating the use of extreme confinement practices for the mother pigs in its pork supply chain. The petition we started in 2019 now has over 355,000 supporters (people care about this!). But sadly, Aldi has remained silent.

I hope Aldi's leadership makes a real, time-based commitment to end these practices soon. This would publicly demonstrate to the the hundreds of thousands of consumers who care about animal welfare that Aldi is a retailer whose admirable values truly extend to how it treats these animals.

Jessica Chipkin

Huntley