Ashley Chang
Hundreds of food companies—from fast food chains to supermarkets—promised to end the abuse of chickens and egg-laying hens in their supply chains. But they aren’t doing enough. Now it’s time to hold these corporations accountable.
Behind closed doors, an animal welfare scandal is unfolding—and corporations have the power to stop it. Will they do what’s right for animals—and for their customers?
In the United States, more than 9 billion chickens are raised and killed for meat each year. Meanwhile, 390 million hens lay more than 111 billion eggs for human consumption annually. Tragically, these birds have little to no legal protection and face extreme and ongoing animal abuse within our broken food system: from abysmal living conditions to brutal methods of slaughter, all at a mind-boggling scale.
Food companies can end this abuse.
Here’s the good news: we’re already seeing progress. Because compassionate consumers demanded—and continue to demand—an end to this cruelty, over 500 companies have publicly committed to doing better for chickens raised for meat, and more than 2,000 companies have done the same to protect egg-laying hens. These companies acknowledge that profit is poor justification for animal abuse, and they’re creating crucial change by publishing corporate policies to improve animal welfare throughout their supply chains.
But corporate commitments alone won’t reduce the suffering of animals. Only action will. When companies fail to follow through on their promises, they not only mislead consumers—they also prolong the abuse of animals in our food system. This is why corporate accountability matters.
What is corporate accountability?
Corporate accountability is one solution to corporate greed, corruption, and abuse.
Across sectors and industries, and all around the world, corporations enjoy incredible power. From the gas we pump to fill our cars, to the new shirts we find on sale at the department store, to the movies we catch streaming online, to the bananas we buy at the supermarket even in the dead of winter, national and multinational corporations touch practically every part of our daily lives.
And these organizations don’t just shape our lifestyles—they also shape our laws. Today in the US, corporations large and small lobby for—and often win—policies and regulations that primarily benefit their own narrow interests. And on the global stage, companies face little international oversight, making it easier for them to exercise power “so imaginatively and ruthlessly,” The Financial Times writes, that they can try to get away with everything “from tax avoidance to environmental damage and paying low wages.”
Because corporations wield such great power, corporate accountability offers important checks to their influence. Holding corporations accountable means making sure these companies answer not only to their own bottom lines but also to people, the planet, and animals. Human rights, environmental justice, and animal welfare may not be priorities for the corporations that dominate our world—from Apple to ExxonMobil to Amazon to McDonald’s—but corporate accountability brings these issues to the forefront and pushes businesses to meet acceptable standards within each area.
What is ESG, and how does it relate to corporate accountability?
Corporate accountability isn’t the same thing as Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)—though the two are related. In recent decades, many corporations have begun to prioritize ESG: a broad range of operational standards rooted in sustainability and social responsibility. ESG is a framework that companies can opt into—often in order to attract new customers by offering more sustainable and ethical products and services. From oil companies to pharmaceutical companies, corporations across sectors are paying closer attention to carbon footprints and labor practices, workplace diversity and product sustainability, water usage and animal welfare. According to the consulting firm McKinsey, ESG creates value for companies. In other words, it actually pays—in top-line growth—for corporations to pay attention to environmental, social, and governance concerns.
The public—often led by advocates, journalists, and scholars—pursues corporate accountability by demanding that corporations regularly and transparently share progress towards environmental and social goals that might go beyond what those corporations voluntarily set out to achieve in their own ESG goals. For example, a corporation might have a set of ESG tenets covering pollution and plastics but come under public pressure to address areas of labor rights and animal welfare. Just because a company claims to focus on ESG doesn’t mean it demonstrates accountability to important issues across the board.
To sum it all up, corporations are powerful entities, and corporate accountability helps to curb that power by making sure companies remain responsible to the welfare of people, the environment, and animals.
Corporate accountability is important—here’s why
Designed to make buying easier, quicker, and more seamless, our economy is built on industries that thrive on low wages and cheap, fast, mass production. This looks like fast fashion—resource-sapping brands like H&M that rely on sweatshops to churn out new jeans at a pace so fast the company has resorted to burning excess inventory (true story). This also looks like fast food—which delivers cheap meals to consumers at high cost to both workers and animals. The reason why Costco chicken is so cheap, for example, is because their chickens are farmed in a way that treats them as products and at a scale that makes it practically impossible to treat these sentient individuals humanely: with clean, spacious, well-lit environments and adequate treatment for rampant diseases.
Given how outsized a role corporations play in the lives of billions of people around the world—changing how we eat, how we dress, and how we spend our time—corporate accountability is crucial to making sure companies wield their immense clout in ways that heal our communities, regenerate our environments, and care for our animals.
From policies to practices: following through on animal welfare
When it comes to animal welfare, corporate accountability is key. Numerous food companies have already made public commitments—in the form of announcements, statements, and policies—to do better for chickens in particular, promising to address the plight of chickens raised for meat and cage-free hens within their global and national operations. Now, these food companies need to follow through on their promises. While corporate commitments are an important sign of initial progress, it’s the actual implementation of those commitments that will tangibly and meaningfully improve the lives of these birds.
In short, holding companies accountable to their existing animal welfare policies—and getting them to move towards actual implementation—will generate real changes for chickens.
Some restaurants and supermarkets with published corporate welfare policies have already started to share news of their progress with the public through reports and roadmaps that detail their plans and projected timelines. But most food companies haven’t done anything since putting out an initial policy—even though, in some cases, they’ve had years to start modifying their practices and transitioning to higher welfare systems. Dozens of corporations have had over five years to make changes and report on their progress.
This kind of inertia and inaction is unacceptable.
With animal welfare, corporate accountability means holding companies accountable to introducing the standards they already committed to implement. What’s stopping these corporations from doing what they said they would do?
It’s time for corporations to take real action.
How “greenwashing” and “humanewashing” undermine corporate accountability
Corporations stand to gain a lot by announcing concern for issues like environmental sustainability and animal welfare. But when they don’t follow through on their commitments to those causes, they risk “greenwashing” or “humanewashing” their claims: branding their work as “green” or “humane,” and benefitting from positive public regard, when in actuality their work falls well short of the transformations truly needed to improve sustainability and welfare.
As the BBC notes, greenwashing “misleads consumers into thinking they are helping the planet by choosing those products.” And, as Jessica Scott-Reid writes for Vox, the meat, dairy, and egg industries are guilty of humanewashing when they attempt to “assuage consumer concerns by merely changing their packaging and advertising with claims of sustainable farms and humane treatment,” rather than actually “engaging in the costly endeavor of actually changing their farming practices.”
Food companies that publish a policy detailing their commitment to animal welfare are celebrated for doing so. Today, consumers are more concerned than ever about the abuses and dangers of industrial animal agriculture, and they’re casting their ballots to support protective measures for animals across the US, from California to Massachusetts to Nevada to Arizona and beyond.
But corporations that fail to follow through on their policies risk misleading—and even deceiving—the public. This is what humanewashing looks like.
How can I help?
Holding companies accountable and driving them to make improvements in their supply chains will lead to real changes in the lives of animals.
Please join thousands of caring people who are calling on the corporate giants to keep their promises and put an end to the abuse of animals. It’s time to call for corporate accountability. Help us hold these companies to their word.
Together, we’re building a world where corporations follow through on their commitments—and where fewer and fewer animals endure needless suffering within our broken food system.
