Meal Delivery Kits: Is HelloFresh a Kind Choice?

May 25, 2022

Meal delivery kits can simplify food prep, but without clear animal welfare policies in place—and a roadmap for how they’ll put those policies into practice—companies like HelloFresh are leaving kindness off the menu.

Getting a meal kit delivered to your door can seem like an easy way to streamline home cooking, but what you gain in convenience may come at a cost to animals in the food system. While some popular meal kit providers have published initial pledges to raise animal welfare standards in their supply chains, sharing a plan for how they’ll meet and uphold those promises is just as critical. For companies like HelloFresh, that’s the missing piece of their animal welfare commitment.

Over the last five years, more than 200 food companies have publicly committed to adhering to the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC): a set of standards put in place to elevate animal welfare for broiler chickens. In doing so, these companies let their customers know that animal welfare matters—and that they are committed to providing not just fresh food, but more humanely sourced products.

With so many food companies signing onto the Better Chicken Commitment, it may seem like those brands are aligned with more compassionate practices for the animals. But making promises is not the same as fulfilling policies. For example, HelloFresh signed on to the Better Chicken Commitment back in 2019, and just recently the company issued an update listing what portion of its chicken adheres to some of the BCC standards. However, with slow or no progress on most components of the Better Chicken Commitment, it’s clear that HelloFresh still has a long way to go to meet its BCC policy timelines, and the company has not indicated how it intends to make substantial progress each year to meet this goal in time.

It’s time for HelloFresh to share detailed plans for how it’ll fulfill its Better Chicken Commitment pledge over the next few years—including incremental annual goals for each BCC standard.

Why is the Better Chicken Commitment important?

Chickens on factory farms are subjected to ongoing abuse from the moment they hatch. Living in crowded, dark sheds for the entirety of their too-short lives, chickens raised for meat are bred for fast growth—too fast. The stress on their bodies from getting to “market weight” so quickly leaves chickens in agony. About 47 days after they hatch, chickens are sent to slaughter, where USDA reports show that some birds are being boiled alive.

This cruelty cannot continue.

The Better Chicken Commitment’s standards help improve animal welfare conditions by requiring:

More housing space for broiler chickens
Improved environments for chickens
Broiler chickens to be rendered unconscious via multi-step controlled atmospheric stunning before slaughter
Supplier compliance through third-party verification
The use of only BCC-approved chicken breeds that demonstrate higher welfare outcomes

As we work side by side to build a kinder future for the animals, choosing to support companies that publish and fully follow through with animal welfare policies like the Better Chicken Commitment can make a difference. In order for meal kit delivery companies to be competitive, compassion needs to be on the menu—and those companies need to demonstrate that taking a humane approach is more important than profit.

So if a meal kit delivery provider like HelloFresh is not providing a transparent path to improved animal welfare, it’s best to select a meal kit provider that is more committed to kindness. Our choices matter, and they can help send a clear message to companies that animals deserve better.

How can I help?

HelloFresh is falling behind the times by refusing to share its roadmap toward meaningful change. It’s important that HelloFresh shares its plans for how it will fulfill its Better Chicken Commitment—both to provide accountability to its customers, and for the animals currently still suffering horrific abuse in its chicken supply chain.

It’s not just possible for meal kit and food companies to make shifts for the betterment of animals and to report their step-by-step progress toward upholding those standards. It’s the right thing to do.

Together, we can send a strong message to HelloFresh that it’s time to publish its roadmap to creating meaningful change for chickens. Take action with us by joining thousands of activists around the world to demand corporations that profit from animal abuse to change—and follow through with—their policies today.