Evan Allgood
RBI just became the first major restaurant group to commit to a truly global cage-free policy. Millions of chickens at 25,000 restaurants will be spared the horrors of battery cages.
In a historic win for animals, Restaurant Brands International (RBI)—a fast-food conglomerate that includes Burger King, Popeyes, and Tim Hortons—has announced that all of its worldwide locations will stop sourcing eggs and egg products from caged chickens by 2025 in 92 percent of their markets and by 2030 for the remaining 8 percent. RBI's pledge comes after activists waged a relentless six-week campaign spearheaded by the Open Wing Alliance (OWA), a global coalition of 75 chicken welfare organizations, of which The Humane League (THL) is a founding member.
You, our incredible supporters, were too loud and tireless to ignore.
Activists in Russia, Taiwan, Denmark, Turkey, Sweden, Finland, and Indonesia led socially-distanced protests outside Burger King restaurants. Tens of thousands of customers bombarded RBI restaurants with phone calls and flooded their social media pages demanding that they ditch the battery cages in their supply chain. And over 270,000 activists signed a petition calling for RBI to commit to higher welfare standards for chickens raised for all of its locations and all of its egg products—no exceptions.
Thanks to you, within a few years, a hen laying eggs for Burger King will be able to spread her wings without hitting the side of a cage. Her feet won't get caught in the wire mesh floor, leading to mangled or broken limbs. She'll have more than a sheet of paper's worth of area in which to move around, allowing her to engage in natural behaviors like perching, roosting, foraging, and exploring. Her feathers won't fall off from the constant friction of rubbing against a wire prison.
To ensure these changes are implemented by the deadline, RBI has promised to provide annual progress reports. We will be working with RBI to translate the commitment across several languages. As always, it's up to us to hold this company to its word.
If and when we do, RBI's commitment will impact millions of chickens at more than 25,000 locations. This real, tangible progress is a testament to your persistence, your scrappiness, your unwillingness to quit or settle for half-measures. Between RBI going cage-free and Aldi pledging to end live-shackle slaughter in its largest market, our movement has built up a ton of momentum to carry us into next year and beyond. If this is what you all can accomplish in a year as challenging as 2020, we can only imagine what you're capable of in 2021.
RBI is now the first major restaurant group to commit to a truly global cage-free policy. It won't be the last.
