Rochester, NY (January 12, 2006) – This Saturday through Monday activists will visit Wegmans store locations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, organizing demonstrations coordinated with local activists in those states. Syracuse-based Community Animal Project is managing the “Wegmans Cruelty Tour” in conjunction with Compassionate Consumers and the Baltimore Animal Rights Coalition in Maryland. These groups and others are urging Wegmans to phase out the use of cruel battery cages it its egg farm in Wolcott, NY.

The tour will aim to educate customers of Wegmans Food Markets about the inhumane conditions endured by the 750,000 hens at Wegmans Egg Farm. To coincide with the tour Compassionate Consumers has scheduled a demonstration for Sunday morning at the Wegmans East Avenue store in Rochester.

On Saturday the tour will visit Wegmans stores in Princeton and Ocean, both in New Jersey. On Sunday, demonstraters, including activists from Washington, DC and Baltimore, will gather at the Wegmans Dulles store in Sterling, VA. On Monday the tour will conclude with a demonstration in Allentown, PA.

“We are very excited about working with activists in these different cities,“ said Drew Wilson, an organizer for the tour. “Many Wegmans customers are unaware of the animal cruelty taking place at the company’s egg farm. We hope shoppers will demand that Wegmans address this issue.”

Last year Compassionate Consumers led an investigation at Wegmans Egg Farm where the group found widespread evidence of egregious cruelty to animals. Investigators found hens covered with feces and open sores, birds forced to sleep atop decomposed corpses, beak mutilations, and hens drowning in liquid manure. Their 27-minute documentary "Wegmans Cruelty" contains video footage of their findings.

Cage-free eggs are widely available at Wegmans stores. Westfield Egg Farms, a cage-free supplier to Wegmans, states on its website that, “[its] farmers are allowing their chickens freedom from small tight cages commonly used to house chickens for conventional eggs.”

Since “Wegmans Cruelty” was released in July 2005 groups in Rochester, Buffalo, Ithaca, Syracuse, Baltimore, and elsewhere have held demonstrations and screenings of the film.

In 2005 Wegmans Food Markets was named the nation’s best company to work for by Fortune magazine. This week the company was ranked second by the same publication. The company operates 69 stores in five states.

Compassionate Consumers is a Rochester-based organization dedicated to providing the public with information about the treatment of animals on farms and at slaughter.