Rochester, NY – Activists from Rochester, Syracuse, and Baltimore—seven dressed as egg-laying hens and crammed into a cage—will protest Wegmans’ cruelty to chickens outside of company headquarters this Friday in an effort to urge the company to end its use of cruel “battery cages” at its Wolcott, NY egg facility.

Date: Friday, 3 March
Time: 2:00 pm
Place: Wegmans Corporate Headquarters, 1500 Brooks Ave., Rochester, NY

Wegmans-brand eggs are produced by cramming hens into barren, wire “battery cages” so small they can’t even spread a wing. At Wegmans’ company-owned, 750,000-hen egg facility investigators from Compassionate Consumers found many hens covered with feces and open sores, living on top of their dead and dying cage-mates. Many hens had suffered painful beak mutilations, a result of beak-trimming, done only to prevent birds from pecking each other in this stressful environment.

In July of 2005 Compassionate Consumers released a video to show consumers the cruelty that goes into every carton of Wegmans-brand eggs, and began urging them to pressure Wegmans to end the use of battery cages at its egg facility. Other food retailers have recently stopped selling battery cage eggs, including grocery giants Whole Foods and Wild Oats. In November, 2005, organic food chain Trader Joe's agreed to make its own brand of eggs cage-free. Battery cages are considered so cruel that they have been banned in many countries, including those comprising the entire European Union.

“If Wegmans treated dogs and cats the way it treats chickens its executives could be in jail on felony cruelty to animals charges,” said Nicole Matthews, Activist Liaison for Compassionate Consumers. “Because all of Wegmans-brand eggs come from its own company-owned and operated fascility, it has the power to stop the suffering of 750,000 chickens today.”

Even cage-free egg producers that sell eggs at Wegmans store locations acknowledge the inhumane conditions on battery cage egg farms.

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.”

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

For more information visit www.WegmansCruelty.com

Contact: Ryan Merkley, (585) 410-0773, ryan@compassionateconsumers.org