The Humane Society of the United States has a long track record of successful work with food companies on developing forward-thinking animal welfare policies -- advancements that result in meaningful improvements for animals such as ending the use of extreme confinement systems like battery cages and gestation crates.
Animal welfare should be part of the Corporate Social Responsibility portfolio for any major corporation, and increasingly, companies are heeding the call.
Sometimes, our attempts at positive dialogue with a company break down and our last resort is a public campaign. While we always prefer to work cooperatively with businesses, on occasion even years of dialogue can yield no benefit for animals and it becomes necessary to publicly call on a company to do the right thing.
That's why today we're launching a national campaign urging IHOP to start switching some of its eggs away from battery cage confinement to cage-free -- a modest step that many of the company's competitors have already taken. Despite more than two years of private discussions, IHOP refuses to change the fact that all of the eggs it uses come from hens confined in cages so small they can't even spread their wings.
To make this matter even more urgent, yesterday IHOP's primary egg supplier, Michael Foods, was the subject of a gut-wrenching undercover exposé documenting egregious animal cruelty and severe food safety concerns. The animal protection organization that conducted the investigation, Compassion Over Killing, videotaped hens forced to live in cages with the decomposing corpses of their cage-mates, sick and injured hens, live and dead hens stuck in their cage's wires, and disturbingly filthy conditions.
The cruelties that the investigation exposes are tragically nothing new at Michael Foods. A 2006 HSUS investigation of another Michael Foods factory farm documented similar cruelty, including live hens confined in cages with corpses, hens trapped in cage wires, sick and injured hens, and more.
Battery cages are so inhumane they've even been banned in IHOP's home state of California (phase-out date of 2015), thanks to Proposition 2's landslide passage last November.
Please contact IHOP today and ask the company to take a modest, commonsense step in the right direction by simply starting to move away from battery cage eggs.