-Almira Tanner
In December 2022, Costco quietly ended its commitment to the Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare, updating their animal welfare policy to instead observe the “Five Domains.” As the lead organizer of Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), an animal rights group that has been calling on Costco to drop cruel factory farm suppliers for years, I am disappointed that Costco has chosen to rewrite its policies rather than change its suppliers.
The Five Freedoms, formalized in 1979 by the Farm Animal Welfare Council in the UK, are often viewed as the “gold standard” of animal welfare. They include Freedom from Hunger and Thirst; Freedom from Discomfort; Freedom from Pain, Injury, or Disease; Freedom to Express Normal Behaviour; and Freedom from Fear and Distress.
This sounds good in theory, but in reality, the Five Freedoms are used as a piece of marketing to make consumers feel better. Investigations by DxE and other organizations have repeatedly shown that Costco suppliers uphold none of these freedoms. So it’s a minor victory that Costco has at least stopped lying about them.
In their place, Costco has now adopted the “Five Domains:” Nutrition, environment, health, behavior, and mental state. The “Five Domains” are not a definition for what constitutes animal welfare, but rather a framework for thinking about it. This suggests that there is no formal commitment made by adopting this framework other than the commitment to think about animal welfare in this way.
A few weeks after Costco updated its policy, DxE released never-before-seen footage from inside the gas chambers of a Smithfield Foods slaughterhouse. Smithfield is the largest corporation in the world that slaughters pigs for consumption and is a known supplier for Costco.
The footage shows pigs screaming, gasping, and thrashing violently as they descend into the pit of carbon dioxide gas. Former federal prosecutor Bonnie Klapper reviewed the video and determined that the use of these gas chambers on pigs violates federal law requiring that carbon dioxide gas can only be used if it accomplishes “anesthesia quickly and calmly, with a minimum of excitement and discomfort to the animals.”
Over 140 veterinarians reviewed the footage and signed onto a statement asserting that the “extreme distress experienced by the pigs highlights the company’s failure to comply with the Humane Slaughter Act and California law.”
Despite this widespread condemnation of Smithfield’s gas chamber cruelty, which was covered by Wired and The New York Times, Costco has not cut ties with Smithfield. In fact, Costco has taken a very different approach: trying to silence the whistleblowers.
The day the investigation was released, DxE activists projected the gas chamber footage onto Costco’s SF store.
Earlier this year, I received a cease and desist letter from Costco’s attorneys, demanding that DxE stop “conducting demonstrations, including projecting, beaming and/or displaying any video footage, images, or messaging on its warehouses, buildings, and properties in California.”
The letter claimed that the projected videos “violate the Permanent Injunction Order” that Costco has against DxE.
Costco filed a federal lawsuit against DxE and three members of its leadership team, including me, in November 2019, following several investigations of Costco-supplying factory farms, as well as dozens of related in-store protests. The investigations and protests haven’t stopped, though the demonstrations have since occurred on public property. Costco wants to push us away and restrict our activity as much as possible to prevent customers from seeing the horrors that happen at its suppliers.
If Costco wants to effectively distance itself from this cruelty, it should cut ties with Smithfield Foods. Moreover, if Costco truly wants to live up to its commitment to giving animals positive experiences, it should stop selling the bodies of exploited and murdered animals and pay reparations to sanctuaries for the many harms it has caused.
Almira Tanner is the lead organizer of the grassroots animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere. She lives in Berkeley, California.
Image Source: Direct Action Everywhere
Karma’s a bitch and eating death kills!