Photo by Suzanne Tucker on Unsplash
Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., an American multinational hospitality company, with the assistance of global animal welfare organization, World Animal Protection recently released an updated animal welfare statement. The statement publicly acknowledged it was unable to achieve its goal of sourcing gestation crate-free pork by 2018, while affirming its commitment to continue making progress and setting a new deadline of 2022.
The hotel conglomerate has also recently set a cage-free egg commitment and signed up to the Cool Food Pledge to promote plant-based menu items in its hotels.
“We applaud and support Hilton Hotels for its transparency and for remaining steadfast in its commitment to improve animal welfare in its supply chain amid challenges,” said Liz Quick-Corral, Interim Executive Director, World Animal Protection, US. “We appreciate Hilton’s willingness to acknowledge not achieving its original 2018 timeframe and to work alongside World Animal Protection to develop a new goal to fully eliminate gestation crates in its pork supply.”
This level of transparency from a company is critical for keeping customers informed and continuing to signal to industry that higher welfare products are needed now. In addition to commitments like Hilton’s, several state laws banning the production and sale of products from close confinement systems, like those that use gestation crates, will go into effect in 2022. By that time, all companies operating in those states will need stable supplies of crate-free pork.
World Animal Protection’s outreach demonstrated to Hilton that it is accountable to its crate-free commitment and other animal welfare goals and appears to have encouraged the company to publicly recommit to phasing out gestation crates.
