Poking the bear
Kroger and Walmart have put t their businesses in the cross hairs of Mercy for Animals, a so-called animal rights activist group, by breaking their promises involving cage-free eggs.
Kroger has pledged in 2016 that it would only sell cage-free eggs by 2025 and Walmart did the same.
In the meantime, egg production was decimated by avian influenza, which led to higher prices, and you can bet most consumers are going to choose the lower priced eggs whether they are produced by chickens inside or outside of a cage. And I’m. sure, grocery stores were also eager to buy the cheapest eggs they could find and pass on the savings to their customers.
Being a cynical journalist, I don’t believe when I see “cage free” on a carton of eggs that the hen who laid them was free to roam around outside. Anyone can slap a cage-free label on a carton of eggs no matter how they are produced.
The problem is that big companies like Kroger and Walmart believe that if they cow tow to animal activists their customers would repay them by buying the higher-priced products.
To appease Mercy for Animals Kroger has now promised to sell 70 percent of cage-free eggs by 2030. I don’t know where Walmart stands now but it was sued in 2018 for mislabeling its cage-free eggs.
If these large companies were smart, they would stay out of politics and concentrate on business. Once they let animal activists tell them what to do a slippery slope will ensue. Soon the activists will order them to quit offering milk produced by dairy cows, meat produced by livestock and fish.
The problem is that Mercy for Animals has deep-pocketed followers, including many Hollywood celebrities. I believe these celebs support these organizations so they can atone for their other bad behaviors like owning homes the size of castles and flying private planes all over the world, to mention just a few. Can you imagine who much energy is required by a single movie set. They certainly don’t want that kind of publicity.
Some of them are sincere but many don’t realize that the leather clothes and shoes they wear are made from cowhide.
