Animal Rights Activists Protest Whole Foods for Inhumane Egg Supplier

“Humane meat is a lie, these animals did not want to die,” a group of animal rights activists chanted as they walked through the Brooklyn Whole Foods market on Saturday.

In 2013 Whole Foods Market employees and union activists went on strike calling for workers to be paid at least $15-per-hour and have the right to form unions without retaliation. Scott Olson/Getty Images

There is nothing humane about snapping an animal's neck.

— Wayne Hsiung, co-founder, Direct Action Everywhere

DxE also noted that one of Whole Foods CEO’s, John Mackey, is a board member of the animal advocacy group, Humane Society of the United States.

“There is an incestuous relationship between major animal advocacy organizations and animal agriculture itself,” said DxE’s press coordinator Brian Burns in a statement. “By working together to sell tortured animals’ lives as ‘humane,’ Whole Foods and The Humane Society of the United States are committing moral fraud on the public,” he said.

In a New York Times report, the owner of Petaluma Farms, Steve Mahrt said the video did not depict the whole of their operations. “They (DxE) had to go through 15 barns off and on over a year to find three chickens they could use to make their point in this video,” Mahrt told the Times.

There are currently multiple certification programs for humane animal treatment in the country, which may have differing standards on how to handle the animals that are not transparent to the consumer. For example, Certified Humane requires a minimum of two square feet per adult bird to qualify as “free-range,” while the Animal Welfare Approved program requires that chickens after their brooding period get access to at least 4 square feet of space.