Safeway, Albertsons, and Vons offer Animal Welfare Approved animal produce at their grocery stores. The ultimate goal of this petition is to help reduce the suffering of animals in factory farms and move our nation away from the cruel methods of factory farms in use today. Factory farming is a recent evil that has flourished over the last forty years and in its existence it has caused unimaginable suffering and unimaginable torture to billions of innocent animals and continues to torture about 10 billion farm animals a year in the United States. Sadly, most people have no intention of turning vegetarian and eliminating meat from their diet, therefore animals will continue to be killed for their meat. However, a majority of these people agree that they would prefer to eat the meat from an animal that was humanely treated and was given a much better quality of life. This is where humane labels help, to significantly improve the quality of life and greatly reduce the suffering of animals who are raised for food. 

 We can help prevent a lot of the severe abuses endured by animals raised for meat and move our nation back towards the way farms were supposed to be (with big green pastures and the animals living in a more natural environment) by asking major grocery stores to offer animal produce with humane labels that actually mean something such as Animal Welfare Approved in place of meaningless labels such as American Humane Certified. For example, a new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation revealed sickening cruelty to animals at Foster Farms—an American Humane Certified poultry producer—including birds scalded alive and workers throwing, punching, and tormenting chickens before violently shackling them upside down to have their throats cut open. Most if not all other labels are a mere scam to capitalize on consumers ethical dilemma and are handed out to factory farms far too generously. The Animal Welfare Approved label however is not in any way the same as these, it is the absolute GOLD standard of humane labeling requiring animals to be raised on open pasture and handled and humanely slaughtered.  Sadly, many animals set for consumption in the United States do not have this program's rigorous oversight, therefore they are tortured and abused but we can change that by making the move to have these major supermarkets (which there are thousands throughout this country) offer these products.

Let's help to move our nation toward the end of factory farming cruelty with a small but powerful step to stop the growth of factory farms by purchasing ethically and asking Vons, Safeway ,and Albertsons to provide Animal Welfare Approved labeled animal products.