Walgreens is a staple in Palos Heights, Illinois where I live, but I would rather travel the extra five miles to a CVS. CVS had committed to working with their suppliers towards the goal of 100% cage-free egg offering by 2025, and just recently announced they will be 100% cage-free by the end of 2022, three years ahead of schedule! Walgreens has a commitment to ban cages but unlike CVS, Walgreens has not even started reporting cage-free progress. 

Consumers across the country want transparency about the way animals raised for food are treated. Currently, Walgreens is falling behind its competitors when it comes to ethical treatment of animals. 

On factory farms, eggs are produced by female chickens, known as laying hens, who are subjected to horrible acts of cruelty. Thousands of birds are crammed together, often in filthy, darkened places where the birds have almost no ability to engage in natural behaviors. On factory farms, the more hens you can confine in a given space, the more eggs that can be produced – this means a bigger profit for greedy companies at the expense of sentient birds The cruelest type of egg production confines each bird to a small space that’s equivalent to the size of a piece of letter-sized paper. It’s barely enough space for her to stand, let alone sit to lay an egg. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. As consumers demand for cage-free eggs increases, companies across the United States, including CVS, McDonald's, and Target, are not only sticking to their promises and making meaningful progress toward their cage-free commitments, but are also being transparent with consumers by publicly reporting that progress. Additionally, Arizona just became the 8th state to ban the sale and purchase of eggs from cages. It is more clear than ever that the future is cage-free.

I hope you will join me in urging Walgreens to be transparent with its customers about the progress it has made to date, share that progress on its website, and  accelerate their timeline and match the commitment made by their industry peers. Even with many Walgreens near me, I can travel the extra miles to shop at a store that is committed to the ethical treatment of animals. Please sign my petition and let Walgreens know that if CVS can report on their progress, Walgreens should be held to the same standards.