Cage-Free Eggs Statement
America’s Food Basket is sensitive to the issue of animal welfare. While recognizing the demand to harvest animals that satisfy the food needs of our customers, we believe that all animals raised for food should be treated humanely.
As of today, the food production industries are governed by an array of animal welfare regulations developed and enforced by federal, state, and local governments and authorities. In addition to governmental regulations and oversight, independent industry trade organizations and commodities groups have also developed their own stringent animal welfare guidelines to ensure the humane treatment of animals. We have confidence in the comprehensiveness of this regulatory framework, but we hold our suppliers and ourselves to an even more stringent set of standards.
We are, and will continue to be, product availability, range, and price point sensitive in order to meet the spectrum of our customers food needs.
We are open to engaging our suppliers on sensitive animal welfare topics as they are brought to our attention and working with them to identify continuous improvement opportunities and qualitatively better alternative approaches.
We will move to a Cage-Free environment as soon as the industry has the capacity to do so, and still satisfy the needs of our customers.