- Lori Pilger
- Jun 15, 2022 Updated 3 hrs ago
- https://journalstar.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/lawsuit-accuses-costco-of-violating-nebraska-animal-welfare-laws/article_046b42e2-917e-5f55-b40c-0a843936984e.html
New hidden-camera footage recorded by a Mercy For Animals investigator reveals extreme animal suffering in a system set up by Costco to supply themselves with cheap chicken.
At this farm, chickens suffer from rapid weight gain and struggle to walk under their own unnatural weight. Costco’s chickens die in chronic pain.
Sign the petition: https://costcoexposed.com/
In a newly filed lawsuit, Costco has been accused of violating animal-welfare laws in Nebraska and Iowa for allegedly raising chickens that grow so fast they cannot stand under their own weight and die.
The complaint — filed by two shareholders in Superior Court in King County, Washington, where Costco is based — involves an undercover investigation into Lincoln Premium Poultry near Fremont last year.
In a 48-page complaint, attorney Adam Karp said in an effort to continue selling $4.99 rotisserie chickens to drive foot traffic, Costco directors and officers have willfully ignored red flags indicating their poultry production practices are unlawful.
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He said Costco sends millions of the fast-growing birds to “dirty, crowded, factory farms, run by inexperienced contract growers who Costco recruited and trained.” There, he said, the disabled birds slowly die from hunger, thirst, injury and illness.
Karp said Costco’s practices amount to neglect and abandonment of the chickens, a violation of state law.
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The lawsuit is asking a judge to find Costco’s president, CEO, chairman of the board and others, liable for breaching their fiduciary duty and order them to take all necessary actions to reform and improve Costco’s policies, procedures and practices.
In a press release, Alene Anello, president of Legal Impact for Chickens, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that advocates for animals, said: “Once lauded as an innovative warehouse club, Costco today represents a grim existence for animals in Nebraska who are warehoused in inescapable misery.”
Costco hasn’t yet filed an answer and didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.
But in a statement last year after Mercy for Animals, a Los Angeles-based animal protection nonprofit, publicized its 2021 investigation, Costco said it is committed to maintaining “the highest standards of animal welfare, humane processes and ethical conduct throughout the supply chain.”
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“Lincoln Premium Poultry shares our commitment, as do the independent growers selected for the program who have been carefully chosen based on our mutual business philosophies. Independent audits are regularly performed to ensure all parties are consistently in compliance.”
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