Costco Sued Over Mistreatment Of Their $5 Rotisserie Chicken

The following report is from WPXI Channel 11 Pittsburgh:

SEATTLE — Wholesale behemoth Costco has been sued by animal rights groups over alleged mistreatment of chickens it raised and sold as $4.99 rotisserie-grilled chickens.

Legal Impact for Chickens, a “litigation nonprofit dedicated to making factory-farm cruelty a liability,” filed the lawsuit with Animal Law Offices on behalf of two Costco shareholders, Food & Wine reported.

According to The Washington Post, Costco cultivated its own Midwestern supply network to wean itself off major poultry producers and better control the price and size of its in-house chickens.

In 2021, however, international nonprofit animal protection organization Mercy for Animals targeted Costco with an undercover investigation of a Nebraska barn in which the group claimed to have found overcrowded birds, some with open sores, “sitting in their own feces because they were too top-heavy to walk,” the Post reported.

The lawsuit, filed June 13 in Seattle, alleged that Costco’s poultry operations – specifically its $450 million poultry complex in Fremont, Nebraska – violate animal welfare laws in both that state and Iowa, claiming “breach of fiduciary duties” by the company’s executives and directors through their “illegal neglect and abandonment” of animals at its Nebraska chicken processing plant.

Food Processing Plants And Distribution Centers Are Burning Down. *UPDATE 8* 10K Feedlot Cows Dead In Kansas

Richard Galanti, Costco’s chief financial officer and executive vice president, told the Post via email that the company would have no comment. Galanti is one of the 17 named defendants, which also include Ron Vachris, president and chief operating officer; W. Craig Jelinek, chief executive officer; and Hamilton E. James, a billionaire businessman and Costco board chairman, the newspaper reported.

Alene Anello, president of Legal Impact for Chickens, decried the “grim existence for animals in Nebraska who are warehoused in inescapable misery,” CBS News reported.

Meanwhile, shareholder plaintiffs Krystil Smith and Tyler Lobdell accused the company’s leadership in their suit of blind addiction to cheap poultry in the name of the massively popular Kirkland Signature rotisserie chicken, which sell for $4.99 each, the Post reported.

If Costco continues its illegal mistreatment of chickens, it risks undermining its long-running and successful traffic-generation strategy. As more consumers learn of the mistreatment of Costco chickens, the benefits reaped using loss-leading rotisserie chickens to drive customer traffic and purchases . . . will vanish or greatly diminish because consumer preferences to not buy products made illegally or unethically will trump the lure of a ‘cheap’ chicken.

The lawsuit stated

Costco sold 106 million rotisserie chickens in 2021, CBS News reported.

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AUTHOR COMMENTARY

A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

Proverbs 12:10

This mistreatment and cruelty of these chickens are the status quo for “Big Chicken” and the industry, for a very longtime. These chickens are extremely unhealthy, greatly lacks the proper nutritional value that it should, and are juiced to the gills with steroids, antibiotics, fungicides, pesticides, and other GMO edits and feed they ingested. These chickens are not to be eaten for those reasons.

“Supersize Me 2: Holy Chicken” covers this and exposes the corrupt chicken industry.

That being said, the timing of this lawsuit is no mere coincidence. Assuming the animal rights group wins in court, or Costco settles the claim to avoid the court fees and wait time, this will only add on to the rapidly emerging famine in this country and around the world; namely amidst this mass culling of birds this past spring.

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[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).

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