Organic Consumers Association Takes Legal Action Against Foster Farms

Organic Consumers Association, with Richman Law & Policy, sue Foster Farms Over Misleading “Five Freedoms” Chicken Welfare Claims

March 19, 2024 – Washington, D.C. – Organic Consumers Association and Richman Law & Policy filed a complaint against Foster Farms on XXX in the District of Columbia Superior Court. The complaint alleges that Foster Farms, in violation of the District of Columbia Consumer Protection Procedures Act, deceptively markets its chicken products with claims concerning animal welfare.

Foster Farms, the complaint alleges, misleads consumers by claiming that, “The chickens we raise enjoy the five freedoms.” Organic Consumers Association does not take issue with Foster Farms’ claims that its chickens have freedom from hunger and thirst and from cages, but it does challenge these freedoms Foster Farms claims its chickens have:

Freedom from discomfort;
Freedom from injury, pain, or disease; and
Freedom from fear and distress.

In addition, Foster Farms’ claims each of the chickens under its care that each of its birds “has the space to roam and act like a chicken” and has “enough room to run around, sit, scratch, roll around, scratch, and run some more.”

Despite these claims, the indoor space that Foster Farms allocates to the its chickens under its care is minimal—less than one square foot per bird, or, about the size of a sheet of standard printer paper—which does not give these chickens these its chickens room to express their natural behaviors. And, in addition to this extreme confinement even if they weren’t so constricting, Foster Farms facilities does not provide sufficient the outdoor access or indoor enrichments necessary for their chickens to forage, nest, peck or perch.

The reality is that chickens under Foster Farms’ care chickens  regularly suffer discomfort, injury, pain, disease, fear and distress their entire lives.

These chickens are bred to grow unnaturally fast to proportions that prevent their tiny legs from supporting their immense bodies, making walking painful or impossible. They live out their short lives packed into windowless sheds where they are constantly covered with, and breathing in, their own waste. This causes a variety of skin infections, including contact footpad dermatitis, a painful condition where the chicken’s skin becomes inflamed, causing lesions and deep ulcers.

At slaughter, chickens are supposed to rendered unconscious killed, typically by electrical stunning, before they are slaughtered with a cut to the throat. They are supposed to be bled out and no longer breathing by the time they are de-feathered in a scalding vat of water. But, numerous investigations of Foster Farms have found that it isn’t unusual for their chickens to miss the stunning and even the slaughtering and enter the scalders alive, fully conscious, and able to experience pain.

In 2018, Foster Farms was issued Noncompliance Reports for what the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection service described as “egregious, deliberate mistreatment of poultry” and an “ongoing pattern of birds dying otherwise than slaughter.” Birds entered scalders alive, fully conscious, and aware rather than being slaughtered first as required by law and or were trapped or crushed as they moved through dump shoots towards slaughter.

Foster Farms advertises and markets its chicken with animal welfare representations, which mislead reasonable D.C. consumers into believing that the chickens “enjoy” freedom from injury, pain, disease, fear, and distress, can express natural or instinctive behaviors, and have “enough room to run around.” In reality, Foster Farms chickens spend their lives in conditions of extreme confinement. They are farmed and killed using inhumane practices that subject those chickens to injury, pain, disease, fear, and distress.

Organic Consumers Association and Richman Law & Policy are fighting to end this type of deceptive marketing directed at D.C. consumers.
Foster Farms’ chicken is produced and sold throughout the country including in Washington, D.C.

To view the complaint, follow this link.

Press Contacts:

Organic Consumers Association:
Alexis Baden-Mayer
alexis@organicconsumers.org
202-744-0853

Richman Law & Policy:
Phoebe Gittelson
pgittelson@richmanlawpolicy.com