Nearly a month ago, Ryan Gosling wrote an open letter to the CEO of Costco, asking the store to stop selling eggs made from caged hens. Gosling has been a well-known vegetarian and animal-rights advocate for a while, and I think the open letter was a well-targeted use of Gosling’s fame. And as it turns out, Gosling was sort of ahead of the curve – now other celebrities are jumping on this cause too. Brad Pitt and Bill Maher both spoke out about this issue this week:
Brad Pitt might have six kids, but he probably isn’t shopping in bulk from Costco to feed them.
The actor and Bill Maher are slamming the wholesale chain for selling eggs produced by caged hens, saying it contributes to animal cruelty. Pitt penned a letter to Costco CEO Craig Jelinek Thursday asking him to stop selling eggs produced this way. In the letter he explains the type of suffering the birds endure while living in captivity, which includes muscular atrophy.
He also notes cages have been banned in California. “As you know, these birds producing eggs for your shelves are crammed five or more into cages that are not large enough for even one hen to spread her wings,” Pitt writes.
The HBO show host, on the other hand, aired his grievances in an editorial published in The New York Times last week. Even though he began his letter with, “I LIKE Costco,” the Real Time With Bill Maher host transitioned into what he found wrong with the company. He even went into much more graphic detail about the consequences of cooped up hens.
Is this officially a bandwagon? It used to be “Fur is Murder” and now it’s “writing open letters to Costco about caged hens.” Now, of course Brad probably cares a lot about this issue, especially since he’s got six little rugrats and he wants them to eat well. But that’s just the thing – I’ve never really believed that Brad and Angelina are the “we only feed our children organic food and free-range hen eggs” type of people. They go to McDonalds. They order pizza from chain pizza joints. They buy Cheetos and ice cream and they don’t pack healthy snacks for the girls’ soccer practice. Maybe Brad was just helping out his new bro, Ryan Gosling.
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.
It is a VERY SERIOUS issue that nobody talks about – ever. It is animal abuse at its worst. And no, I am not a vegan or anything.
Heartbreaking, horrific and torturous.
Meanwhile, Pitt looks mighty fine. Mighty fine. What a bod. His torso is perfection. His facial hair is truly vominous, but underneath that, you still have the hottest 50-something male.
Agreed, it is horrible, sickening. Good for Pitt and Gosling to raise awareness.
Yep, I was surprised to see this today because I never thought of this as being one of his causes, then figured Ryan probably got him on board…
Good on both of them – thank you, Brad!
I fiercely disagreed with you in a different post today, but have nothing but a plus one for you here.
I don’t even shop at Costco. Animal cruelty is animal cruelty, though. Needs to stop.
I agree. Except it makes me sad that so-called free range eggs are seen as humane. There is no humane way to abuse a sentient living being. It’s still breeding them JUST for the purpose of abusing their bodies, free-range hens still go to slaughter and male chicks are still ground up alive in special machines at 1 day old because they’re useless to the industry. Plus free-range hens still live in terrible conditions and are sick and attacked by others, all it takes is googling this stuff to see that it’s not the answer, it’s just something that farmers came up with to get people off their case, and people bought it cause they want to believe they’re making ethical choices when in fact they’re still supporting animal abuse just so they can have an egg for breakfast (possibly with another food of the moment, #BACON….)
Completely agree. You don’t have to be a zealot health nut to support cage free chickens.
Yeah this is not a health issue, it’s about animal rights. Eating organic has nothing to do with this, most vegans stop eating animal products for ethical reasons, not cause they’re health nuts.
Ummm…generalize much qwerty? My family has a small farm and we have free range chickens. We don’t butcher them; we treat them kind and they are very happy animals. I am a vegetarian and animal lover, but even our ‘traditional Farmer’ friends do not randomly grind up baby chicks. I’m not saying it isn’t done, mostly by large commercial farming industries, but please don’t lump all farmers together and make assumptions about our ethics. All of our animals are treated kind and humane, and live their lives happy and well cared for.
You don’t have to be a health nut to care about animal welfare. It’s true that junk food usually isn’t derived from humane practices, but one can feast on pizza, fries , Oreo cookies, etc all while avoiding animal cruelty. At most places you have to specially request cheese free pizza or vegetable oil fries, but just saying there’s no reason fast food enthusiasts can’t also write open letters to Costco. (Also, yes , Oreos are vegan).
I’ve always wondered though, do they get the riboflavin that they use in Oreos from animals or is it synthetic?
I’m terrified to think what’s actually in Oreos. To me, vegan = plant based,which they most certainly are not, but PETA stands by them as vegan. I don’t generally eat them, but I love the perplexed looks when I drop that factoid on people.
It is animal derived.
White processed sugar is made from the charcoal of animal bones. So oreo cookies are Not vegan. Nothing with processed white sugar is vegan.
Sugar comes from sugar cane or beets. The carbon filtering process for bleaching sugar from sugar cane sometimes contains bone char. But there is no bone char in the final product.
I mentioned it on another post already – there is a great album on facebook by a photographer Tamara Kenneally called “The price of eggs”, it’s really eye-opening. You can see it here https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.526120067436914.1073741830.105296489519276&type=3 These pics include hens from free range farms. They’re not better.
Just so that we don’t alarm EU free range egg buyers – there is a significant improvement for European free range eggs over enriched cage (old-style cages are banned in the EU) or barn eggs. Organic free range are the best to buy in Europe. If unsure, look for the eggs stamped with a 0 (organic free range) or a 1 (free range). All eggs have to be stamped according to production method in the EU. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-range_eggs)
I haven’t done my research on this….but I seem to recall that releasing chickens from the cage is only slightly better that keeping them caged. As in, now they have a 6×6 cell block for the 6 chickens rather than a 3×3 block. Is that right? Is being cage-free the same as free-range?
I’m not saying this isn’t the right thing to do. I’m just trying to get my facts straight.
Just to remind everyone of an important point raised in the last thread about this: vast amounts of processed foodstuffs contain eggs amongst their ingredients. Unless clearly labelled otherwise, these will be caged eggs (for EU people, the “enriched” cages allowed after the ban on battery eggs really aren’t a very significant improvement). So check what you buy if you want to avoid caged eggs!
I read it was an animal welfare charity that asked Brad Pitt and Maher to write letters. Not sure if that’s true, but if it is, I think it’s a great thing for them to do. Shit like this is why I want to end up having a farm. Or at least living by a butcher that raises and slaughters his/her own meat (which is what a lot of people do where I live).
You don’t raise and slaughter “meat”, they’re animals.
And as humans are omnivores, it is natural and healthful for us to eat meat. And yes. meat comes from animals. I abhor animal abuse. But I also abhor the machine that is animal rights that wants to take away our right to have animals as pets or to have animals to eat.
Love u QWERTY. Love u Brad. That is all.
Just because you get fast/junck food some times doesn’t mean you eat it all the time and don’t eat organic foods. It’s not a one or the other you can have a happy medium.
… and yet, he and Angelina routinely bring their brood to fast food joints like Mcdonald’s (ahem.. he and Angie were spotted leaving Subway this past week, and they are NO BETTER).
Routinely? I think I have seen them buy McDonalds/subway a few times this year.
A few times the past 8 months is not a big deal – most families give their children junk food as a treat every few weeks.
And again junk food does not equal animal cruelty.
Routinely? Really? Is that just an exaggeration in order to score a cheap point against him?
Brad is a well known vegan so ofcourse he cares about animal cruelty.
Junk food does not equal supporting animal cruelty. A large part of junk food is actually non meat related.
Plus who says that Brad and Angelina don’t give organic food to their children on day to day basis? Angelina said that Pax and Brad loves to cook so they might even have their own home grown vegetables. Home grown vegetables – nothing can be more organic than that.
PS: maybe animal rights organisation asked Brad to speak for them because Brad is currently one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Whatever he says brings lots of attention to that subject.
Brad is vegan?
Brad is not a vegan. Nowhere have I ever read he is a vegan. I would be absolutely horrified if he was.
why would you be horrified?
Yeah, why would you be horrified?!
Get over yourself, Sally.
Oh, I agree that would be terrible. I;m not into men who care about animals, that’s so unmanly. Real men put raw meat in their smoothies. Meat from an animal that they hunted themselves… at a supermarket.
He is not a vegan. LOL
Meh.. Easy to judge the common man when u make a salary like that …
So true.
God he looks awful. The Great Hoboification continues, and it is not so great.