Nellie’s Free Range Eggs Earns PETA ‘Pants on Fire’ Award

For Immediate Release:
January 28, 2021

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

“Pants on Fire” awards are on their way from PETA to 10 companies that are guilty of humane washing—that is, trying to deceive customers about their use and abuse of animals—and Nellie’s Free Range Eggs is among them.

Nellie’s earned the dishonor for advertising its eggs with photos of hens on rolling green hills, even though PETA uncovered thousands of hens crammed into a shed at one of the company’s “free-range” suppliers. While Nellie’s claims to use “happy hens,” its suppliers cut off the tips of hens’ sensitive beaks to prevent cannibalism among the densely packed, stressed chickens—but despite the mutilations, many birds were still missing feathers, which could have been pulled out by them or more dominant chickens.

“PETA won’t stand by and let Nellie’s claim that mutilated hens who are crammed by the thousands into packed sheds are somehow ‘happy,’” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Instead of hiding behind empty promises, Nellie’s should start meeting the skyrocketing demand for vegan products that are actually kind to animals.”

Other recipients of the “Pants on Fire” awards include Eli Lilly, which boasts of its “commitment to responsible animal research” while refusing to ban a near-drowning test on mice and rats, and Canada Goose, which claims to care about animals while selling fur from coyotes who can endure excruciating pain in steel traps and down feathers from birds who are violently killed.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.