State’s Failure to Address Cruelty to Birds at Trillium Farm Focus of New Roving Billboard

Exposé That Showed Rampant Neglect on Massive Factory Farm Has PETA Encouraging Consumers to Take Action Against Cruelty and Go Vegan

For Immediate Release:
September 8, 2020

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

A mobile billboard showing hens suffering at Trillium Farm Holdings—a local egg factory whose eggs are sold under Walmart’s Great Value brand—will be seen all over Licking County tomorrow. It will pass the farm on Clover Valley Road, park in downtown Newark, and visit the Walmart store at 1315 N. 21^st St. Its message will encourage everyone to go vegan.

The billboard references the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s (ODA) failure to abate cruelty to hens at Trillium, where a PETA undercover investigation revealed widespread, severe abuse, including workers pulling on and twisting hens’ heads over and over in failed attempts to break their necks. The ODA announced that it would inspect Trillium on July 16, giving the facility’s staff 11 days to clean the waste-encrusted cages and filthy sheds. On the day of the inspection, an ODA inspector walked through just three of the 16 sheds holding 1.8 million hens and concluded, “No violations found.”

“State officials have failed in their duty to stop chickens from being slammed into metal boxes and cruelly gassed or decapitated,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “That’s why PETA is asking kind consumers not to buy the products of this cruelty by choosing vegan meals and stands ready to help them do just that.”

In just 18 days at Trillium, PETA’s investigator found hundreds of dead hens, many of whom were left to decompose alongside the survivors in small, cramped cages. In one incident, the investigator found a severely injured bird still alive in a trash bin. A supervisor had clumsily attempted but failed to kill the hen and then let her languish for two more days before another worker finally killed her. Yet another worker was seen pulling a live hen’s head off.

Since July, PETA has protested outside Walmart stores across the U.S. and Canada to call on the company to reassess its relationship with Trillium.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. Broadcast-quality video footage of the group’s investigation is available here. For more information, please visit PETA.org.