At Animal Justice, we believe that every animal deserves to live free from suffering. Alongside our goal to secure legal protections for animals to ensure they aren’t harmed, we recognize the urgent need to make farmed animals part of the national conversation and alleviate the immense suffering they are experiencing right now in factory farms across Canada. This is where our strategic corporate cage-free campaigns come in—a cornerstone of our farmed animal welfare work.
Corporate animal welfare work helps:
- Reduce immediate suffering
- Make positive change over time
- Elevate animal welfare as a corporate responsibility issue
- Expose cruelty and increase public awareness
- Run intentional, strategic, and effective campaigns
- Support our work to secure stronger laws protecting animals
These campaigns create positive change over time, easing millions of animals’ suffering, exposing the cruelty of factory farming, and promoting a more compassionate future.
Reducing Immediate Suffering Through Corporate Campaigns
Extreme confinement on farms is the most widely addressed farmed animal welfare issue in the world. Hens in tiny cages and mother pigs in restrictive crates suffer severe pain, illness, and constant distress. This is why laws and corporate policies that ban cages and crates help reduce the immediate suffering of farmed animals.
Even hens in so-called “enriched” cages experience 5,000+ more hours of pain in their lifetime than hens in cage-free aviaries, according to the Welfare Footprint Project.
Making Positive Change Over Time
We push for incremental changes like cage-free systems, in part, because incremental change has a real and immediate impact on the lives of millions of animals suffering right now. Even seemingly small acts, like providing water for thirsty pigs on trucks, alleviates immense suffering for individual animals. If we put ourselves in the animals’ position, we believe they would want advocates removing their greatest sources of suffering now while we work to tackle systemic issues.
While cage-free is not cruelty-free, phasing out cages significantly improves conditions for individual animals while raising minimum standards. Some companies even purchase fewer eggs or remove eggs as ingredients to help fulfill their commitment to ban cages. Companies facing greater public pressure on animal welfare often offer more plant-based options.
Our corporate cage-free campaigns play a vital role in making these incremental improvements possible, helping millions of animals live better lives while pushing the food industry toward higher welfare standards.
Elevating Animal Welfare as a Corporate Responsibility Issue
We demand companies include animal welfare alongside their other sustainability goals. This ensures animal welfare is treated as seriously as other social and environmental issues, highlighting companies with poor practices as higher-risk to investors. Canada’s largest grocery stores and food companies make hundreds of millions in profit every single year. We want these companies to invest in animal welfare and explore alternatives, rather than profiting from cruel practices.
Globally, over 2,700 companies have adopted cage-free egg commitments, including 130 in Canada. Numerous countries and states have passed cage-free laws. Our cage-free campaigns work to ensure that Canada is part of this movement and doesn’t fall behind the rest of the world.
Exposing Cruelty & Increasing Public Awareness
When people hear about caged egg production, terms like “inhumane,” “cruel,” and “sad” frequently come to mind. Corporate campaigns effectively expose factory farming’s hidden horrors, especially when paired with undercover investigations that raise public awareness. Together, undercover investigations and corporate campaigns help make farmed animals part of the national conversation.
Small actions like supporting welfare reforms often sparks greater empathy and openness toward broader animal issues.
Our Approach to Corporate Animal Welfare Campaigns
At Animal Justice, our corporate campaigns focus on systemic issues like intensive confinement in cages and crates, aiming for significant industry shifts and raising public awareness about industrial animal agriculture. We oppose current practices and believe true reform means fundamental changes to how animals are treated on farms.
We are in this for the long-haul—to make systemic change and transform how our society views and treats animals. Animal Justice works to ensure all sectors impacting animals—food companies, legislators, farmers and consumers—take responsibility for their impact.
