Major Buyer Southeastern Grocers Drops Cruel Duck Supplier

For Immediate Release:
March 15, 2022

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

Locally based Southeastern Grocers—the parent company of grocery chain Winn-Dixie and one of the largest conventional supermarket companies in the U.S., with 523 locations—has ended all purchases from Culver Duck Farms following communications with PETA. The move comes after PETA furnished the company with whistleblower photos and video footage and an affidavit detailing ducks’ throats being slit while they were conscious, live birds tossed into grinders every day, and others buried alive under a mountain of feed at Culver, the country’s second-largest duck slaughterer—which boasts that it’s the only one that’s “American Humane Certified.”

“After hearing that birds were smothered to death and ground up alive at Culver Duck Farms, Southeastern Grocers cut ties with this company entirely,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA commends this leading grocery chain for dropping Culver like a hot potato, and we encourage all its shoppers to load their carts with humane vegan vittles.”

After a 2016 PETA undercover investigation into Culver revealed that birds were bludgeoned, decapitated, and kept in ammonia-ridden sheds, Harris Teeter dropped the slaughterer as a supplier. Southeastern’s decision comes just after Albertsons, the second-largest supermarket chain in North America, suspended sourcing from Culver. PETA is renewing its call on Culver’s other customers, such as Sprouts, WinCo Foods, and European Imports, to reconsider their business relationships with the company.

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