New Billboard Takes Aim at Walmart Over Egg Supplier

PETA Investigation Shows Hens Trapped, Trampled to Death

For Immediate Release:
January 26, 2021

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

Following PETA’s undercover investigation into a Trillium Farm Holdings chicken operation in Licking County whose eggs are sold under Walmart’s Great Value brand, the group has placed a billboard near a local Walmart store highlighting the “great suffering” of hens factory-farmed for the company.

PETA’s exposé reveals widespread, severe abuse, including workers pulling on and twisting hens’ heads repeatedly in failed attempts to break their necks. Trillium keeps up to 2.4 million hens in 16 massive sheds on the farm, and in just 18 days there, PETA’s investigator found hundreds of dead birds, including many who were trapped by a leg, a wing, or their head in the filthy cages’ wire mesh flooring and starved or were trampled to death. Many were left to decompose right there.

“Chickens feel pain and experience misery, which makes it indefensible that every carton of Walmart’s eggs represents their suffering as their bodies were pushed to the breaking point and beyond,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is urging consumers to stop supporting blatant cruelty to animals by choosing vegan egg replacements.”

In one incident at Trillium, 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 suffer for two more days before another worker finally killed her. Yet another worker was seen pulling a live hen’s head off.

PETA recently ran a full-page ad in the Newark Advocate calling on the Newark law director to authorize a criminal investigation into Trillium. PETA has also protested outside Walmart stores across the U.S. and Canada to urge the company to reassess its relationship with Trillium—and the group is asking its members and supporters to do the same.

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 or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The billboard is located at 2750 Bethel Rd. in Columbus, just 0.2 miles from a Walmart store.