The third-richest family in the world is building wealth on extreme animal suffering.
The Mars family owns Mars Incorporated, maker of M&M’s, Milky Way, Snickers, Pedigree, and many more global brands.
The Mars family—including Valerie, Victoria, Pamela, and Marijke Mars—is building their wealth through a company that has yet to globally ban one of the most egregious practices in factory farming: confining hens in cruel cages so small they can’t even spread their wings
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The third-richest family in the world is building wealth on extreme animal suffering.
The Mars family owns Mars Incorporated, maker of M&M’s, Milky Way, Snickers, Pedigree, and many more global brands.
The Mars family—including Valerie, Victoria, Pamela, and Marijke Mars—is building their wealth through a company that has yet to globally ban one of the most egregious practices in factory farming: confining hens in cruel cages so small they can’t even spread their wings.
In a cage egg-production system, up to 10 hens are crammed into a single cage, each bird spending most of her life on floor space smaller than a notebook-sized sheet of paper. With so little room, some hens are trampled to death by their cagemates.
These cages are so tiny that hens can’t even spread their wings or walk more than a couple of steps. Such confinement can cause bone brittleness, foot lesions, and fatty liver syndrome. By the time they’re slaughtered, about 30 percent of these birds experience at least one bone fracture.
The extreme stress brought on by intensive confinement often compels hens to peck one another. Instead of addressing this problem by eliminating cages, the egg industry uses “beak trimming.” At the hatchery, chicks have the tips of their beaks seared off without anesthesia. The procedure can cause chronic pain, sometimes so severe that chicks die from starvation because they can’t even eat.
Many hens become trapped in cage wire or under feed trays. Unable to free themselves or reach food and water, they suffer and die. The remains of birds who die in cages are often left to rot among hens still laying eggs for human consumption.
And while Mars acknowledges the basic animal welfare standard of banning cages in parts of the global North, Mars has rejected any accountability for this same animal welfare standard in the global South.
As virtually all Mars competitors have committed to phasing out cages globally, Mars has fallen behind. Pledging to go 100 percent cage-free globally with a clear deadline of 2025, like its competitors, is one of the most basic steps Mars can take to improve the welfare of laying hens in its global supply chain.
TAKE ACTION
Raise your voice for hens, and ask Mars to ban cages globally.