Fill ‘Chickieleaks’ website with positive comments

It’s not unusual for Mercy for Animals to be adversarial towards Tyson Foods and McDonald’s, but the animal rights group is taking a different avenue.

Roy Graber Headshot
Photo courtesy of Tyson Foods
Photo courtesy of Tyson Foods

It’s not unusual for Mercy for Animals to be adversarial towards Tyson Foods and McDonald’s, but the animal rights group is taking a different avenue.

Rather than focus exclusively on treatment of animals raised for products produced by Tyson or sold at McDonald’s the organization is now seeking whistleblowers to share stories of other alleged wrongdoings of the two companies.

Mercy for Animals has launched the website chickieleaks.com, asking people if they have a story about McDonald’s or Tyson Foods. Of course Mercy for Animals isn’t interested in hearing about how great the food tasted or how good the customer service was; the group, proclaiming to give a voice to “those who’ve suffered in the chicken industry,” wants to find out anything negative that might have happened.

In the cover page of the website, Mercy for Animals alleges that Tyson has been found guilty of environmental destruction and worker safety violations, and that McDonald’s has been found guilty of copyright infringement, hiring underage workers, and unlawful advertising.

The chickieleaks.com site includes a form, in which including your name and contact information is optional, in which you can “securely report what you’ve witnessed or endured using the secure form below.”

Billboard ads

At the same time, according to an Atlanta Journal Constitution report, Mercy for Animals has launched a billboard campaign to solicit anonymous information from contract farmers for Tyson Foods. The report states that Mercy for Animal will use the information gained from those contract workers to pressure Tyson Foods and restaurant customers for better pay for farmers, and more humane conditions for the birds.

Leah Garces, president of Mercy for Animals, told the newspaper her organization wants reform for the workers and the animals, and that “collaborating would be a big step in the right direction.”

How to respond

Obviously, if a person wants to offer negative feedback via the website, that is their prerogative. But that doesn’t mean that people who have good things to say shouldn’t be heard.

I know my last experience as a Tyson Foods consumer was a good one. Last night, I came to the house at sundown after working on a tractor. My youngest son had a warm plate of Tyson Any'tizers waiting for me. They tasted great, I wolfed them down, and I appreciated my son’s kind gesture.

If you have a positive story, even something as simple as that, why not put it on that website as well?

Mercy for Animals may not do anything with such stories, but the way I see it, the more time the organization spends sifting through positive messages, the less time it has to spend fighting animal agriculture.

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