Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 2/19/15


Perdue Farms has launched a new website featuring video and photographs in and around their poultry growers’ facilities, in an effort to help consumers and other online audiences better understand one of the company’s programs for raising chickens.

“We know that consumers have questions about where their food comes from,” said Dr. Bruce Stewart-Brown, senior vice president of Food Safety, Quality and Live Production, in a news release about the website. “This new website is a way for consumers to better understand why we raise many of our chickens indoors, and our commitment to responsible animal husbandry across all of our raising programs.”

The website includes interviews with some of Perdue’s growers, videos and photographs taken in an around the chicken houses, and infographics that explain how a modern chicken house operates. Perdue promises that new content will be added regularly. 
The poultry featured on the website are those being raised for the Perdue and Harvestland brands, which are covered

by Perdue’s USDA Process Verified Program for Poultry Care, which includes federal agency audits of hatcheries, farms and processing plants. Perdue’s own animal welfare program includes monitoring air quality in the barns and video monitoring of live-bird handling areas at the processing facilities.

Perdue Farms also has free-range and pasture-raised programs for other brands, including its organic lines.

Last October, Perdue Farms and The Humane Society of the United States jointly announced the settlement of two federal cases in New Jersey and Florida, in which HSUS had accused Perdue of misleading consumers by putting the phrase “Humanely Raised” on its Harvestland chicken packaging. In the settlement, HSUS dismissed its claims with prejudice, in exchange for Perdue agreeing to remove the “Humanely Raised” label claim from its Harvestland chicken packaging.

In December, a video became public that was taken on a farm owned by one of Perdue’s contract growers by an animal welfare group called Compassion in World Farming. The grower had invited the group to record its video at his facilities. The Center For Food Integrity’s (CFI) Animal Care Review Panel reviewed the video and said that the grower might be “negligent” in his handling and care of the flock.

For more stories, go to www.meatingplace.com.