PETA has announced that it has taken shares in Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods, Maple Leaf Foods, and Hormel. The charity says that it plans to use its shareholder position to push each company to move in a plantbased direction and away from animal agriculture.
PETA states that it will work to encourage Tyson to reinvent itself as a vegan meat producer, and has “offered to cover a portion of the costs needed to retrain employees.”
The organisation says its strategy is to: push Tyson Foods to embrace its Raised & Rooted plant-based line; encourage Smithfield Foods to stick with its vegan brand, Pure Farmland; use its shareholder position to push Hormel to focus on expanding its Happy Little Plants line; and to ask Maple Leaf Foods to focus on its plantbased brands Lightlife and Field Roast.
- “As a shareholder, we’ll attend annual meetings, correspond with other stockholders under Securities and Exchange Commission rules, and directly urge CEOs to convert all slaughterhouses to producers and packers of only vegan meats.”
- “PETA has purchased stock in Hormel—along with other major U.S. and Canadian slaughter companies—in order to attend annual meetings, correspond with other shareholders under Securities and Exchange Commission rules, and directly urge CEOs to convert all slaughterhouses to produce and pack only vegan meats.”
- “This crisis has shown that raising and killing animals in filthy factory farm conditions and butchering them in ill-regulated slaughterhouses creates breeding grounds for infectious diseases,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is pushing Hormel and all other major meat companies to shut down the slaughter lines and switch to plant-based meats that never cause a pandemic.”
The charity also took out a full page ad in the Washington Post on 3rd May as follows: