Hormel Foods Settles Lawsuit Over Deceptive "Natural Choice" Advertising While Still Killing Animals in Factory Farms

The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), an organization dedicated to protecting the interests of animals, recently filed a motion to dismiss its lawsuit against the US food company Hormel Foods over the advertising of its Natural Choice brand products, as the dispute between them has been resolved.

The lawsuit, filed in June 2016 by ALDF together with Public Justice, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization, alleged that Hormel Foods misleads consumers by advertising its Natural Choice brand lunch meats and bacon as "natural", while the products come from animals raised in the worst factory farms that use additives, hormones and antibiotics and contain ingredients constituting artificial preservatives. All of this violates the D..C.. Consumer Protection Procedures Act ((DCCPPA))  ..

As part of the resolution, Hormel Foods has published additional information on its website to help consumers understand the terms it uses on its product labels and in its advertisements. Hormel Foods also agreed to use explanatory language in future advertisements for Hormel Natural Choice products.

Discovery during the proceedings revealed that Hormel advertises these products as "natural" and claims that the pigs used for this product line are treated differently from the pigs in its other products, even though the animals in Natural Choice brand products are also raised in factory farms and given antibiotics such as bambermycin and/or virginiamycin, as well as other chemicals such as chlorine and Termin-8 acid (a feed disinfectant containing formaldehyde and propionic acid).

Additional documents produced by Hormel reveal that there is nothing "natural" about the way the company treats animals, including pregnant mother pigs being confined to gestation crates, typically 7 by 2 feet in size (about 2 meters by 60 cm), which confine artificially inseminated female pigs for virtually their entire lives. The use of gestation crates is already banned in several states, including California. California's law has been challenged by industrial animal agriculture industry associations and is currently being reviewed by the US Supreme Court. This followed multiple lower court decisions in which ALDF, as part of a coalition, successfully intervened to defend the law against lawsuits filed by the industrial animal agriculture industry.

Further, disturbing US Department of Agriculture noncompliance reports reveal safety violations in which animal carcasses contaminated with fecal matter were reprocessed. Other documents from the litigation also show Hormel's efforts to exploit a loophole that allows it to mislead customers by labeling its products as having no added nitrates, despite using celery powder, an additive that ultimately produces nitrates.

Deposition testimony taken during the litigation also revealed that Wayne Farms, one of the suppliers of Hormel's Natural Choice brand, renders dead chickens into feed, which it then gives to the company's chicken growers to feed later generations of chickens. This means that, through this process, chickens may have been fed parts of their parents, grandparents or other relatives.

"Hormel has done everything it can to deceive customers looking for 'natural' foods by simply changing its branding while continuing to harm animals and put workers and consumers at risk," ALDF Executive Director Stephen Wells said in a statement. "Consumers want to make informed choices that reflect their values, which is why transparency is so critical, and why we have laws to protect consumers from being misled."

In September 2021, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals revived the case against Hormel Foods, which had initially been dismissed. The appeals court reversed the lower court's ruling, finding that ALDF has standing to pursue its false advertising claims against Hormel Foods and that those claims are not preempted by federal animal product labeling laws.

In this watershed ruling for consumer protection of all kinds, the Court held for the first time that the DCCPPA allows qualifying nonprofit organizations to sue to enforce the DCCPPA without having to demonstrate standing before federal courts. The decision is an important win for consumers, as it keeps the doors of Washington D.C. courthouses open to consumer claims.

The 2016 lawsuit was filed following an undercover ALDF investigation that revealed serious animal neglect and violations of laws protecting both consumers and animals at a Nebraska factory farm owned by The Maschhoffs, a major Illinois-based pig producer and one of Hormel Foods' largest suppliers.

Source:WORLD ANIMAL NEWS

This news item was translated into Turkish by İlkim Damla Birtay and Nilsu Öztürk.