© 2024 University of Missouri - KBIA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Hardee’s to end use of gestation crates

gestation crates
Wikimedia Commons
Gestation crates for sows

The fast food chain Hardee’s says it will stop buying pork from suppliers who use gestation crates – the cramped metal cages where many industrial pork producers house pregnant sows for most of their adult lives.

Hardee’s is headquartered in St. Louis. Along with Carl’s Jr. and their parent company CKE Restaurants, Hardee’s has committed to eliminate use of the crates from its supply chain by 2022.

The food policy director for the Humane Society of the United States, Matthew Prescott, says his organization applauds CKE’s decision.

“There aren’t many worse ways that animals suffer in America than pigs in gestation crates, and for Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s to take such a strong stance sends a clear message to the pork industry that things just have to change," said Prescott.

The move by CKE Restaurants follows similar commitments by McDonald’s, Burger King, Safeway, and a number of other food companies earlier this year.

Véronique LaCapra first caught the radio bug while writing commentaries for NPR affiliate WAMU in Washington, D.C. After producing her first audio pieces at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies in N.C., she was hooked! She has done ecological research in the Brazilian Pantanal; regulated pesticides for the Environmental Protection Agency in Arlington, Va.; been a freelance writer and volunteer in South Africa; and contributed radio features to the Voice of America in Washington, D.C. She earned a Ph.D. in ecosystem ecology from the University of California in Santa Barbara, and a B.A. in environmental policy and biology from Cornell. LaCapra grew up in Cambridge, Mass., and in her mother’s home town of Auxerre, France.