Beyond Meat Announces Soaring Revenue Despite Covid-19 Shutdowns

As more people around the world chow down on delicious plant-based burgers and sausages, Beyond Meat has announced that its second-quarter revenue leaped to $113 million—an impressive 69 percent increase! The sales have far exceeded Wall Street’s forecast of $99 million.

According to Ethan Brown, Beyond Meat’s founder, president, and CEO, by June of this year, 4.9 percent of U.S. households had tried Beyond Meat products—up from 3.5 percent in January. Even more impressive, half these households bought the tasty vegan meats again.

These results are even more significant in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond Meat generally sells half its output in restaurants and foodservice outlets, many of which have been forced to close or dramatically change the way they operate. In response, Beyond Meat repackaged burgers and sausages prepared for foodservice and sent them to grocery stores for direct purchase. The company even launched a 10-burger value pack at select stores, including Walmart and Target. Thanks to this quick action, Beyond Meat’s U.S. retail sales nearly doubled last quarter, despite a 61 percent drop in foodservice sales.

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Chickens Crushed, Denied Water, Left to Suffer at McDonald’s Supplier

A new Animal Equality U.K. investigation reveals chicks having their necks crushed, birds suffering from burns and blisters, and chickens purposely denied water at a McDonald’s chicken supplier.

For years, Mercy For Animals has reached out to McDonald’s representatives, asking that the company ban the worst abuses for chickens in its supply chain. In 2018, Mercy For Animals joined forces with The Humane League, Animal Equality, Compassion in World Farming, World Animal Protection, and Animal Outlook to form a coalition campaign and launch a petition calling on McDonald’s to adopt a meaningful chicken welfare policy. So far, the petition has gathered over 300,000 signatures. The footage was taken over two months in eight British chicken farms operated by Moy Park, one of Europe’s 10 largest poultry producers. Moy Park is responsible for nearly a third of all chicken sold in the United Kingdom and raises and kills over 312 million birds every year.

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A Zoo Is Struggling So Much That It May Have to Feed Some Animals to Other Animals

(CNN)- Faced with disrupted supply chains and steep revenue declines due to the coronavirus pandemic, one zoo is considering a drastic measure: turning some of its residents into food.

The longer that the coronavirus lockdowns continue and the more dire financial situations become, the more realistic it is that Neumünster Zoo in northern Germany will have to consider its absolute, last resort plan: slaughtering some of its zoo animals to feed others.

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Historic Partnership to Protect 2M Acres of Caribou Habitat

A partnership agreement to recover the endangered central group of southern mountain caribou has been signed by Chiefs of the West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nations and Ministers of the British Columbia and Canadian governments.

The agreement has a 30-year term and is the first of its kind in Canada.

Approximately two million acres of land will be placed into protected areas, where Caribou habitat will remain undisturbed by new industrial development activities. The partnership agreement is centred around the Klinse-za (Twin Sisters) mountains and the Klinse-za caribou herd. In 2013, when the herd numbered just 16 animals and was facing extirpation, West Moberly and Saulteau began a maternal penning program to give newborn calves a better chance of escaping predators.

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American Red Cross’ Latest Lifesaving Move: Banning Leather Gloves

Cows are just like you and me—they build friendships, can be bossy and devious, and even sometimes hold grudges against their peers who treat them badly. And just like you and me, cows value their lives and don’t want to be killed for leather or any other reason. That’s why we urged the American Red Cross to replace the leather gloves in its flood and fire kits with leather-free ones, a plea that—victory alert! —the organization embraced wholeheartedly.

Not only did the American Red Cross pledge to ban leather gloves from its kits, it also agreed to stop recommending them for emergency purposes to members of the public by removing references to them from its website and other messaging.

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Farm Animals Can Now Attend Your Virtual Meeting, Thanks To Half Moon Bay Animal Sanctuary

One of these things is not like the other.

At a recent Zoom meeting, there were 10 people wearing telephone headsets and a couple of people obviously logged in from home — and then there was the llama.

Welcome to “Goat 2 Meeting,” a program launched by Sweet Farm animal sanctuary in Half Moon Bay as a way of adding some zing to online meetings in the mandatory shelter-in-place world.

“We had to shut our doors during the COVID-19 quarantine, which has prevented us from generating any of our normal revenue and our donations are down,” says farm co-founder Anna Sweet. “So we decided to bring the farm to the community virtually through our Goat 2 Meeting program.”

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Producers and Processors in The Top Tier of The 2020 Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare

The 2019 Benchmark, which analysed 150 global food companies and is supported by Compassion in World Farming and World Animal Protection sees Cranswick and Noble Foods recognised as global leaders on farm animal welfare, alongside retailers Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Co-op Group (Switzerland) and Migros.

Beyond the individual company rankings, the 2019 Benchmark reports that 60 of the world’s leading food companies now have formal farm animal welfare policies and appropriate management processes for ensuring they are effectively deployed internally and throughout their supply chains. It cites consumer interest in farm animal welfare, coupled with positive momentum inside a majority of the world’s most influential food companies as key accelerators of year on year change. However, it warns that progress is still too slow with 40 percent of the 150 companies still appearing in the bottom tiers, providing little or no information about how they are managing the risks and opportunities associated with farm animal welfare.

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