By Lindsey Klingele on 9/26/2007 for Meatingplace.com

Carpinteria, Calif.-based CKE Restaurants announced an agreement to buy cage-free pork at two of its fast-food chains. The company agreed to improve animal welfare standards for products served at Hardee's and Carl's Jr. following a push from People of the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Under the agreement, 15 percent of all pork will be purchased from suppliers who do not confine animals in gestation crates. The company plans to increase that number to 25 percent by 2009. "We take the animal welfare very seriously," Jeff Mochal, a spokesman for Hardee's, told the Associated Press. "When you meet with PETA, they make a pretty good case. We want to stay consistent with where the industry is at now and where it's heading." CKE Restaurants is not the first fast-food giant to make the change to sourcing cage-free animals. In March, Burger King announced that it would buy 10 percent of its pork from cage-free suppliers. (See BK serves up new animal-welfare policy, Meatingplace.com, March 28, 2007.)

More and more restaurants and fast-food chains are implementing animal rights restrictions on the ingredients they purchase. We all believe in humane meat production, but it frightens me that they are developing regulations based on PETA's advice and guidance. Why do we as agricultural producers allow activist groups to speak louder than ourselves? To control government policy, public conception and our day-to-day production practices?

What will it take for agriculture to stand up for itself and educate the masses about what we really do? What happens if it's too late when we do?