Dave Rinaldo:
Use your influence to stop extreme animal cruelty
ALDI is authorizing extreme animal abuse
Aldi continues to permit one of the most inhumane factory farming practices in their U.S. supply chain—confining animals in cages for their entire lives. Pigs and hens endure immense suffering because Aldi refuses to implement a meaningful anti-cage policy or provide transparency on any progress away from cages.
As Aldi’s President whose role is to oversee product and sustainability strategies, Dave Rinaldo should use his influence to champion animal welfare reforms. By committing to phase out extreme confinement in Aldi’s supply chain, Rinaldo could help align the brand with consumers’ growing demand for better treatment of animals, ensuring Aldi’s practices reflect the values of its customers and competitors alike.
Email ALDI president, Dave Rinaldo, and demand an end to cages for animals
Dane Charbeneau
Aldi’s professed commitment to animal welfare is not just unconvincing but hypocritical, as they continue to condone the cruelest factory farming practices in their US operations. Caging hens and pregnant pigs is an outdated and inhumane practice, and it contradicts Aldi’s own principles.
Campaigns Manager
Animal Equality
Keep speaking up for animals trapped in cages
Gestation crates for pigs are a real problem… Basically, you’re asking a sow to live in an airline seat.
Temple Grandin
I think it’s something that needs to be phased out.
Associate Professor, Department of Animal Science.
Colorado State University
[T]he close confinement of sows in stalls or tethers is one of the most extreme examples of cruelty to an animal. It continues throughout much of life and is much worse than severely beating an animal.
Donald M. Broom
Professor of Animal Welfare.
University of Cambridge
Confinement of sows during pregnancy, especially in individual stalls or on tethers, can be cold, uncomfortable and injurious, and imposes severe restrictions on natural behaviour.
John Webster
Sr. Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Animal Husbandry and creator of The Five Freedoms.
University of Bristol
Gestation cages:
The cruelest confinement of pigs
These 7-by-2-foot cages take an immense physical and mental toll on the animals.
Pigs cannot walk, turn around, or stand comfortably in these cages. Beneath them are hard floors with slats for the urine and feces to fall through before collecting in giant outdoor waste lagoons.
Professor Ian Duncan, a scholar of animal welfare at the University of Guelph, has described it as “one of the cruelest forms of confinement devised by humankind.”
ALDI is authorizing extreme animal suffering
Pregnant pigs are confined to cages of 7-by-2-foot that don’t let them turn around.
Research shows that these cages—gestation crates—cause physical and psychological suffering:
- Unable to move, their bones and muscles weaken,
- have open wounds due to the constant abrasion against the cage bars,
- many develop cardiovascular problems,
- overgrown hooves that cause them pain when they stand,
- digestive problems,
- and painful urinary infections.
Hens trapped in cages
Hens are social animals who like to forage for food, take dust baths, perch, and care for their chicks.
In Aldi’s US operations, hens used for eggs are crammed into cages with 6 other birds, leaving each hen with less space than a standard letter.
The hens can not spread their wings, perch, roost, nest, dust-bathe, forage, or explore.
They are victims of violence from workers, and their bones often break when their wings get caught in the wire. They are forced to live like this for up to two years.
Because of the poor conditions, many hens die and rot in the cage alongside other birds.
ALDI falls behind competitors
In the United States, ten states have restricted cages for hens, eleven states have banned gestation cages, and thousands of companies worldwide—including Aldi’s close competitors Kroger, Costco, and Target—are eliminating cages.
Aldi has claimed that animals must be “healthy, comfortable, well nourished, safe, able to express innate behavior, and [who are] not suffering from unpleasant states such as pain, fear, and distress.”
But hens and mother pigs in cages are constantly suffering throughout their lives. Some, exhausted and unable to move, are trampled to death by others confined in the same tiny cage.
Disclaimer: Images represent factory farms that use cages. They do not necessarily supply to Aldi.
Stop animal abuse with every meal
Pigs, hens, and other animals feel pain and deserve to be protected from abuse.
You can protect these innocent animals by simply choosing plant‑based alternatives.
