North Carolina Animal Advocates United members protest outside Crumbl Cookies

On Saturday, Nov. 9, several North Carolina Animal Advocates United members gathered outside the Crumbl Cookies location on Franklin Street to protest the bakery's use of battery cages in egg production.

The protest included roughly a dozen members, and they remained in the area for around three hours. They carried signs, conducted chants and distributed flyers calling for Crumbl Cookies to make a cage-free commitment.

Madeleine Jones, a member of NCAAU and a senior social media specialist at The Humane League, said battery cages cause extreme psychological and physical suffering for hens. 

“Anywhere from three to a dozen hens can be crammed into a battery cage at a time,” she said. “They don’t even have enough room to spread their wings.”

Jones said the group drafted a letter for Crumbl Cookies' manager and will follow up with phone calls and emails to continue encouraging the corporation to make a cage-free commitment. 

“Protests like this are happening across the country everywhere that Crumbl is operating,” she said. 

Jones said the protest is part of a national effort led by The Humane League to combat battery cages in egg production.

Karen Hirsch, the senior public relations manager for The Humane League, said protests against Crumbl Cookies began when customers started a petition that currently has over 50,000 signatures.

She said many of Crumbl Cookies' competitors, including Krispy Kreme and Dairy Queen, are already cage-free and 11 states are in the process of banning battery cages.

“Consumers don’t want their eggs to come from animals that suffered, so with the help of consumers and our partners, we’ve been able to get 2,200 companies, including 120 global corporations, to adopt cage-free policies,” Hirsch said.

Jones said that open aviary barns are an alternative to battery cages in large-scale egg production.

“It’s a huge improvement in their lives and a huge decrease in the pain that they go through,” she said. 

The protest also featured a member of NCAAU dressed as a chicken and locked inside of a wire crate to emulate the conditions of battery cages. 

“It’s the closest we have to showing the discomfort of extreme confinement,” Jones said. 

She said members of the Chapel Hill community were receptive to the protest. 

“We’ve had several people stop and talk to us about why we’re out here and generally folks have been really supportive,” Jones said. 

According to Jones, NCAAU plans to return to the Crumbl Cookies location in Chapel Hill this December if the corporation has not made a cage-free commitment by then. The group will be equipped with harnesses that attach to small TVs displaying the conditions of battery cage farms. 

“As uncomfortable as it is, it’s our goal to be uncomfortable,” Jones said. “We really want to put pressure on them, so the goal is pretty powerful disruption.”

A Crumbl Cookies employee shared the store did receive literature from the protestors but is unsure what steps their manager is taking to address them. 

The employee said their coworkers noticed customers passing by the store instead of entering while the protest was taking place.  

“We’re not expecting them to make this change overnight, but it can be done and I think people just realize that there’s no excuse for squeezing a little more profit [by] making animals go through this horrific cruelty,” Jones said. 

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