As part of a nationwide campaign, a group of volunteers from the Albert Schweitzer Foundation demonstrated in front of a Lidl branch on Schleißheimer Straße on Saturday evening for better animal husbandry conditions. They showed stall photos secretly taken in the summer of 2022 in a Lidl supplier company, on which there was no floor to be seen because of all the chickens, as well as an “undercover video” of the same action. Those involved handed the deputy branch manager a letter with demands that Lidl pay more attention to animal welfare and to stop “torture breeding” at suppliers.
According to the Munich action group of the Schweitzer Foundation, the Lidl representative assured them “very kindly” that they would pass this on to the head office. Anyone who follows the activists’ call and sends an email protest to the head office will receive a reply from Lidl’s customer service in Bad Wimpfen within minutes, in which Lidl announces that it has already asked the suppliers for comments and has called in external experts. In addition, Lidl wants “in the long term to completely switch our fresh poultry to husbandry levels 3 and 4”. This is “an even higher level of animal welfare than in the European broiler chicken initiative”.
The aim is to improve the housing conditions
Other chains such as Aldi have long since joined the initiative, in which the Munich activists see a good compromise, but not a perfect goal, but Lidl has not yet, affirmed Martin Riedlberger and Macus Bauer in their action on Saturday evening.
In the supermarket there are 400 grams of “mini-steaks from the breast fillet” for 4.99 euros, “keeping form 2: stable housing plus”, the poultry refrigerated shelf is bought almost empty on Saturday at 6 p.m. The five vegan protesters outside the Lidl entrance are realists. “We know that a lot of meat is still eaten, so our goal is to improve the keeping conditions.” The Albert Schweitzer Foundation already has almost 140,000 supporters online.