Ryan Gosling calls Costco out for alleged abuse of chickens

Ryan Gosling wants Costco to rethink the way that it treats the chickens it uses to produce its ridiculously cheap eggs. In an open letter, Gosling describes the “abhorrent cruelty” exposed in an investigative video recently posted by the Humane Society.

In the notably graphic video Paul Shapiro, president of The Humane Society, details some of the abusive conditions Costco egg supplier Hillandale apparently subjects its chickens to. While much of Costco’s egg packaging depicts chickens roaming free through green fields, the animals seen at Hillandale’s Pennsylvania plant were stuffed into cramped, overcrowded cages, lined with feces and the rotting, flattened corpses of dead chickens.

“It is appalling that Costco has been selling these eggs with deceptive labeling on cartons featuring graphics of birds living out in a green pasture,” Gosling wrote. “You’re already eliminating cages for veal calves and pigs—don’t you feel that chickens also deserve the same mercy?”

According to The Humane Society, Costco vowed that all of its eggs would be cage-free in 2007, but if the video is any indication of the company’s suppliers, that’s far from the case.