Grill’d has a strong commitment to making conscious choices about what goes into their burgers. And when you learn that a big part of their identity is doing good for the planet, it makes sense that they take sourcing ethically and caring about the welfare of farm animals seriously. Read up about some of their efforts below.
Free-range eggs for happier hens
Right from the moment they opened their doors in 2004, Grill’d have only ever used free-range whole eggs for their burgers and today, their home-made sauces use free-range egg as an ingredient as well. If you’ve been following our campaign to get hens out of barren battery cages, you’ll know it’s a massive deal when brands insist on sourcing cage-free shell eggs as well as cage-free eggs as an ingredient in products such as sauces, cakes and pasta.
Why? Around 10 million egg-laying hens are still kept in barren battery cages for their entire lives. That’s at least half of all the hens in Australia! In battery cages, hens can’t move freely, stretch or even flap their wings – they simply aren’t given the space. They can’t scratch, perch, dustbathe (clean their feathers) or lay their eggs in a nest. They lay their eggs on the same sloping wire floor they have to stand on all day and night. The eggs these birds lay are labelled as cage eggs.
Hero brands like Grill’d who say ‘no way’ to cage eggs are saying that these smart, curious and social birds deserve better.
Grass-fed for better sheep and cattle welfare
Sourcing grass-fed lamb and beef has always been important to the folks at Grill’d. And since 2010 their lamb and beef burgers are 100% grass-fed. This means sheep and cattle have spent their whole life in paddocks and haven’t spent time in feedlots where they can’t graze fresh pasture.
While work is certainly being done to improve animal welfare in feedlots, sheep and cattle are still restricted in how much they can move around, they don’t have access to pasture, and can suffer from heat stress (from lack of shade) and respiratory problems (caused by stress and the presence of bacteria or viruses).
RSPCA Approved to raise the bar for meat chickens
Did you notice that Grill’d’s new Healthy Fried Chicken is made using RSPCA Approved chicken breast?
In 2016 – again, being one of the first – Grill’d made a commitment to source 100% of their chicken from higher welfare farms participating in the RSPCA Approved Farming Scheme. For 5 years now, they’ve been proud to source RSPCA Approved chicken. Knowing that birds have been raised by farmers prioritising animal welfare and meeting higher welfare standards, gave Grill’d the confidence they needed to choose RSPCA Approved.
Being RSPCA Approved means meeting the RSPCA’s detailed and publicly available animal welfare standards and importantly, undergoing regular on-farm assessments by RSPCA Assessors who make sure these standards are being met.
The RSPCA Approved Standard for Meat Chickens is based on animal welfare science and makes sure chickens can behave normally and do all the things that they like to do, such as:
Perching to help to keep their bones and muscles strong
Dustbathing, which means shaking and rubbing dust through their feathers to keep them clean and healthy
Pecking and foraging which are natural exploratory and food-seeking behaviours.
All while housed in a safe and comfortable environment with:
Quality litter covering the floor
Proper lighting that encourages birds to move around during the day and allows them to rest at night
Temperature and ventilation control to keep birds comfortable.
Decisions like these show Grill’d cares as much about meeting their customers’ expectations, as they do about the ingredients in their burgers. They’re working hard to give their customers fresh, locally and ethically-sourced food in a way that shows they care about people, the planet and, importantly, farm animals.
You might also be interested in Pioneering better farm animal welfare and Looking to make a better dairy choice?
