Restaurants, meat plants compelled to consider animal welfare before mealtime The life of a chicken isn’t something most people have had to think about when frying up an omelet, at least not since we all lived on farms. But, increasingly, people are asking how much air their meat and poultry got in their tails before they died, and just what their diets consisted of. So, the size of the chicken coop and the grass fed to the cow is now high on the list of priorities for many customers browsing the meat counter.

Animal rights activists, many of whom have lived on the fringes of advocacy in a way that alienated large segments of the American public, are increasingly adopting tactics that emphasize core values that many consumers share, according to a groundbreaking story in The New York Times today. The movement is maturing in a way that, you could say, parallels the larger environmental movement, 20 years its elder. Most consumers want to know that the meat they eat comes from animals that have been treated humanely.