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Share Name | Share Symbol | Market | Type |
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Seaboard Corp | AMEX:SEB | AMEX | Common Stock |
Price Change | % Change | Share Price | High Price | Low Price | Open Price | Shares Traded | Last Trade | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
-5.00 | -0.16% | 3,140.00 | 3,197.00 | 3,119.96 | 3,130.35 | 1,570 | 21:03:03 |
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Name of Registrant:
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Name of person relying on exemption:
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Address of person relying on exemption:
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Written materials:
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PLEASE NOTE: The HSUS is not asking for and cannot accept your proxy card.
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Please vote FOR Item 3 on the proxy received from the management, following the instructions enclosed with the proxy as to how to cast your ballot.
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Memorandum |
Subject:
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Grounds to vote FOR Seaboard Item No. 3: Stockholder Proposal, encouraging management to create and announce a plan, by October 2012, for phasing out the confinement of breeding pigs in gestation crates.
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Date:
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March 21, 2012
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Contact:
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Josh Balk, The Humane Society of the United States
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(301) 721-6419 or
jbalk@humanesociety.org
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/s/ Josh Balk
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I.
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Introduction
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Eight U.S. states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and Oregon—have passed laws banning the confinement of pigs in gestation crates, as has the European Union. Numerous other states have bills pending that once passed would also criminalize gestation crates.
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The Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act (Proposition 2), asked California voters, in 2008, whether to ban the practice of cramming pigs into gestation crates; the vote passed by an overwhelming margin, and received more votes in its favor than any other citizen initiative has received in the state’s history.
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McDonald’s recently announced that it “believes gestation stalls are not a sustainable production system for the future” and stated that “there are alternatives that we think are better for the welfare of sows.” The company went on to announce: “McDonald’s wants to see the end of sow confinement in gestation stalls in our supply chain.”
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Other companies—like Whole Foods, Chipotle, and Wolfgang Puck—
only
use gestation crate-free pork.
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The world’s largest food-service provider, Compass Group, announced it is switching all 38 million pounds a year of pork it uses to gestation crate-free by 2017. Compass runs the dining operations at 10,000 colleges, universities, hospitals, government buildings and other institutions in the U.S.
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Wendy’s stated, “Wendy’s agrees that the recent industry efforts to move away from single sow gestation crates is the right way to go…”
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Seaboard competitors are moving away from the gestation crate confinement of breeding pigs. Smithfield announced that it will phase out the use of gestation crates at company-owned operations by 2017.
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Hormel emulated that announcement earlier this year, indicating that it, too, would end the use of gestation crates in company-owned operations by 2017.
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Cargill is already 50 percent gestation crate-free and Maple Leaf Foods, one of Canada’s largest pork producers, will also be gestation crate-free by 2017.
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Numerous corporations are including gestation crate-free pork into their supply chains. In addition to McDonald’s and Wendy’s, these companies include Burger King, Sonic, Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s and Quiznos.
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Supermarket chains are also getting on board: Safeway, Harris Teeter, and Winn-Dixie have policies to increase their gestation crate-free pork sales.
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Burger King stated, “For almost a decade, we have used our purchasing power to encourage positive steps in … the production of cage-free animal products.”
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In a news release about its animal welfare policy, fast food chain Sonic stated, “Preventing … abuse is our corporate responsibility and quite simply, the right thing to do.”
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Its Animal Welfare Goals and Missions states, “The pork industry is moving away from the practice of confining sows in gestation crates to housing them in group pens and Sonic supports this change.”
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An American Farm Bureau-funded opinion poll found that 95 percent of people believe that farm animals are well cared for but that the vast majority of people do not think gestation crates are humane.
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In the same study, consumers expressed a strong desire for high standards of farm animal care. The authors concluded that consumers, “generally view cages as inhumane.”
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The study also found that 89 percent of people believe that food companies that require farmers to treat their animals better are doing the right thing.
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Food industry consultant, Technomic, found animal welfare to be the third-most important social issue to American restaurant patrons.
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A 2010 survey by Context Marketing found that 69% of consumers will pay more for “ethically produced” foods and 91% include animal welfare in their criteria for whether something is ethically produced.
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In response to McDonald’s announcement that it will require its pork suppliers to provide plans to phase out gestation crates, the
Chicago Sun-Times
editorialized, “In Illinois, the next humane step would be a state ban on gestational cages. Pigs confined so tightly develop health problems that require antibiotics, raising human health concerns. More than that, the cages are simply cruel.”
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Mark Bittman, columnist for
The New York Times
wrote, “a gestation crate is an individual metal stall so small that the sow cannot turn around; most sows spend not only their pregnancies in crates, but most of their lives. For humans, this would qualify as “cruel and unusual punishment,” and even if you believe that pigs are somehow “inferior,” it’s hard to rationalize gestation crates once you see what they look like.”
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Concerning California’s law to criminalize gestation crates
, The New York Times
wrote, “The mantra of industrial farming has always been efficiency, but efficiency has come to mean a pregnant sow — millions of them — confined in a gestation crate barely 2 feet wide and only as long as she is.”
The Times
continued, “No philosophy can justify this kind of cruelty, not even the philosophy of cheapness.”
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Citigroup wrote in a 2008 “Restaurant Industry Initiation” report that, “There are also a number of potential headline risks that could tarnish the image of restaurant companies, including concerns over animal cruelty…”
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A 2010
New York Times
editorial stated, “There is no justification, economic or otherwise, for the abusive practice of confining animals in spaces barely larger than the volume of their bodies. Animals with more space are healthier, and they are no less productive. Industrial confinement is cruel and senseless and will turn out to be, we hope, a relatively short-lived anomaly in modern farming.”
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In making his predictions for 2011, food industry trends analyst Phil Lempert, “The Supermarket Guru,” wrote, “Move over local. Move over organic. Humane is stepping in.”
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The majority of breeding pigs used by Seaboard are confined in gestation crates. Gestation crates are individual, concrete-floored metal stalls measuring roughly 2 feet by feet, only slightly larger than the animal and so severely restrictive that the sows are unable even to turn around.
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As a result of the intensive confinement, crated sows suffer a number of welfare problems, including poor hygiene, risk of urinary infections, weakened bones, overgrown hooves, poor social interaction, lameness, behavioral restriction, and stereotypies. The European Union Scientific Veterinary Committee (SVC) criticized gestation crates in its 1997 report, “The Welfare of Intensively Kept Pigs,” and concluded: “No individual pen should be used which does not allow the sow to turn around easily.”
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There is substantial scientific evidence supporting the view that confining pigs so restrictively is detrimental to their welfare. Renowned farm animal expert Dr. Temple Grandin has repeatedly condemned gestation crates, saying, “gestation stalls have got to go.”
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Colorado State University Department of Animal Science professor Dr. Bernard Rollin states, “Animals that like to move and are built to move are surely affected negatively if they cannot do so.”
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The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production—an independent panel chaired by former Kansas Governor John Carlin that included former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman—recommended “the phase-out … of all intensive confinement systems
that restrict natural movement and normal behaviors, including swine gestation crates.”
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Iowa State University, the state school for the top pork producing state in the U.S., conducted a two-and-a-half year study supported by the USDA that concluded it can cost pork producers “11 percent less” to breed pigs without gestation crates.
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PLEASE NOTE: The HSUS is not asking for and cannot accept your proxy card.
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Please vote FOR Item 3 on the proxy received from the management, following the instructions enclosed with the proxy as to how to cast your ballot.
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