“Kids care passionately about hens. Time for Countdown to listen! “

Kiwi children are demonstrating their passion and commitment towards protecting animals by bravely standing up to supermarket giant Countdown. From creating video messages to Countdown’s CEO to starting up a nation-wide petition demanding Countdown stop selling all cage eggs, they are making their voices heard.

At 11am today, two bold sisters, Jasmine (9) and Indigo (4), will hand back all their Countdown promotional movie cards to Countdown Ponsonby. They feel strongly about personally delivering their message that kids prefer to help real animals, over and above their love of collectables. 

Countdown markets to young people with in-store collectables, including animal cards and more recently, movie cards. They care about what kids think, but appear to be forgetting that children are real animal lovers. Countdown keeps making excuses not to help hens, but those excuses do not wash with kids.

Jasmin and Indigo are straight shooters when it comes to telling the truth about animal cruelty. Jasmin says, “Countdown, you should stop having hens like this because it’s really mean!” While Indigo adds, “I think it’s really bad because they won’t get to go outside and play.”

Meanwhile 12-year-old Maja, who has blogged about animal cruelty for some years now, was so aggrieved at the cruel treatment of caged hens, she started a petition directed at CEO Dave Chambers on change.org asking Countdown to go cage-free. This currently has over 16,000 signatures. A similar petition by a 14–year-old in the UK contributed to Tesco supermarkets announcement last week that they are going cage-free.

Maja says, “I may only be a child, but I want to make a difference. I want the public to join me in persuading Countdown to follow their parent company Woolworths in Australia and stop selling these cage eggs once and for all.”

The handover by Jasmin and Indigo coincides with a ramping up of pressure on Countdown to go cage-free. This includes poster adverts paid for by Countdown customers saying, “Countdown, we don’t want cruelty in our trolleys”, along with street stencils and a mobile billboard with sound effects.