Kristin Bauer Crying Foul Over Fowl Treatment

Kristin Bauer, best known for her role as Pam in the True Blood series, is up in arms against fast-food giant McDonald’s. The Wisconsin native is known as an animal rights activist, and earlier this year, championed the cause of Tony, a Siberian-Bengal tiger who had been cooped up at a Louisiana truck stop for the past ten years.

This time, Bauer is crying foul over the cruel treatment of hens that produce eggs for popular McDonald’s breakfast staple, the Egg McMuffin. A video of Sparboe Farms facilities in Iowa, Minnesota, and Colorado filmed by an undercover investigator for Mercy for Animals showed that the egg-producing hens were jam-packed into tiny wire cages for their entire lives, with no room to spread their wings or even move around. Dead hens were simply left in the cages to decompose.

Spurred by the public backlash after Mercy for Animals investigation was featured on Good Morning America and 20/20, McDonald’s dropped Sparboe Farms in mid-November 2011. However, the inhumane practices at the Sparboe Farms facilities appear to continue unabated. Bauer, together with celebrities Ryan Gosling, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Deschanel, Alicia Silverstone, Maria Menounos, Kristin Bauer, Ed Begley, Jr., Wendie Malick, Bryan Adams and Steve-O are doing their part to make sure that the cruelty against the caged hens remains in the spotlight.

Earlier this week, the group of concerned celebrities fired off a letter to McDonald’s, calling on the firm to ensure that it purchased eggs only from suppliers which treated their hens in a humane manner. Pointing out that McDonald’s was the largest egg buyer in the United States, their letter said that the fast-food chain “has the power – and the moral responsibility – to ensure that the eggs in its Egg McMuffins don’t come from rotten egg suppliers.”