We did it! Our 71,000 signature petition was handed in to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on Friday 25 February.

More than a dozen of us gathered in Westminster to hand over our ’71K’ petition following a seven-month campaign. A huge THANK YOU to everyone who has signed the petition, shared it and donated towards our The Foul Truth campaign. You can see below how stunning the hand-in was.

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Let’s recap…

In November 2020, we released our second undercover investigation at Gressingham Foods, this time, inside their slaughterhouse. This was the first time that duck slaughter had been captured on camera in such horrifying detail and scale. Hundreds of ducks were killed during the filming and countless violations were recorded. In just 12 hours of filming, 15 Red Tractor and government regulation breaches were seen.

The tragic treatment of ducks inside Gressingham Foods’ slaughterhouse went against the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (England) Regulations 2015, the very legislation in place to ‘protect’ animals at their time of slaughter. Animal Justice Project understands that no animals should be killed in slaughterhouses, but Gressingham violated even the poorest of ‘protections’ that these ducks should have legally had. There were clear illegalities.

The Crown Prosecution Service are responsible for carrying forward prosecutions once the law is broken, yet they simply stated that it would “not be in the public interest” to do so. The CPS has allowed Gressingham Foods to face no repercussions but we will not be silenced.

The hand-in included a huge eight-foot high banner and our beautifully-designed ’71K’ props, created by artist Verna Poppy

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On the same day as the petition hand-in, we ran an online campaign, targeting the CPS’ social media platforms. A special thank you to those who took part, it was a fantastic success!

Over 1,000 actions were taken by our supporters on the day, including 842 tweets plus thousands of retweets.

You helped reach tens of thousands of people to show them #TheFoulTruth!

This is not the end. We will be continuing to contact the CPS demanding that they prosecute Gressingham Foods. Together we can get #JusticeForDucks and highlight the complete failure by the UK government to protect farmed animals.

As always,

For the animals.

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