In August of this year, Morrisons denied trying to silence Doug Maw. It even claimed that it encouraged Doug to post his views on a Morrisons’ Facebook page.
Now he has been fired after sharing his views. Doug is an outspoken opponent of animal abuse and he has been punished for it.
Morrisons justified dismissing Doug on three grounds:
- That him speaking with the press broke confidentiality with Morrisons, as he did not obtain written permission from the company to do this.
- That the protest he organised was intentionally harmful to the interests of the company and misrepresented the Morrisons brand.
- That he breached the Respect in the Workplace Policy and Social Media Policy.
Luckily Doug does not have to face this alone.
His courage, and dedication to standing up for broiler chickens when Morrisons won’t lift a finger, is inspiring to us at The Humane League UK. We will stand by him.
Doug will not be silenced, and recently joined in with our volunteers to protest against Morrisons this Halloween.
Morrisons claims that it “cares deeply about animal welfare”, yet has made no real effort to help the fast-growing ‘FrankenChickens’ in its care. Those that have highlighted this hypocrisy, like Doug, have been punished or ignored.
Morrisons must follow in the footsteps of Waitrose and M&S and sign onto the Better Chicken Commitment if it wants to claim animal welfare matters to them. It must stop profiting from these unnaturally huge birds, whose lives are short, miserable and painful.
However, we can help stop this.
Doug will continue to fight for these innocent and desperate animals and so will we.
Join us in our fight against animal abuse by signing up to receive our emails, and we'll send you quick actions you can take to help animals once or twice a week.
Cordelia Britton
