This Is the Latest Grocery Item to Go "Cage-Free" — Food News

Tiny cardboard boxes of Barnum's Animal Crackers first appeared on store shelves in 1902, and each one was decorated with pictures of some of the animals that audiences could see at P.T. Barnum's own Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. With the exception of some of the illustrated animals, the packaging has remained mostly unchanged for the last century — at least until the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) got involved.

It took them more than 100 years, but PETA finally noticed that each box looked like a little train's boxcar, and each of the two-dimensional animals looked like they were in equally two-dimensional cages. That's not the case any more: PETA wrote a strongly worded letter to cracker-maker Nabisco's parent company, Mondelez, and now those animals will be TOTALLY UNCAGED.

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