Park Slope Food Coop Animal Welfare Committee

By Piper Hoffman Do you want to know whether the meat, dairy, or eggs you are buying came from animals who were treated humanely? You won’t find the answers on the packaging. Recent revelations about the conditions Perdue’s chickens suffer illustrate the problem: their “labels carry a seal of approval from the Department of Agriculture asserting that the bird was ‘raised cage free,’ and sometimes ‘humanely raised,’” Nicholas Kristof wrote in The New York Times. (“Abusing Chickens We Eat,” December 3, 2014.) Those descriptions are misleading at best. Coop members, however, can get reliable, detailed information that shoppers at conventional grocery stores don’t have. The Animal Welfare Committee publishes Guides for members about a number of product categories that detail the treatment of animals by the Coop’s vendors. With a Guide in hand it is easy to choose the most humane option the Coop offers and to avoid the others. The Members’ Guide to Coop Chicken is the latest example. ...

It's that time of year again! Thanksgiving is a little over a week away and turkeys are starting to appear in the Coop's meat case. Check out our  2015 Thanksgiving Guide  to learn more about the welfare of the turkeys we have available this year - as well as plant-based Thanksgiving options!

by Kama Einhorn, Animal Welfare Committee You may have noticed a "certified humane" logo on some coop meats—but only a few. Why are there plenty of small, local family farmers raising animals well, but so few humane-certified items available in the coop—or in any store or restaurant? Here’s the four-part problem: All farmers must use USDA-approved slaughterhouses. Farmers cannot legally sell meat unless it’s been “harvested” at an approved “processing plant” (otherwise, they can only eat it themselves or give it away). Obviously, it’s crucial for a government agency to ensure that disease is kept out of the public food supply, but the USDA is a bloated bureaucracy whose rules favor factory farms (with fast “line speeds,” which is poor for humane slaughter) and help them to thrive. And factory farms are responsible for E. coli, Salmonella outbreaks and mad cow disease (the USDA lets factory farms feed dead, diseased cows to living cows). Small farmers are limited...

by  Deborah Diamant, Animal Welfare Committee Are you looking for a unique day trip to flee the city with your friends or family in tow? The Animal Welfare Committee encourages you to visit one of the several farm animal sanctuaries located within a few hours of the Coop before the summer ends. Some are even reachable via mass transit! Spending a day at a farm animal sanctuary is not just a humane alternative to visits to zoos and circuses--they enable us to interact with animals up close in an environment where they receive proper care. While stroking the radiant coat of a Holstein cow and standing among frolicking goats, we observe up close each animal’s unique personality. This simply is not possible through a cage in a zoo and from a seat in a circus. The purpose of farm animal sanctuaries, though, is to provide a caring environment where animals mistreated as products in commercial farms can recover and live the remainder of their lives free of cages and substandard...

THE APPLICATION PERIOD HAS ENDED.  IN LATE JULY/EARLY AUGUST,  WE WILL CONTACT THOSE CANDIDATES WE WOULD LIKE TO MEET IN PERSON TO SCHEDULE AN INTERVIEW. Like what we do and want to get involved? Apply to join the Animal Welfare Committee! We're looking to add a few members to our very active committee. Below you can read an overview of what the Animal Welfare Committee's work entails and how to apply for the Animal Welfare Committee squad as your coop workshift. All applications are  due by July 1  and we are hoping to meet with candidates who are a good fit during  our August 24 meeting  (7:00-8:30 p.m.), if possible. Please review the following points before applying.  Please know  our mission  before applying.   The Animal Welfare Committee provides transparent animal welfare information about the co-op’s products.   Please take a look at the  info sheets  we produce.   This is a large part of w...

A little known fact about the egg industry is the number of male chicks who are killed in the process of producing eggs.  How does that happen?   Almost all hens in commercial operations are purchased from hatcheries that dispose of male chicks shortly after hatching since they only need the birds who will lay eggs – the females. The hatcheries need to wait for the eggs to hatch to “sex” the birds and identify males and females.  Females get sent to egg industry vendors and males get destroyed.  Methods of disposal include suffocation, gassing and grinding alive. These male chicks are not used as “meat” birds because their bodies are not as profitable as conventional broiler chickens (birds bred for and used as “meat” birds) and therefore have very little use and value to the agricultural industry.  The killing of male chicks is an unfortunate side effect of egg production. You may notice that there is a column on our Egg Guide that asks vendors “Fate...

[From the December 25, 2014 edition of the Linewaiter's Gazette ] By Kama Einhorn, Animal Welfare Committee The welfare of animals involved in food production has been a major concern for many since the beginning of our industrialized food system. Coop members are, of course, no exception. The Coop’s Animal Welfare Committee seeks to address these concerns by educating and providing facts to our fellow Coop members about what’s happening on the farms from which our animal products originate. In the 1960s, as factory farming became increasingly standard practice in the UK, the British government commissioned an investigation into the welfare of “intensively farmed animals.” Soon after, they created the Farm Animal Welfare Council, which developed a set of guidelines now known in the animal welfare movement as the Five Freedoms: Freedom from thirst and hunger: by ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigor. Freedom from discomfort: b...

Two Coop vendors recently went head-to-head in a lawsuit over the meaning of the word "humane." For members who want to know more about the meat they buy, here is the story. In 2003 Coop members voted to stop buying foie gras, which consists of the diseased livers of ducks and geese who were force-fed through long, hard pipes to swell their livers eight or more times their normal size. Before 2003 we bout foie gras from vendor D'Artagnan, which sold foie gras made by Hudson Valley Foie Gras (HVFG). The Coop still sells meat from chickens, pigs, lambs, rabbits, cows, turkeys, wild boars, and ducks from D’Artagnan HVFG has been calling its foie gras humane, which stuck in the craw of another Coop provider, Regal Vegan, which makes Faux Gras. Regal Vegan made an unfair competition claim, arguing that by calling its product humane, Hudson Valley was stealing business from Regal Vegan’s Faux Gras -- which is free of animal products and so indisputably the...

Just in time for Thanksgiving, the Animal Welfare Committee's 2013 Turkey Guide is here! We contacted the Coop's turkey vendors and interviewed them about  the conditions their birds live in, then organized the information in a handy chart for members. The Guide also explains the labels commonly found on meat products, like free-range and pasture-raised, and describes the festive turkey alternatives that the Coop carries. The Turkey Guide is laminated next to the turkeys, and take-home versions are also available there. You can find a larger version of the Guide online by clicking on the AWC Guides tab at the top of this page, and then clicking on Buying Turkeys at the Coop. Piper on behalf of the Animal Welfare Committee

Our new milk guide is here! The Members' Guide to Coop Milk provides a wealth of information about the welfare of the cows and goats who produce the milk sold at the coop, along with definitions of the terms on dairy product labels like "Pasture-Raised" and "All Natural." Like all our guides, the milk guide is organized in an easy-to-read chart. You can find it laminated near the dairy case at the coop. Piper on behalf of the Animal Welfare Committee

At our end-of-July meeting we discussed the final steps for producing our Dairy Milk Guide and Plant-Based Milks Guide. We brain-stormed ideas for promoting our informative Guides to Coop members, including a link from the Coop’s website to this blog. We also planned subjects and discussed the schedule for upcoming Guides. Piper, for the Animal Welfare Committee 

This month we set up the production schedule for layout of our new Milk Guide, including the plant-based milk alternatives information that will appear at our blog and in a small handout available in print in the Coop. We participated in a brainstorming session about a logo/identity for the committee and will reach out to another Coop committee and discuss their helping with our logo production. We also prepared a preliminary outline and promotion calendar for our January 2014 workshop, "Eating Vegan at the Coop." Deborah, on behalf of the Animal Welfare Committee

Further editing of our milk guide continued at this month's squad meeting. Additional areas for research were identified and a plan for where to place the guide in the coop was outlined.   We completed the initial planning of our guide about chicken and research tasks were assigned.   A discussion of branding of our committee took place. A logo will be designed and used in the future so coop members will easily recognize resources produced by our committee.   Deborah, on behalf of the Animal Welfare Committee

We spent the majority of this month's meeting focused on the content of our guide to milk at the coop, which will include information about dairy and non-dairy milks. We expect to have this guide completed soon after our June squad meeting.   Feedback was shared about our guides that have already gone to press and now appear in the aisles of the coop. We are pleased to see coop members reading the guides and we welcome your feedback at psfcanimals@gmail.com .   Final edits to a Linewaiter's Gazette article on animal testing were made.     Deborah, on behalf of the Animal Welfare Committee  

Did you know we are publishing and placing our guides in the coop's aisles? The Animal Welfare Committee provides clear, concise, and unbiased information for PSFC members in the following guides, which you can download from our blog or find in print when you next visit the coop. Guide to Animal Testing (last updated April 17, 2013)   Guide to Coop Eggs (last updated March 20, 2013)