Park Slope Food Coop Animal Welfare Committee

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...

We have an updated Dairy Milk Guide up on our blog and in the folders outside the milk case (near the butter)!  You can find this guide and all current guides here on the blog at the AWC Guides tab located at the top of the blog.   (Current guides:  Eggs: Animal Testing on Products; Dairy Milk) What's up our sleeve?  We'll be finalizing a Chicken Guide soon!  Keep an eye on Twitter and the blog! The seasonal Turkey/Seasonal Veggie Thanksgiving Options guide will also be happening this year - keep an eye out on Twitter and the blog! We will offer another Eating Vegan Workshop in 2015 but we're waiting until the large Meeting Room is available for booking again (it's currently slated for construction) so stay tuned for the 2015 date! Jesse, on behalf of the Animal Welfare Committee

This meeting the squad checked in our work calendar for the remainder of 2013. What will we be doing for the rest of 2013?  The Milk Guide is done and will be posted to the blog shortly.  The laminated version is already up in the co-op!   We'll be starting the Chicken Guide next   We're considering whether we have the bandwith to commit to a seasonal Turkey Guide , as we did last year Some items are already in our pipeline for 2014: A workshop for those interested in eating vegan - this was a request from our co-op membership when we hosted the committee info sessions last year.  Scheduled tenatatively for January 2014, we'll be gathering resources for the "Interested in Eating Vegan?" workshop Beef Guide - we're slated to start the Beef Guide in 2014 We also discussed a Communication Checklist for the information guides we produce.  When we come out with  a new info guide, we want you to know!  So we brainst...

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