Park Slope Food Coop Animal Welfare Committee

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

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

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...

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