Park Slope Food Coop Animal Welfare Committee

The Thanksgiving Guide, including both animal welfare information for turkeys and plant-based roast options, is available at the co-op and online. You can find the Thanksgiving at the Coop Guide here online . It is also listed on the AWC Guides tab on this blog, where you can find all of the guides the Animal Welfare Committee creates.

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!

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

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...

As mentioned in last update, we've collaborated with PSFC staff to put together an animal welfare flyer outlining parameters of turkey treatment in addition to the multiple veggie turkey alternatives the co-op carries. You can find the Choosing Your Thanksgiving Dinner flyer as a pdf here, and at the co-op both at the turkey case and in front of the freezer cases in aisle 3 where the Field Roasts and Tofurkeys are! There is what seems to be a a discrepancy between this flyer and the co-op's flyer pertaining to Plainville Farms.  They are listed on the co-op's flyer as "free-range" but are a but NO under our "Able to forage outdoors/pasture-raised" column.  This is because the birds are housed in indoor facilities so they are not pasture-raised outdoors, although technically they are "free-range" because they are not caged in the indoor facility.  We made this distinction in the interest of fully transparency for animal welfare conditions...

Hello Readers, Here is your (late) update from our 10/22 meeting! But first, we want you to know that we've been working with the staff members Bill Malloy, Joe Holtz and Joe Szladek to put together animal welfare information outlining how the turkeys the co-op sells are treated .  We're hoping to have that finalized shortly and we want to thank the staffers for being so generous with their time and information.  The information we assemble will be a handout distributed at the PSFC so keep an eye out for it in the literature dispensers and we will try to include it on the blog as well.    photo by Slideshow Bruce Updates: (No) Animal Testing List -  This has been moving a little slowly but we're still gathering info, researching and updating the spreadsheet.  Please see the Animal Testing Co-Op Product Info page (there's a tab at the top of the blog, too) to see where we are now.  If you have questions about a specific product, please ...