Take a step toward animal welfare at our meat counter

By Nancy Van Patten, Marketing/Food Writer

So you’re standing at the meat counter at Whole Foods Market Johns Creek. You’d like to get some steaks for Saturday night, when company’s coming over for dinner and you want to utilize that fancy smoker you talked yourself into over the Fourth of July weekend.  You take a step closer to the case (maybe whip out those reading glasses?) and read the tiny sign on the meat that looks like this:

And you may wonder “what in the world does that little green bar at the bottom mean?” Or “what exactly is ‘Local?’ Is that local to the store or local to the distributor?” Or even “why isn’t this steak on sale?”

Now I can’t help you with question number three (although if you follow us on Twitter @wholefoodsjc or on Facebook at Whole Foods Market Johns Creek, or sign up for our newsletters at www.wholefoodsmarket.com you may get a great scoop on meat sales) but I can offer you some clarity on what the rest of the sign means. This year we’ve made some improvements in the way we communicate to our customers about where we source our meat products.   With more verbiage on our signs you can be assured exactly where your meat comes from and how it was raised.

In the upper left corner, you’ll read the country of origin and if possible, the exact ranch or farm that the animal came from. In this case, the steak came from Will Harris’ farm in Bluffton, Georgia.  Since this beef is from Georgia, we add a “LOCAL” logo to the upper right section of the signage.  And as our store is located in the Peach State, “local” means any product from the state of Georgia (and a narrowly designated stretch of land extending into a couple of neighboring states.) Obviously, the middle of the sign designates the product and the price, and sometimes we include a bit of information about the product—in this case, that the beef was grass-fed.

Now about that colored strip across the bottom. In the lower left corner, you’ll see a logo for Global Animal Partnership. This is a non-profit organization that brings together ranchers, farmers, scientists and animal advocates that want to improve the welfare of animals in agriculture. They’ve come up with a way to do that through their 5-Step Animal Welfare Rating Standards, which recognizes and rewards producers for the way they treat their animals, maintain and improve their facilities, and keep consumers informed about the production systems they support. The Global Animal Partnership sends trained third-party auditors (in other words, experts that are not paid by Global Animal Partnership) to the farms and ranches in all four seasons and assesses the way the animals are raised, fed and processed. By working with these independent certifiers, farmers, consumers and retailers (like us) can be assured that the Step ratings you see on the right-hand side of this sign are fair, accurate and free of conflict of interest.

And just what do these Step Ratings mean? We have a great brochure that’s available on our Meat Counter (or ask one of our Team Members) but here’s a quick rundown:

• Step 1 (orange strip)—No crowds, cages or crates. Animals get to move around and stretch their legs.
• Step 2 (orange strip)—Enriched environment. Animals are provided with enrichments that encourage behavior that’s natural to them — like a bale of straw for chickens to peck at, a bowling ball for pigs to shove around, or a sturdy object for cattle to rub against.
• Step 3 (yellow strip)—Enhanced outdoor access. Pigs and chickens might live in buildings, but each and every one of them have access to the outdoors.
• Step 4 (green strip)—Pasture-centered. Pigs get to wallow, chickens get to forage, cows get to roam.
• Step 5 & 5 Plus (green strip)—Animal centered; no physical alterations prohibited. Animals keep all their body parts just where they like them. 5 Plus means the animal was born and spent its entire life on one farm.

Why do we care so much about where our meat comes from? We want to bring you the best product possible. We believe that the healthier the animal, the better the meat will taste. For a way more comprehensive education about our meat program that we have room to do here, check out http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/meat/index.php.  You’ll feel better about your meat choices—which will make that New York Strip even more delicious this Saturday night.