Whole Foods Market, Inc.(Nasdaq: WFMI) is celebrating its 25th year of operations by establishing the Animal Compassion Foundation. The company, the world's leading natural/ organic foods supermarket, says it will donate five percent of total global sales on January 25 to launch the foundation.
The independent, non-profit organization will provide education and research services to assist and inspire ranchers and meat producers around the world to achieve a higher standard of animal welfare excellence while still maintaining economic viability. "By creating the Foundation, Whole Foods Market is pioneering an entirely new way for people to relate to farm animals — with the animals' welfare becoming the most important goal," said John Mackey, chairman, chief executive officer and co-founder of Whole Foods Market. "There are many universities and organizations out there doing research making production systems more productive and profitable, but there is no one place where meat producers can go to learn about making their processes more compassionate. We are out to change that with this Foundation."
The Animal Compassion Foundation will allow ranchers and producers the opportunity to visit and learn from others who are innovating animal husbandry techniques to create the ideal environments and conditions to support every animal's physical needs, natural behaviors and well-being. The Foundation's tasks will include:
1. Searching the planet for innovative animal compassionate ranchers and farmers whose methods can be studied.
2. Creating a worldwide network comprised of animal compassionate ranchers and farmers to share knowledge to learn and improve together.
3. Collecting and compiling the global knowledge of animal compassionate methods into an online library to help other interested ranchers and farmers successfully convert to animal compassionate methods.
4. Providing research money to animal scientists at universities around the world to conduct scientific studies of more compassionate animal raising techniques to address the hundreds of challenges currently faced by ranchers and farmers trying to raise animals more compassionately.
In December 2003, Whole Foods Market began a rigorous process of creating enhanced farm animal treatment standards above and beyond the strict animal welfare already required by the company. To be completed by 2008, the standards will cover every species sold by the company. The standards are being developed with leading animal welfare advocacy groups such as: The Humane Society of the United States; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; Viva! USA; Animal Welfare Institute; Animal Rights International; animal welfare scientists including Dr. Ian Duncan of the University of Guelph and Dr. Renee Bergeron of Universite Laval; and Steritech, an independent third-party animal welfare auditor.
"Whole Foods Market helped spark the rising consumer interest and the explosive industry growth of natural and organic foods. As we celebrate our 25th year, the Animal Compassion Foundation will give us the opportunity to stay true to our company's core values which have led us to this endeavor while helping us continue to be responsible tenants of the planet," Mackey said. "We hope that the new animal compassionate standards and the knowledge collected by the Animal Compassion Foundation will eventually become the global standards embraced and utilized by every animal welfare group, animal producer and food retailer."
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