SHOP WHOLE FOODS MARKET® JANUARY 24 TO HELP IMPROVE FARM ANIMAL QUALITY OF LIFE
Company Donating 5% of Day’s Global Sales to Support Non-Profit Animal Compassion Foundation
(Austin, Texas...January 5, 2006) Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFMI) announces that it will donate five percent of its total global sales on Tuesday, January 24 to the Animal Compassion Foundation (www.animalcompassionfoundation.org). The Animal Compassion Foundation is an independent non-profit 501c(3) organization created by Whole Foods Market in January 2005 that works to improve the lives of farm animals by serving as an interactive resource for ranchers, meat producers and researchers to learn and share practices that support the animals’ physical needs, behaviors and well-being.
“The quest for cheap food in our society has created an industrialized model of meat production in which animals are bred and raised in conditions focused on efficiency rather than on the basic needs of the animal,” said John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market. “As another important milestone on our path to being a responsible tenant of the planet, Whole Foods Market created the Animal Compassion Foundation to act as a forum in which meat producers can learn, share and be inspired to ensure animal welfare as a top priority.”
Whole Foods Market has consistently gone to great lengths to set strict requirements for food safety and high standards for animal welfare in its Natural Meat Program. The launch of the Animal Compassion Foundation in 2005 parallels the development of Whole Foods Market’s next generation of meat standards – which will include the Animal Compassionate Standards, requiring that environments and conditions provide enhanced support of animals’ physical, emotional, and behavioral needs. In the future, as the specific standards for each species are completed and the labeling logistics are finalized, producers who successfully meet the specific Animal Compassionate Standards will be able to label their products with a designation.
“The Foundation was created to help producers make the transition to these higher levels of animal welfare that we are encouraging producers throughout the world to achieve. Over the long run, with access to the information available through the Animal Compassion Foundation, we hope more producers will see the intrinsic merits of raising animals in a compassionate manner and will be inspired to follow this lead,” added Mackey.
Five percent of the day’s sales at Whole Foods Market on January 24 will be used to continue the Foundation’s work providing the opportunity for producers and researchers to learn, share ideas, and collaborate on projects that focus on animals’ welfare and well-being. All money generated through the Global Five Percent Day will go solely to research projects and on-farm experiments, not to Foundation administrative purposes.
“The Foundation’s goal is to bring animal welfare to the forefront by utilizing information and skills from the past, enhanced by present and future innovations,” said Anne Malleau, executive director of the Animal Compassion Foundation. “The Foundation will act as an interactive center for knowledge gleaned from research and farm animal producers to enable producers to see the intrinsic merits of raising animals in a compassionate matter and to improve the lives of animals on farms.”
The Foundation’s focus is in four primary areas:
- Searching the globe for ideas and innovations from ranchers and farmers who are raising their farm animals compassionately
- Creating a worldwide network of animal compassionate producers to share knowledge and improve practices
- Collecting knowledge of compassionate husbandry methods in an online library to assist interested producers to successfully adopt these techniques
- Providing research money to producers for on-farm research and to animal scientists to seek solutions to current husbandry issues
About Whole Foods Market®
Founded in 1980 in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Market (www.wholefoodsmarket.com) is the world’s leading natural and organic foods supermarket and America’s first national certified organic grocer. In fiscal year 2005, the company had sales of $4.7 billion and currently has 180 stores in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The Whole Foods Market motto, “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet”™ captures the company’s mission to find success in customer satisfaction and wellness, employee excellence and happiness, enhanced shareholder value, community support and environmental improvement. Whole Foods Market, Harry’s Farmers Market®, and Fresh & Wild® are trademarks owned by Whole Foods Market IP, LP. Whole Foods Market employs more than 38,000 team members and has been ranked for eight consecutive years as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in America by Fortune magazine. The company founded the Animal Compassion Foundation in 2005 to help improve farm animal quality of life.
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Nancy Civetta
Civetta Comunicazioni
90 Hamilton Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
T: 617/577-8098
F: 617/876-9233
E: nancy@civettacom.com
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