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Whole Foods Market tackles animal welfare

Date posted: April 11, 2005

Anne Malleau speaks at the Livestock Care Conference, hosted by Alberta Farm Animal Care (AFAC) in Red Deer.

The largest organic grocery store chain in North America has its sights set on new animal welfare requirements for meat suppliers – a move expected to help drive major animal welfare changes for the agriculture and food industry. Anne Malleau, Executive Director of the company’s new Animal Compassion Foundation, discusses six key challenges to implementing standards.

Austin-based Whole Foods Market is not your average food company.

Start with its uncommon beginnings:

In 1981, a huge flood sent 10 feet of water and muck down several Austin streets, destroying Whole Foods Market's first store before it had completed a year of operation. The uninsured owners were set to close up shop for good, when a large group of neighbours showed up, shovels in hand, and spurred a round-the-clock volunteer rescue effort. The store re-opened in less than a month and the experience led Whole Foods Market's co-founders to structure their business strategy around community involvement – a strategy they credit as integral to the company's dramatic rise to become North America's largest natural and organic grocery store.

Next, consider its bottom line:

Though a small company by retail sector standards, Whole Foods Market's network of 168 stores generates an average $800 per square foot of retail space – twice the industry average. Last year, it generated over 3.3 billion dollars worth of sales, while being named one of Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" for the eighth year in a row.

Follow its history:

For 25 years, Whole Foods Market has followed quality standards aimed at delivering the highest quality natural and organic foods available. It was a major player in the U.S. process of developing organic certification standards and has championed a range of sustainability issues.

Now, glimpse its future:

Whole Foods Market is aiming to grow to over 300 stores by 2010, including expansion in Canada. The company has stores in Vancouver and Toronto, and a new store will open in Oakville this May. Building on its history of driving industry innovation, the company plans to establish a new line of meat products based on high animal welfare standards – a move expected to help drive major animal welfare changes for the agriculture and food industry.

What does this latest step mean for the future of livestock care standards in North America?

Anne Malleau, Executive Director of Whole Foods Market's new Animal Compassion Foundation, discussed the company's animal welfare initiative at the recent Livestock Care Conference in Red Deer, hosted by Alberta Farm Animal Care (AFAC). She outlined six key challenges to developing enhanced standards.

Six key challenges

1. Ability to audit. "The most important thing is that we create standards that are based in science," says Malleau. "We want to make changes that are actually proven to be better for the animal – not just changes we think are better for the animal."

In 2003, the company recruited experts and stakeholders as advisors in a process that led to the development of a 15-stage plan for setting up welfare standards for various species. It started with ducks and is now at stage 13 with that species. Whole Foods Market has also started work on swine, lamb and beef cattle, and plans to have standards in place for all species sold in its stores by 2008. "In developing these standards, we have brought in animal scientists for each species, animal rights organizations, animal welfare organizations, producers and a third party auditor," says Malleau. "At the end of the day, if you don’t have something that you can audit, then you don’t have anything."

2. Cost of production. A major challenge for any new standards that require producer participation is generating incentive at that level – a challenge that Whole Foods understands, says Malleau. "We recognize that welfare costs money. So with our new standards, the idea is that any producer that meets the standards will receive an additional premium, as a profit-sharing approach.'

Susan Church, Manager of Alberta Farm Animal Care (AFAC).

Currently, all meat sold by Whole Foods Market is marketed under the company's "natural" line brand. The standards for this line, which centre on organic criteria, do include some animal welfare criteria. However, following a confrontation with an animal rights organization at one of its shareholder meetings, the company delved deeper into the animal welfare issue and decided to establish the second "compassion" product line to feature enhanced welfare standards. "Our goal is to have the two lines run concurrently, and each year have the proportion of compassionately raised meat increase," says Malleau. "The enhanced line will be sold at a premium, so we felt a premium should also go to the producers that are willing to raise their bar to meet this standard."

3. Disease risk. Another important issue at the production level is disease risk, she says. "Once you start looking at alternative welfare systems, often you start having problems with disease initially. A perfect process requires having the right animal on the right system and the right feed – that takes some work and adjustments. When you take animals selected for intensive systems and then throw them into alternative systems, that doesn’t always work."

4. Consumer willingness to pay. While Whole Foods Market believes in the market opportunity for the enhanced product line, it realizes establishing steady demand will take careful planning. “There are all sorts of consumers that are very supportive of higher standards, but it's well documented that what consumers say they want and what they're actually willing to pay for are often different," says Malleau. "I think we’ll be able to get consumers to buy the product initially, but the challenge is to get them to do that frequently and on a steady basis."

5. Producer adoption. At the end of the day, everything depends on producer adoption, she acknowledges. "We need producers who are willing to try new things, and as a company we need to be prepared to help them through some of the issues that arise in setting new standards."

6. Constant improvement. Blazing a new trail is one thing, but Malleau emphasizes that long-term success depends on ongoing improvement. "At the end of this first set of standards, we don’t expect to that we're going to have the answers to everything. But we're committed to continuous improvement and having these standards as a living document."

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