Out of Harm's Safeway

Safeway agrees to animal-welfare standards for some products

Posted at 7:02 AM on 12 Feb 2008

One of the largest grocery store chains in the United States, Safeway, has agreed to increase animal-welfare standards for some of the animal-derived products sold at its stores. Chickens and pigs were the focus of the most recent efforts pressuring the chain to adopt humane standards. Safeway has pledged to purchase more pork from suppliers that have started phasing out the most restrictive kind of crates that don't even allow pigs to turn around; the chain has also promised to buy more eggs from suppliers that don't use the most-cramped kind of chicken cages. Safeway also said it will source more poultry from companies that use a method of execution considered more humane than industry-standard electrocution and throat-slitting. "Safeway's new policies represent important progress on basic animal-welfare issues and will positively affect many thousands of animals," said the Humane Society's Paul Shapiro.

sources: East Bay Business Times, Food Production Daily, PETA, The Wall Street Journal (access ain't free)

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Comments: (2 comments)

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Take that Tesco!

Take that Tesco! Recently Tesco, a major UK super market, has been selling whole chickens for only 2 pounds, ($4.50). Most of the chickens are from very horrid places, with much abuse!

I am glad there is a step in the right direction! - Good for Safeways.

I only have this one life, so I am going to try my very best to make a positive change. --- The Happy & Healthy Vegan ---

by javaearth at 10:11 AM on 12 Feb 2008

Great

Safeway also seems to be offering more vegetarian and vegan foods lately also.

This is a good step for them but I wish they and other conventional grocery stores would have policies to only sell free-range animal products like some other more progressive retailers have done but that's probably not realistic to expect them to be so advanced. Customers will complain about price, but in the long run it would cheaper for us all if factory farming was banned. Climate change, bird flu, mad cow disease, salmonella, polluted waterways, obesity, and so are all pretty expensive problems.

by amc89 at 12:53 PM on 15 Jul 2008

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