Media Release

3 March 2004 US Food Chain Enters UK with Animal Welfare as a Priority Whole Foods Demands Highest-Ever Standards! The gauntlet has been thrown down by quality US supermarket chain, Whole Foods Market, with its recent purchase of the UK Fresh & Wild supermarket chain. Whole Foods Market has made animal welfare one of their top priorities and its high standards expose the 'animal friendly' claims of other British supermarkets as being little more than marketing hype. With 145 stores in the US, annual growth of 21 per cent and a turnover approaching $4 billion, Whole Foods recently transformed its attitude to animals after a two-year long campaign against it by animal group Viva!USA, founded by the Bristol-based British group, Viva! Late last year Whole Foods' CEO, John Mackey, conceded that Viva! was correct that Whole Foods Market's standards needed to be higher in order to maintain good animal welfare standards. Following discussions with Viva!'s US campaigns director, lauren Ornelas, Mackey researched the issues on his own and ultimately took the step of becoming vegan once he became convinced of the inherent animal cruelty involved in modern livestock production and slaughter. In a press statement issued by Viva!USA, Mackey stated that Whole Foods Market would seek animal welfare improvements from its duck meat supplier along with an end to that supplier's involvement in the foie gras market. Since then, Whole Foods Market has been working with their suppliers and animal welfare organizations, including Viva!USA to draw up new and vastly improved 'animal compassionate' standards, beginning with ducks. Access to fresh air, water for swimming, the ability to roost and to forage are amongst the requirements, all of which are entirely denied most UK ducks. "Whole Foods is helping to create a paradigm shift in the way farm animals are treated", says John Mackey. "We don't want incremental change that leaves the industrial farming model still operable. We are committing to a revolution. We are starting with ducks and are going to go on to all other species. We intend to bring all interested parties to the table, including animal welfare bodies". Viva!, of course, will be amongst them! Speaking from Bristol, Juliet Gellatley, Viva!'s international director says: "This is a momentous victory for Viva! and we congratulate John Mackey's honesty. We just wish other CEOs would also admit the obvious. With Whole Foods intention to bring similar standards to Britain, this could certainly be a revolution for farmed animals. It will also expose as utterly hypocritical the claims of our mainstream supermarkets to care about animal welfare. They are the driving force behind factory farming, which they cloak with spin and phoney assurance schemes, as Viva! has exposed time and again. "Every time we go behind the closed doors of a factory farm and produce footage showing just how appalling the conditions are for animals, our evidence is met with denials. Our recent expose of conditions on a Tesco pig farm was dismissed with the claim that the RSPCA had inspected the animals and found no abuses. This was entirely untrue and Tesco know this. They also know it is impossible for anyone to check, so secretive is modern farming", concludes Ms Gellatley. For further information contact Tony Wardle or Juliet Gellatley on 0117 944 1000 Other Viva! campaigns. Viva! virtually ended the sale of 'exotic' meats such as kangaroo, ostrich and emu, when 1,500 supermarkets emptied their shelves. Brought the UK ostrich industry to its knees. Viva! exposed the dreadful conditions inside Bernard Matthews' turkey factory farms. Turkey sales dropped. Viva! was the first to expose the factory farming of ducks in Britain, ended the painful practice of debeaking and brought about welfare improvements. Viva! campaign against ritual religious slaughter helped to end 'home slaughter'. Viva!'s Pig in Hell campaign revealed the disgrace of modern pig production with covert footage of 30 plus farms. Pork sales declined. Viva! Poland credited by the country's chief vet with slashing live horse exports to Italy for meat.