This blog post was created to inform readers about our research project and the collaboration involved in the project. This post was co-written by myself and Danielle McCleery.  

    So far, our project is coming along great. At first, we had a very broad topic in mind and Professor Mangini helped us make it more specific. We were interested in food labels on meat and what they mean to consumers. This topic was broad because we would have to cover every label in each different supermarket. Narrowing our project down to Whole Foods Stores gave us a focus point and a finite source to go in depth on.
      Looking over the Whole Foods website in class last week gave us a lot of information. We learned about their 5- step rating process for meat and poultry. Getting a good understanding of some of the workers of Whole Foods and their meat is important for us to ask the right questions in order to receive information useful to our project. Using those questions, we are going to visit a Whole Foods store and interview a butcher and another employee.
Our collaboration process has been going great so far. We have been emailing each other back and forth and will be setting up a Google doc next. Up through this point our process has been very dialogic. We have shared in all the responsibilities and are working very well together!

  This blog is all about the research we have found for our research project thus far. This post was co-written by myself and Danielle McCleery.
For our project we are researching meat and poultry labels used at Whole Foods markets. For this assignment we will be visiting a Whole Foods market and speaking to the store butcher and perhaps a few consumers. To begin our research, we went to Whole Foods website where we were able to find a significant amount of information about the meanings of different labels.

            On the Whole Foods website we have learned that Whole Foods market offers step-rated, organic, grass-fed, or grain-finished beef. The site also offers a description of each of these types of meat. Whole foods has partnered up with Global Animal to certify their producer’s animal welfare practices and provide this information to their consumers. Whole Foods now offers Global Animal’s 5-step Animal Welfare Rating Standards in most of its stores in the United States and Canada. This step-rated program rates how pigs, chicken, and cattle are raised for meat. On an interesting side note, Global Animal Partnership is in the process of creating a step-rated program for turkey, lamb, and others. Here is a look at what the 5-Step Animal Welfare Rating Standards looks like with a brief description:

Before we make the trip to Whole Foods we will research this 5-step Animal Welfare Rating Standards more in depth on the Global Animal Partnership website. We have found our research thus far very interesting and are intrigued to see where further research will lead.