This blog was co-wriiten by myself and Danielle McCleery to provide readers with detailed information of our progress on our research of meat labels. 

Researching and then some…….

            Our research project has been coming along quite nicely. On Thursday, April 19th, we took a trip to Whole Foods Market in Marlton, NJ. Neither of us have ever been in a whole foods market and were quite blown away by the displays and variety of foods that they offer. We made our way over to the meat department where we were “WOWED” with quite a display of meat. The meat was not pre-packaged but rather displayed in cases. Costumers made their ways up to the counter and told the butchers what they like. The meat was labeled with individual descriptions and their ratings.

We asked the butcher some questions and he informed us that the stores do not carry a lot of 5 and 5+ rated meats yet. The only 5 and 5+ rated foods they carry right now is for chicken. The butcher explained to us how the closest to #5 rating the better conditions the animal lived in. As we took in everything the butcher told us, our minds were reeling. We were trying to figure out how we were going to proceed with our project. That’s when it hit us! We each decided to buy the best meat available and then go to Shop Rite and buy the best meat they have available. We are going to cook using both meats and ask people to be test takers. We want to test to see if consumers can taste the difference between grass fed beef from Whole foods and average beef from Shop Rite.

            We had decided to change our project once again, but this time for the last time! Now we are researching the difference between the meats sold at Whole Foods and the meats sold at Shop Rite. We took separate trips to Shop Rite and bought meat. We both spoke to the butcher’s on our separate visits (at separate stores) but received similar responses when asked where the beef comes from. Danielle’s butcher couldn’t really tell her, he had no idea. Angela’s butcher went on and on to say how Shop Rite makes sure to buy only high quality meat with no pink slime. The problem is, the question wasn’t about pink slime, the question was, “Where does the beef come from?” Angela’s butcher had no concrete answer either.

            Since Friday we have both performed individual taste testing on the meat at home. Danielle prepared burgers for her family and Angela prepared meatballs for her family. The results are pretty interesting and we will share our results very soon! We are both very busy composing more research on Shop Rite and Whole Foods as we speak. We are both very excited about our new topic and can’t wait to see where our results lead us.  

    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.