AUSTIN, Texas (January 18, 2005) Whole Foods Market®, the world's leading natural and organic foods supermarket, today announced Anne Malleau will serve as executive director of the new Animal Compassion Foundation. To help meat producers achieve a higher standard of animal welfare excellence while still maintaining economic viability, the Foundation will:
- Search the planet for innovative ranchers and farmers who raise their animals with the well-being of the animal rather than producer productivity as the primary goal
- Create a worldwide network comprised of animal compassionate ranchers and farmers to share knowledge to learn and improve together
- Collect and compile the global knowledge of animal compassionate methods into an online library to help other interested ranchers and farmers successfully convert to more animal compassionate methods
- Provide research money to animal scientists at universities around the world to address any challenges faced by producers trying to raise animals more compassionately
“The creation of the Animal Compassion Foundation offers a brighter future for farm animals, and I am proud to lead the Foundation to really make a difference in animal life on farms worldwide,” said Malleau. “This Foundation will provide producers with the information necessary to consider animal welfare issues on their farms with the same veracity they already give to food safety and quality.”
Malleau earned a Bachelor of Science in agriculture/animal science, a Masters of Science, and a MBA in agribusiness at The University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, providing her comprehensive training in animal production and in all aspects of animal welfare and on-farm food safety programs. Most recently, she served as the Communications Coordinator for the Colonel K.L. Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare in Guelph, Ontario. A former member of the Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare Steering Committee (1995-1997), she was also a presenter at the International Society for Applied Ethologists in Prague, Czech Republic (1997) and a spokesperson for the Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair (1997).
The foundation will be led by Malleau as executive director, and the board of directors includes the following Whole Foods Market team members: John Mackey, CEO; Margaret Wittenberg, vice president of marketing and public affairs and chair of the foundation; Elizabeth Fry, farm animal quality standards coordinator; Roberta Lang, general counsel; Michael Besancon, regional president for the Southern Pacific Region; Steve Keville, national meat coordinator; Theo Weening, meat coordinator for the Mid-Atlantic Region; AC Gallo, co-president; John Nicholson, meat coordinator for the North Atlantic Region; and Dan Neuerburg, meat coordinator for the Northern California and Pacific Northwest regions.
The Animal Compassion Foundation will allow ranchers and producers the opportunity to visit and learn from others who are innovating animal husbandry techniques to create the ideal environments and conditions to support every animal's physical needs, natural behaviors and well-being. Whole Foods Market invites shoppers to visit its 167 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom on Tuesday, January 25 as five percent of total company sales will be allocated to create the Foundation, which will be an independent, third party non-profit organization.
