Thank you for your time reading this. My name is Amelia and I am an economist living in cape Town. I have become more and more interested in sourcing sustainable products and usually support all of Woolies efforts to make changes for the good. I am always happy when these changes make a business case for sustainability (and hence are good for the earth or for animal rights as well as for your bottom line). It seems that more and more information is becoming available on what we are eating and the industries that unfortunately have grown to support our burgeoning population.
I am writing to you now to voice my concern over the lack of free-range organic dairy products that you stock (especially the yogurt). It has become a staple of mine and I am mortified that those cows are not free range. I think you will find that more and more people will be outraged at the organic brand not supporting pasture cows.
I encourage you to please consider free-range organic dairy products. It is just not good enough to have feed-lot dairy. I do understand that pasture reared cows will be more expensive to you but I know you can make this work. Please provide campaigns such as GRASS with a proper time-line on any efforts you have to change - in the absence of such, people might think you have no such plans.
Come on Woolies - you can lead the way with proper labeling of food.
I look forward to your response.
Yours sincerely,
Amelia
2ND LETTER TO WOOLWORTHS BY AMELIA
Hi Vinolia
Your link directs me to your corporate index. This isn't much of a response. However, on the page that you sent me to I have read about your treatment of dairy cows and the fact that you keep cows in barns which are fed a grain diet. This is exactly what my initial email concerned. I encourage you to make packaging explicit on which dairy farms are free range and which are not. I refuse to buy dairy from cows that are kept in a barn, as I am sure many others would too.
While I was on the page I also noticed the press release statement saying you are removing the rBST label - does this mean that your dairy is not rBST free any more?
Thanks you for your help,
Amelia