I looked at the Whole Foods website where they talk about the meats they offer:
We offer organic meats, raised humanely and processed with a measure of compassion, custom cut to your specification when you want it ... it's all about quality and freshness and caring -- farmers and ranchers caring about the welfare of the animal, processors caring about the quality of the product, and our butchers caring about you.
"A measure of compassion." They realize the act of brutally killing a young animal doesn't fit the standard dictionary definition of compassion, so they hedge and claim, not actual compassion, but partial compassion, a measure of compassion, in their words. Next up, they talk about the "farmers and ranchers caring about the welfare of the animal." What are we supposed to make of this? Maybe Whole Foods is saying, "Hey, we just got through acknowledging there's only a measure of compassion in the way we treat animals, what more do you want from us?" Maybe they think that little bit of forthrightness earned them the right to go back to the preposterous untruths they offered up in the previous sentence when they claimed animals were "raised humanely." Another possibility is they meant the farmers and ranchers care about the welfare of the animal in the sense that they know if they take steps to make it appear that they treat the animal well, pre-slaughter, i.e. meet the standards of "free range," they can charge a premium. Or maybe the farmers and ranchers care that animal welfare has become more of an issue and videos of their animal abuse end up on Youtube. Final possibility: maybe it was just a typo. Whole Foods wrote "caring" when they meant to write "carrying," as in carrying the terrified animal to the place of slaughter.
Whole Foods. Selling the highest quality natuaral and organic products.
