The truth is, I’m an animal welfare/rights person. And yes, I’m a vegan too.

While helping my animal sanctuary client with a project, I stumbled on to the Humane Society of the United States Web site. This interesting news bite about Safeway caught my attention. My first response was, uh oh. I shop there. Are they bad?

It turns out not to be the case. Safeway is actually taking steps to assure animal welfare! You can read the article here. It is really promising and I hope more big (and small) stores follow their lead.

If marketed and advertised correctly, this could set Safeway apart from all other grocery stores. Even most organic and natural food stores do not have such a policy. I worked as a graphic designer for a natural and organic food store and to my surprise, animal welfare was not on their list.

Now it seems this issue is becoming popular. Increasingly, TV is exposing animal cruelty cases all over the U.S. Just the other day, Katie Couric aired a spot on cruelty to dairy cattle in California.  So Safeway’s move is “timely” and could put them in the spotlight as a progressive and humane enterprise.

I look forward to seeing how they incorporate this in their marketing. I hope they do.