Grocery Stores – WF & TJ

Trader Joe’s (store locater here) sells meat under its own Trader Joe’s label, as well as meat from other companies. I contacted Trader Joe’s to ask about their store-brand meats and did not hear back from them regarding how much of what they sell under their private label is grass-fed, organic, free-range, etc. Even though Trader Joe's is strong on organic and non-GMO products, you should treat TJ’s-brand meat like any other company’s meat: look for one of the 5 labels listed above – otherwise it’s conventional meat. (Update: I am hearing from frequent TJ shoppers that the chain sells quite a bit of organic meat under the TJ’s label; here's a blog post about organic meat.)

Whole Foods (store locator here) sells a lot of humanely raised meat, thanks to its Global Animal Partnership (GAP) program, which labels meat from Step 1 - 5. None of the fresh meat sold at Whole Foods has antibiotics or synthetic hormones in it, no pigs were raised in gestation crates, no physical alterations were done to the poultry, the cattle and lambs spent at least 2/3 of their life on pasture, and veal calves were not raised in crates. Any company that sells meat at Whole Foods must at least meet those standards. But if you truly want to ensure that your meat was raised well above factory farm standards, buy at Steps 3, 4 or 5. Read more about their 5-step meat labeling system here, or look at the "Humane Certifications" link above.