AUSTIN, Texas
Nov. 15, 2005
Whole Foods Market

The world's leading natural and organic foods supermarket and creator of the Animal Compassion Foundation (www.animalcompassionfoundation.org ), announced today that it has set a deadline of June 15, 2006 to assess and significantly upgrade the supply chain process to procure and sell live lobsters in a more humane way. If more compassionate standards are not implemented by that date, Whole Foods Market will discontinue the sale of live lobsters.

"Our commitment to animal compassionate standards means eliminating unnecessary and avoidable suffering when it is possible for us to do so," said John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market. "Given all the work we have done regarding animal welfare in our natural meat and animal compassionate standards, we decided the sale of live lobsters within our stores and also their procurement conditions were appropriate to question."