Restaurant Patrons Unite :)
As an aside to my blogs about Dominion*, I recently published some information on how to find humanely produced meats in grocery stores.
The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) claims consumers pushed grocery chains to increase their humane food offerings by 23% between 2008 and 2009.
How can consumers use their voices and dollars to point the restaurant industry the same way?
John and Patricia Eddy of cooklocal.com suggested a letter writing campaign. The following is an excerpt from their post called “How To Talk To Restaurants About Their Meat Sources”.
If you’re interested in finding out whether your favorite restaurant sources ethically, here is a template that you can copy and email to them. I encourage everyone to contact as many restaurants as they can. The more inquiries a restaurant gets, the more likely they are to try to make changes to eliminate inhumanely produced meat from their sources.
Greetings,
I am a long time patron of your restaurant and I’ve always enjoyed my meals there. However I have recently decided that I need to eliminate all meat from my diet that comes from CAFOs (confined/concentrated animal feeding operations). So I am writing to you today in the hopes that you’ll be able to share whether your meat is sourced from a CAFO or from a humane and natural source. If you can confirm this, I will happily continue to order animal products from your menu. If not, I hope you’ll consider sourcing your meat from free-range, pasture-fed, and hormone and antibiotic free farms and I will simply order vegetarian dishes when I patronize your restaurant. I appreciate any information you might be able to share with me.
Sincerely,
Another more proactive idea comes from Curt Ellis, posting on civileats.com, who leaves the following card behind at restaurants after he dines.
For the next blog in this series, please click here.
*See “shop local” in the categories at sarahcunningham.org for purchase options.
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