Whole Foods Refuses to Support GMO-Mandatory Labeling Efforts in California

Recently, our intrepid real food activists and California Label GMO pioneers Pamm Larry and Stacey Hall reached out to Whole Foods Market asking them to allow educational events at their stores and for volunteers to be able to collect signatures from Californians who want mandatory labeling of GMOs--something that over 70% of people polled supported.  Below is their response.  We find it hard to believe that Whole Foods, ostensibly committed to healthy food and real choices, is against truth-in-labeling.  Please visit their Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/wholefoods or call your local Whole Foods and tell the manager that you would like them to allow signature gathering at their stores.  We have a real chance at victory in this campaign.  Let Whole Foods know they should be with us, not against us.

Hi Marci,
Thanks for getting back to us.  We are disappointed that Whole Foods is not interested in some of our suggestions.   And just to be clear, because it was not specifically addressed, we need to know whether Whole Foods will allow us to gather signatures in front of your stores in the Fall of 2011 for the California Genetically Engineered Food Labeling Act of 2012?  Signature gathering is expected to start in October so we need to know your answer by Friday, September 23rd at 5pm.  If we do not receive a response, we will assume that Whole Foods will not support signature gathering in front of your stores.  While we appreciate your strategy, polls show that consumers want mandatory labeling of genetically modified ingredients.  We hope that you will choose to support what your customers have repeatedly requested which is mandatory labeling.

I look forward to hearing from you.

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Whole Paycheck and Organic Food Deserts: The Challenge

After decades of grassroots public education, battles to safeguard standards, and hard work, organic food and farming has become the fastest growing sector of U.S. agriculture. Organics have surged in popularity to become a $30 billion dollar industry in the United States, representing approximately four percent of total grocery store sales and 12% of fresh fruit and vegetable sales, growing at the rate of 10-20% a year, in comparison to a growth rate of 2-3% a year for so-called "conventional" (i.e. chemical and genetically engineered) food. According to a recent poll by National Public Radio  the majority (58%) of Americans now prefer organic food.

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Whole Foods Includes GMOs In All Natural Foods

In this guest post by friend, super-sleuth, and fellow blogger Heather Dessinger of Mommypotamus, Heather reveals a disquieting truth about "all natural" product labels and the corporations that use them. She also asked that I include this disclaimer for all you Whole Foods defenders: "I still shop at Whole Foods . . . I just avoid stuff that is likely to contain GMO's. My goal in writing this post was to help other consumers do the same."

Do you believe in the Whole Foods fairy?

She used to be your garden variety woodland sprite, but times are hard and sorting mountains of corn and soy for Whole Foods is a sweet gig. Just sprinkle a little magical fairy dust and VOILA! The genetically modified feed separates from the conventional feed in a snap.

It's a win-win, really. Whole Foods gets to charge a premium for it's GMO-free natural meats, the fairy gets a generous 401K with rollover, and the consumer gets a superior product.

What, you don't believe?!?!? Tell me this then: If roughly 86% of corn and 93% of soy grown conventionally in the U.S. is genetically modified, and the "natural"chickens in Whole Foods are fed conventional corn and soy, then how are they GMO free?

Whole Foods employees are terribly unhelpful in answering this question, as is The Great Oracle Google. Fortunately, though, there is an answer! In an interview with Dr. Mercola, Whole Foods' Senior Global VP, Michael Besancon, ADMITTED their foods are contaminated with GMO's.

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Whole Foods - Major Betrayal of Organic Food Movement- Dr. Mercola Interviews Ronnie Cummins

If You Eat Organic Food, You Have Just Been Betrayed
By Dr. Joseph Mercola Organic consumers and producers in the U.S. are facing betrayal. A self-appointed group of "Organic Elites", including Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, are surrendering to Monsanto.

Top executives from these companies publicly stated several weeks ago that they support the so-called "coexistence" of organics with genetically modified (GM) crops.

Whole Foods sent a misleading e-mail to its customers on Jan. 21in which they gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the "conditional deregulation" of Monsanto's genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa. However, after sharp criticisms from the OCA and their customers, and in the wake of USDA's unrestricted approval of GE alfalfa and sugar beets, the leaders of the organic industry seem to have changed their tune, issuing strong statements against the USDA approval last week.

According to the Organic Consumers Association:

    "The main reason ... why Whole Foods is pleading for coexistence with Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, BASF and the rest of the biotech bullies, is that they desperately want the controversy surrounding genetically engineered foods and crops to go away.

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Whole Foods and Trader Joe's Throwing Out Millions of Pounds of Edible Food

Wal Mart is the largest purchaser of organic food in the U.S. surpassing likelier suspects, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. And the retail giant has one-upped them again by enacting a company-wide donation policy on short-dated or mildly damaged foods while the top two natural food chains let perfectly edible products rot in dumpsters and landfills.

Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert directed the multi-award winning documentary, DIVE!, about the more than 95 billion pounds of edible food ending up in America's landfills each year.

After realizing his own local area grocery stores, mainly Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, were regularly pitching perfectly edible food in their dumpsters, he set out to see if he could feed his family with this reclaimed food and document it for a film project. What he found was not only could he feed his family, but there was enough food to feed the millions of hungry people in Los Angeles county, and millions more around the country.

In DIVE! Seifert makes repeated attempts to help Trader Joe's and Whole Foods adopt a policy that prevents food from ending up in their dumpsters and instead allocated to area food banks, homeless shelters and soup kitchens. To date, neither organization has made any commitment and both continue to throw away millions of pounds of food; a costly expense for taxpayers and the environment, all while homeless, veterans, children and millions of unemployed go hungry.

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Whole Foods Rolls Out New Sustainable Packaging Guidelines

Enviromental Leader, September 9, 2010
Straight to the Source

Whole Foods Market has rolled out new responsible packaging guidelines to all of its more than 2,100 body care and supplement suppliers company wide. All new body care and supplement suppliers must meet the packaging guidelines before their products can be sold in one of the company's more than 300 locations in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

To spearhead the change, the supermarket chain has switched to 100 percent post-consumer recycled (PCR) content bottles for several of its store-brand supplements and 365 brand body care items are packaged in bottles with 50 percent PCR content HDPE (high-density polyethylene).

A recent study from Global Industry Analysts projects that the global market for sustainable packaging will reach $142.42 billion by 2015.

Whole Foods has been working with 25 of its largest personal care product suppliers on the new guidelines since 2008, which went into effect on September 1, 2009. Suppliers were given one year to transition to more eco-friendly packaging.

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Why Did Whole Foods Tart up My Organic Peanut Butter?

By Tom Philpott
Grist Magazine, Aug 5, 2010
Straight to the Source

Confession: I have a thing for peanut butter. If my girlfriend didn't tease me about the habit, I'd probably have toast with peanut butter and honey as "second breakfast" nearly every day. Goes so well with coffee ...

But anyway! So, I usually procure my peanut butter just like any other good hippie: from one of those grinding contraptions at the health-food store. That way, you know exactly what's in it -- peanuts, maybe salt -- and it comes with the oil fully incorporated, unlike jarred "natural" peanut butters, whose oil separates from the paste.  

Every once in a while, I succumb to the jarred stuff when an organic brand's on sale. I like the saltiness of the jarred stuff. Soooo good.

Recently, I found myself at a Whole Foods. While looking for something else -- really! -- I encountered a display of Whole Foods 365 brand organic creamy peanut butter. On sale. For a really low price. So I threw a jar in my cart and went about my business.

Flash forward to this very morning, at the first rumblings of hunger after an early smoothie breakfast. With great anticipation, a piece of bread in the toaster and the honey pot at the ready, I opened the new jar of Whole Foods peanut butter. I was girded for the small inconvenience of having to reincorporate the separated oil back into the paste. The reward would be heaven on bread: sweet, salty, toasty, peanutty.

But everything was wrong. Instead of a half-inch of oil at the top, a grotesque sheen taunted me. You know, like the commercial crap, the stuff Big Food tarts up with added fat to make it uniform and, well, reliably  creamy. And sugar, following the general Big Food law that Everything Must Be Sweetened.

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