Whole Food, Whole Phoo-ey

"Natural" food is big business these days, which is a good thing. Most cities these days have a farmers' market, and the ag industry is coming to realize that organic food is no longer a matter of selling misshapen carrots and potatoes at a premium to hippies, but of tapping a huge market.

Of course, where there's a profit, there's knavery. The new "organic" standards mandated by the USDA have little to do with sound, pesticide-free farming, and everything to do with false labeling on corporate junk. And, as we shall now relate, the knavery is extending to retail outlets that have made their reputation and millions of dollars on catering to consumers who want organic and environmentally friendly produce.

No retail business has exploited this market more profitably than Whole Foods Market, a chain based on Austin, Texas, which operates a hundred stores nationwide and which rings up $1.2 billion a year in sales. The company's motto is "Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet," and offers customers the Whole Foods' "Declaration of Interdependence," a phrase lifted from the poet Gary Snyder. Among the assertions in this Declaration: "We are the leader in supporting organic agriculture. We're committed to protecting the environment. Our shelves are packed with environmentally-friendly products."

We occasionally look in on the Whole Foods store in Berkeley, on the corner of Ashby and Telegraph. For a number of years the Berkeley left shunned the place because of its anti-union posture. "Interdependence" is not translated by Whole Foods to mean "union." The store is so bright-eyed with assertions of planetary good works that the innately suspicious becomes cynical and goes off in search of dowdier establishments purportedly committed to the organic path.

Such suspicions, it turns out, are well-founded.

Earlier this year the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute developed a program to certify shrimp caught by equipment that doesn't endanger turtles. Knowing Whole Food's reputation as a marketer of enviro-friendly products, Earth Island approached the company about selling shrimp that had been certified as "turtle safe." But they were given a cold shoulder by the company, and this rebuff was followed by a direct attack on Earth Island by Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey.

In an interview in Forbes magazine, Mackey accused Earth Island of "hounding" his company to sell turtle-safe shrimp. He also charged that Earth Island was trying to strong-arm Whole Foods into paying a fee for use of the Institute's "turtle safe" imprimatur. Earth Island strongly rebuts Mackey's slurs. "This is just not true," says Teri Shore who is the director of Earth Island's turtle-safe shrimp campaign. "Earth Island never charged anyone for certification and anyway the shrimp is certified at the point of harvest by the fishers, not at the retail level. We were simply asking Whole Foods Market to make good on its policy of environmental leadership and offer the shrimp to its customers."

So, far from doing this, Whole Foods has begun offering a "natural Caribbean shrimp" in packaging that carries a label saying "turtle and environment safe." This label bears a marked resemblance to the certification label sponsored by Earth Island. But whereas Earth Island's label is backed up by independent ship inspectors who certify that the shrimp nets are equipped with turtle excluder devices, the logo attached to shrimp sold by Whole Foods is based only on the company's own assertions that their operations are environmentally sound.

When Earth Island began to criticize Whole Foods publicly, Mackey sent a self-aggrandizing e-mail to Earth Island where he said that "your attacks on Whole Foods Market are strategic mistakes because you are alienating a company who by its very nature and mission is dedicated to helping environmental organizations such as your own. However, our desire is to help proactive and non-adversarial environmental organizations who are above all else committed to the truth (who don't exaggerate or make misleading claims for the sake of their own 'holy cause.')"

Note Mackey's emphasis on helping "environmental organizations," a function which, as Nature and Politics readers will know, is often markedly different from helping the environment. So what organization is Whole Foods Market helping in this instance? None other than Ocean Trust, which Whole Foods describes as "a marine conservation foundation." Whole Foods even disseminates Ocean Trust's handouts to its customers. As Mackey noted in his email, "they [Ocean Trust] have been instrumental in providing facts and information for us to buy seafood responsibly with the environment, freshness, and quality all kept in mind. We believe that we are working with experts in environmental marine science."

Ocean Trust is hardly the turtle-friendly outfit claimed by Mackey, being little more than a seafood trade organization, with a budget financed almost entirely by the seafood industry. Ocean Trust's executive director (and sole full-time staffer) is Thor Lassen, whose career has included a stint as lobbyist for the National Fisheries' Institute, the seafood industry's primary trade organization. In 1997 Lassen was featured as prominent speaker at the Wise Use movement's annual confab in Washington, titled "Fly In for Freedom."

Note: According to the Seattle P-I, Whole Foods will be opening a Seattle store soon.--M.T.