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Login Here Signup Here Signup using Facebook“Alert of the Week: October 24th National Call-In Day for Farmworker Rights! Whole Foods: Can you Hear Us Now?
Despite a mobilization by thousands of organic consumers, Teamsters, and United Farm Workers, sending in petitions and handing out leaflets at Whole Foods Market stores in 33 states, WFM is refusing to stand up for workers rights! Oregon-based Beef Northwest, the feedlot corporation that fattens up Country Natural Beef’s herds, refuses to negotiate with the United Farm Workers in good faith. Whole Foods in the single largest seller of Country Natural Beef in the U.S. Joining leading elected officials in Oregon, Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama, in a letter earlier this year urged Beef Northwest to sit down and negotiate a contract with the United Farm Workers. In the spirit of Cesar Chavez, please support the United Farmworkers Union drive at the Beef Northwest feedlots in Oregon and send a message to the world: eliminate labor exploitation in the organic and natural food sectors.
Call and fax Whole Foods’ Corporate Headquarters and you local Whole Foods’ General Manager. Spread the word in your community and send a letter to the editor in support of sweatfree organic and natural food. Send a letter to Whole Foods executives here.”
source: http://www.organicconsumers.org/bytes/ob148-2.htm (click here and scroll down to “Just Say No”. It give you links so you can actualy send letters/make phone calls/fax unlike this post.) Check out OCA’s webpage @ www.organicconsumers.org ; a wonderful organization devoted to speaking the truth!
There is a lot of information out there about whole foods. Don’t be fooled, do your research.
They mistreat workers, farmers, mother earth.Whole Food’s is ran by a bunch of hypocrites making a buck off of the “Go Green” movement!
Comments
Your title says, Go Greed”, hon.
Edit: did I misunderstand? oops.
hmmmm excactly. Read up. They only care about the money they can fill their pockets with, not their workers, not this earth, not their farmers.
Feel free to add any information, or sources regarding this matter people!
Edit: Yes you did :)
oh I read your article; I just was stuck on the title, sorry!:-D
Thank you for the info TOL. That really disappoints me in WF.
Yes, it is very disappointing. But think about it, how great was the majority of the food that they supplied there? Most of it was all “health food”, read the labels and you would usually find different. How much variety of organic did they have compared to convientional? Not much, it’s usually pretty slim. How about the organic products they carry? The majority of it is big label companies, that also rage conventional products, also trying to make a buck off of the “Go Greed” movement!
If you weight it all out, all your left with is a pile of….
Thank you for this post. I will put it on my list of letters to send in protest. I usually send out at least 4 every month.
I have been to Whole Foods twice as there isn’t one in my state. I loved the store. I am always turned off by large-scale commerciallism but that is the norm in this country. However, I did like the fact that they carried the products which departed from the cookie cutter grocery stores.
I only bought raw food there or raw juices. Yes, most of their food is conventional but I have seen more organic produce there than any other store I have been in. Without their distribution of organics, no matter how few overall, those farmers would not be supporter.
I wish I understood how many of them were real farmers rather than big agribiz. Those are the people I want to support.
At my local market, which is very small and owned by a family that is in tune with the earth, much of the produce sold is local. Unfortunately, only 3 local farmers grow anything organic.
I wish bigger chains like WFM would try to contract with local farmers to provide organic produce. That would have a big environmental impact. Truly healthy food that isn’t transported across the country and keeps real farmers in business. I think I will include that idea in my letter!
Whole Foods is a private business. If they choose not to negotiate with unions, so be it. They have the right to do so. If people don’t like it, they have a choice not to shop or work there.
Swayze :)
Right, swayze.
Anyway, your beef, pun intended, should be with Beef Northwest, not with Whole Foods. The only way to affect the situation as an individual would be to stop purchasing Country Natural Beef, which, as a vegan, you don’t do anyway.
Don’t hate the playa, hate the game. This is the nature of our lovely capitalist economy.
I’ve been involved in Amnesty International since 1986 and many other social causes since well before that, so I am not just some unfeeling jerk insensitive to the plight of farm workers. This is simply barking up the wrong tree – and showing a fundamental misunderstanding of how our economy works. Whole Foods, and any other corporation, will buy the goods they sell from the distributor who offers them at the lowest price. Period. The only way to change that is to cause it to become more expensive for them to do business with companies you don’t like. In this case, you could potentially do that by not purchasing Country Natural Beef (and for others like you to do the same in great enough numbers to affect Whole Foods’ bottom line), but since you already don’t, they’re not losing anything, and they really don’t care what you think or how you feel. I reckon you could stop shopping at WFM entirely and make sure they know why, but unless their profits are affected, they simply will not change their course of action.
I suggest you watch “The Corporation,” if you haven’t already, TOL. I think you would like it and find it very enlightening.