Due to the recent earthquake in Chile’s central regions, we’re anticipating a significant shortage of Chilean grapes within the next 10 days.

We expect the shortage to extend through early April and perhaps all the way to the first of May.

Here’s an update based on information we’ve been able to collect over the past couple of days:

Most important, our vendor partners in Chile report that they’re unharmed.

Unfortunately, their infrastructure didn’t fare as well and there will be an impact on fresh produce supplies, especially table grapes.

Packing houses have been especially hard hit, and we’ve received reports that many cold storage facilities and packing plants have been destroyed. Thousands of pallets of fruit that was packed and ready for shipment has been lost. Chile’s Sixth Region, where grape production is peaking, is reported to be a disaster, without electricity since the earthquake struck this past Saturday. The capacity to cool and hold new fruit is extremely limited. Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE 02/18/10: The comment period has been extended until March 3, 2010  You still have time to have your voice and opinions heard!  The easiest way to send your comments to the USDA is on the True Food Project’s Take Action website.

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture is currently considering whether or not to approve the use of genetically engineered (GE) Roundup-Ready alfalfa. Their report says you don’t care about GMOs in organics. Comments are due to them by February 16th, so read on to hear how you can help. (Or go directly to the True Food Project’s Take Action website.)

As part of the approval process, they are required to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), a detailed analysis of how the crop will affect the environment, organic and conventional farmers, farm animals, and the public. They’ve released their EIS on GE alfalfa, and here’s how the True Food Network at The Center for Food Safety summarized the issue in a recent Action Alert:

In 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued the Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its illegal approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa. The federal courts sided with CFS and banned GE alfalfa until the USDA fully analyzed the impacts of the plant on the environment, farmers, and the public in a rigorous analysis known as an environmental impact statement (or EIS). USDA released its draft EIS on December 14, 2009. A 60-day comment period is now open until February 16, 2010. This is the first time the USDA has done this type of analysis for any GE crop. Therefore, the final decision will have broad implications for all GE crops.

That Environmental Impact Statement, unfortunately, contains a number of questionable statements and conclusions. The part of the EIS that worries us the most is the claim that buyers of organic foods don’t care if those products are contaminated with GMOs (genetically modified, or genetically engineered, organisms). We know that nothing could be further from the truth, and that a huge number of our shoppers care deeply about avoiding GMOs in the foods they buy. Read the rest of this entry »

This just in: The USDA published its final rule on access to pasture for organic dairy animals this afternoon. This enhancement to the National Organic Standards has been in the works for many years, and its announcement is a major victory for organic consumers, the integrity of the organic label, and the lives of organic livestock.

While the National Organic Standards already require access to pasture for ruminant animals, this enhancement lays out very specific requirements:

• Animals must graze pasture during the grazing season, which must be at least 120 days per year;
• Animals must obtain a minimum of 30 percent dry matter intake from grazing pasture during the grazing season;
• Producers must have a pasture management plan and manage pasture as a crop to meet the feed requirements for the grazing animals and to protect soil and water quality; and,
• Livestock are exempt from the 30 percent dry matter intake requirements during the finish feeding period, not to exceed 120 days. Livestock must have access to pasture during the finishing phase.

We’ve supported this enhancement through our testimony and comments to the USDA and the National Organic Standard Board over the past four years. We intend to carefully review the final rule and provide our comments to the USDA.

This change is a giant victory for the integrity and continued growth of the organic label, since it adds clearer definition to the role of pasture in organic livestock production. Our experience with our customers confirms that there is an overwhelming consumer expectation that organic livestock are grazed on pasture, which allows ruminant animals to fulfill their natural behaviors.

Stay tuned for more updates, and for more information, check out the USDA’s press release and Q&A on the changes.

This week, the CBS Evening News is airing a two-part story on antibiotics in food, the result of a three-month investigation by Katie Couric. It’s a story worth watching. Couric raises many concerns about the practice of giving antibiotics to food animals, primarily the worry that this practice may lead to antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that can put human health at risk.

As the national meat buyer for Whole Foods Market, I can assure our customers that our standard is: No antibiotics, EVER! We work very hard to make sure that the people who produce our meat have raised their animals without the use of antibiotics, growth hormones* or animal byproducts in the feed.

Read the rest of this entry »

A group of moms, who also happen to be Whole Foods Market Northern California team members, got together and created a “NorCal Moms” Facebook page as a place to offer fellow moms useful information on all aspects of mothering — from choosing healthy foods and products for babies and kids to cool community events.

While a lot of their information is specific to our Northern California stores, we thought this video they put together about shopping for gluten-free products for your kids had universal appeal. Remember: our product mix varies from store to store so the exact items in the video may not be available in your local store. Also, shelf signs and printed shopping lists vary. Check with your store’s customer service team members and they’ll be able to help you.

We’ve partnered with Chef Ann Cooper, a.k.a. “The Renegade Lunch Lady,” to help schools make a change. Chef Ann has already transformed the school lunch experience for tens of thousands of children across America by helping their schools switch from processed foods to fresh, natural ingredients and scratch-made meals.

Today – Friday, August 28 at 1 p.m. PST/4 p.m. EST, Ann Cooper will be answering YOUR questions about school lunch reform and what you can do to help make simple, yet revolutionary changes to school lunch programs in your area.

Note: You must have a Facebook or Twitter account in order to submit questions, but anyone can watch the live chat video on Facebook.  Check out the link below for more information on how to participate.

Participate in the live chat on Facebook

Big news: We just announced that our 273 U.S. stores have been certified organic by CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers). Those of you who’ve been paying attention know that we’ve been a certified organic retailer since 2003 – a voluntary certification that’s not required by the USDA. So what’s the big deal now? Well, last November, the USDA told us that it was about to get much harder to be a certified retailer. Rather than walk away from certification altogether, we opted to go down the much more difficult road of getting each of our stores individually certified. The USDA was right: it was much harder. But we did what it took and made it happen. That’s the news.

Here’s a bit of context. When USDA’s National Organic Standards went into effect in 2002, they defined organic in great detail, down to the specific substances that could be used, and required that everyone who handles organic food – growers, ranchers, processors, etc. – be certified by a USDA-approved third party organic certifier. Everyone, that is, except retailers. Huh? Yes, the whole supply chain for organic products must be certified, with the tiny exceptions of retailers and restaurants. These exceptions were made because they thought it would have been prohibitively difficult and expensive for all the retailers that carried unprotected organic food to get certified (by “unprotected” I mean unpackaged, like produce, meat, bulk grocery, etc.). So the USDA told retailers that they still had to follow the rules, but they wouldn’t have to be certified. And we told the USDA something to the effect of “So you think it’s too hard for retailers to get certified? We’d like to respectfully prove you wrong.” Read the rest of this entry »

Why am I grinning ear-to-ear on this steamy hundred-degree day in the middle of Texas? The reason is this press release, which announces our commitment to the Non-GMO Project and represents the culmination of a very long and complicated undertaking. I’ve been working on this project – helping the company come up with a way to truly verify our efforts to avoid Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in our private label products – for just over five years, and it would be an understatement to say that I’m ecstatic about this announcement. I’d even go so far as to say that this moment makes me extremely optimistic about the future of our food supply and the persistence, energy and integrity of the natural and organic food visionaries who propel our industry forward.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was pretty disappointed late last week to learn that there was a smear campaign afoot, by a group claiming that Whole Foods Market is working to “undermine” the integrity of the organic food label. What?! It seems like this happens every couple of years, usually based on some sort of claim that large food corporations are inherently evil and out to dilute the organic standards to make organic food cheaper to produce so they can make millions off of unsuspecting, gullible shoppers. Insert your best evil laugh here: Mwah-ha-ha!

Ludicrous yes. True no. We’d have to be insane to push for weaker organic standards. A strong standard gives food shoppers something to trust. The “organic” label represents a strong regulation that ensures the food is grown without toxic and persistent chemicals on environmentally friendly farms. We fought hard for decades to get that regulation established and the last thing we’d want to do is jeopardize its value by chipping it away.

A small and passionate group of people who wanted to create a natural and organic alternative to the mainstream conventional grocery stores of the era opened the doors of our first tiny store 30 years ago, about four blocks from where I’m sitting now. Since day one, we’ve supported organic agriculture, and we now offer more organic products than our founders could have imagined back in 1980. And we add more and more year after year. Here are some basic facts about our commitment to organic: Read the rest of this entry »

Rachael is part of our team dedicated to answering emails, letters and phone calls from our customers.

When films like FOOD, Inc. (in select theaters on June 12th) open, people always contact us with questions about how we do things at Whole Foods Market. Sometimes the questions come from people who are our long-time, loyal shoppers and sometimes they come from those who are brand new to us and want to learn more. Some of my teammates and I checked out an advance screening of FOOD, Inc. so we could get a head start on answering the possible questions coming our way. Check out a trailer of the film:

FOOD, Inc. takes a peek into the supply chain of much of the food we eat and talks about the consequences of the way food is currently grown, raised and processed. Consequences like deadly new strains of E.coli, epidemic obesity, type II diabetes, pollution from pesticides and feedlots, and the effect this system has on people in the industry. Although this subject matter sounds both complicated and mind-numbing, FOOD, Inc. presents the information in an engaging and interesting way. I know that many of our shoppers are aware of the issues and concerns of the current industrial agriculture system and that they shop with us because we offer an alternative. I thought I would share some of the things in the film that I found compelling, and how we do things differently at Whole Foods Market. Read the rest of this entry »