Thousands of customers are participating in a boycott on Whole Foods Market after the market’s co-founder and CEO wrote an op-ed piece opposing President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform.
The piece, entitled “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare,” denounced Obama’s proposed solutions to health care while also stipulating eight different ways to improve the medical system without adding to the national deficit.
“While we clearly need health care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health care system,” Mackey said in his opinion piece.
Whole Foods Market, founded in 1980 in Austin, Texas by Mackey and three other co-founders, is widely regarded as one of the most humane, healthy and socially responsible companies.
The market has been awarded Green Power awards by the EPA, completely eliminated all plastic bags from grocery stores in January of 2008, and has been named by Fortune Magazine as one of the best 100 companies to work for. In 2007, Mackey himself reduced his salary to $1.
The “Boycott Whole Foods” Facebook group, created in part by Mark E. Rosenthal, attracted more than 34,000 members and initiated over 200 discussion topics and almost 3,000 wall posts from pro- and anti- boycotters alike.
The group’s founders have written an explanation of their stance on Mackey’s opinions on their Facebook page.
“Whole Foods has built its brand with the dollars of deceived progressives. Let them know your money will no longer go to support Whole Foods’ anti-union, anti-health insurance reform, right-wing activities,” said the founders as the reasoning behind their self-imposed sanctions on the natural grocer.
Listed on the group’s page are upcoming events, some of which are staged protests against the openings of new Whole Foods stores, links to articles offering dissenting opinions to Mackey’s views, and Rosenthal’s own blog.
No protest has ever existed, however, without encountering people opposing it.
A “Do NOT BOYCOTT Whole Foods!!” group was started in retaliation to the dissent against Mackey and his views. While it hasn’t attracted nearly the amount of support the boycott group has, its members are just as adamant about their views as the boycotters are.
Allen Cox, a 37-year-old mechanic at Heritage Electric and full time mechanical engineering student at Community College of Denver, was a customer at Whole Foods before he heard about the boycott and said he plans on remaining one.
He first heard about the boycott from Facebook groups and by encountering picketers while shopping at his local Whole Foods.
“They don’t have anything better to do with their lives,” Cox said of the boycotters. “It’s massively impractical. If you appreciate the store, you don’t boycott it because you don’t like the checkout person. I would challenge all of those boycotters to look up all the CEOs and find their beliefs and see if they agree wholeheartedly with them. I think it’s an impossibility to find that you agree with all of them.”
Nathaniel Reaven, a 21-year-old senior English education major, said he agrees with Cox on the issue of the legitimacy and effectiveness of boycotting.
“I do not agree with these boycotters, because I think that boycotting Whole Foods is a silly way to make a difference in this particular situation,” Reaven said. “I think that condemning an entire business for one person’s opinion is irrelevant considering the good they do on other facets of organic and natural farming.”
Despite the attention this issue seems to be attracting, however, the debate hasn’t reached some of CU’s student population.
Jith Karingada, a 25-year-old electrical and computer-engineering master’s candidate, said he had not realized that there was a coalition being lead against the Whole Foods CEO.
“No, I hadn’t heard about it. What is the boycott about?” Karingada said.
Whole Foods does not have an official company-wide position on the health care reform issue, but customers have been provided with a number to call in order to voice their opinions on the matter.
Whole Foods has also allowed protesters to use the market’s own Web site and forums as a watering hole for boycotters to discuss their opinions and views.
Upon being contacted by the media, the company’s public relations representatives released this statement on the boycott issue:
“As our country continues [the health care] debate, Whole Foods Market will continue to do what we do best: offer the best natural and organic products available in an inviting store environment. One single opinion piece is far from the sum total of what Whole Foods Market has been known to offer for the past 30 years. Our customers can be assured that our primary focus is to continue to serve our valued shoppers, to ensure a great work environment for our Team Members, and to support our communities and our planet as a whole,” the statement read.
Whole Foods employees were unable to answer any questions related to this matter, and a current CU student participating in the boycott was unable to be reached for comment.
To access the forums Whole Foods Market has enabled for discussion, visit the Whole Foods Web site.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Sheila V Kumar at Sheila.kumar@colorado.edu.
1 comment
Why are people against free speech. The guy has every right to say what he wants, just like anyone here. What comes around goes around, people should be trying to protect free speech, not shutting it down.
The CEO of Wholefoods does not take a pay check any more, he receives $1.00 for his work. The 50,000 employees of Wholefoods are the working people who will suffer if this boycott even worked. But what I understand in Northern California, more people are going there because of this and the impact is non-existent. I guess enough people care about FREE SPEECH. I hope in the future, your right to express yourselves doesn’t get shut down. It might with activity such as this.