Petition urges Whole Foods Market to ditch meat counters
Hundreds of consumers are asking Whole Foods Market to make a "revolutionary" change. An online petition calling on the Texas-based supermarket chain—which has stores in Vancouver and West Vancouver—to shut down its meat counters has been signed 1,400 times.
Posted by James McWilliams, the Texas-based author of Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, the petition states:
Forget (for the moment) dairy and eggs and all the animal-based products dependent on systematic suffering that you believe are integral to a robust stock price. We can deal with these items later. For now, as a step toward a better future, just shut down the meat markets. Forever.
Do this because you can afford to do it. Do this because it is consistent with your articulated values. Do this because it is the right thing to do. Do this because you would be doing the gutsiest thing ever done in corporate and culinary history. Do this because, if you don’t, nobody else ever will. As a loyal patron, vegan advocate, and historian of agriculture, I’m asking you to do what you have done so well since the 1980s: lead.
McWilliams says he's received a response from Whole Foods co-CEO John Mackey. That letter, which McWilliams has posted on his blog, says the chain has "no plans to stop selling meat and poultry…or seafood, eggs and dairy items for that matter". Mackey's letter continues:
Our work in the world of animal welfare makes a difference in the way hundreds of millions of farm animals are raised every year. It supports a network of several thousand hardworking farmers and ranchers who are improving the welfare of livestock animals. Giving up on our initiative at this point won’t slow the rate of animals being processed and it won’t encourage Whole Foods Market’s carnivore customers to stop eating meat. It will simply shift purchases of meat to other retailers, to those that have not invested millions of dollars and many years of hard work to ensure that animals are raised with care and respect, and slaughtered with a minimum amount of stress. Whole Foods Market isn’t selling humanely raised animals simply because they are eventually killed for food. That is not true. Also, for you to suggest that selling meat is only about the bottom line at our company simply is not true either. Our first stakeholder is our customer and the most of them purchase and eat meat.
In a follow-up post, McWilliams says his fight with Whole Foods "isn’t over".
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Comments
47 Comments
earlnelly
Sep 11, 2012 at 7:24pm
mmm...beef
jonny .
Sep 12, 2012 at 12:04am
i find vegans to be very annoying. i rarely eat meat, and i can understand a vegetarians point of view, but i find vegans to be rigid illogical people who are always angry and refuse to accept people who are different than them. just like hard core religious people. ugh!
of course whole foods aren't going to stop selling meat. and they shouldnt. people need a source of organic meats. organic usually also means free range. if they stopped selling meat, people would have to go buy lower quality meat from animals that are abused.
FunkDem
Sep 12, 2012 at 12:37am
This is the kind of vegan dogmatism that, even if capitalist forms of (meat) production were abolished tomorrow and all cows lived happily on green pastures, would still call a nice piece of Brie "rape". If I cared enough, I might start a petition for James McWilliams to get a life.
Jerry Cunningham
Sep 12, 2012 at 4:07am
McWilliams is someone who should be ignored - if you don't eat like he does then you are wrong. He is biggoted, self-centered and more like a vegan-Taleban. My advice to James is STFU.
Tyler
Sep 12, 2012 at 6:14am
"Humanely" raised. Brutally and violently slaughtered. There is no such thing as humane meat.
P. Slater
Sep 12, 2012 at 6:46am
It's a truly sad world we live in when people who believe in non-violence and compassion are considered dogmatic but those who partake in violence and environmental degradation are the "normal" ones.
Natty
Sep 12, 2012 at 7:05am
Let's see...the US population is over 300 million and the Canadian population is about 35 million. That means less than 1% of the population has signed this petition. Big whoop.
JaneyL
Sep 12, 2012 at 9:25am
Ironically, that piece of brie is a product of bovine sexual assault.
Did you know that, or were you just being funny ?
Gradual Change
Sep 12, 2012 at 9:39am
Ignoring the animal welfare side of the argument, the fact is: meat - even ethically and "organically" raised and slaughtered meat - is far far worse for the environment and our health than the equivalent amount of non-meat foods. Perhaps Whole Foods shouldn't remove their meat department entirely, but how about cutting each store's meat offerings by, say, half? They (the chain) can use their leadership position to educate consumers on the value of a largely vegetable-based diet. Extremism isn't going to work, but gradual changes in our way of thinking will be the best for everyone in the long run.
Ughh
Sep 12, 2012 at 9:42am
Some people don't eat meat and that's cool. Some people eat meat and that's cool too. No matter what there will always be people that are going to eat meat. There are even carnivorous plants for f**ks sake. The focus should be on the treatment of the animals that they are using instead of wasting energy on taking it off the shelves.