fake food created by “fake” people. sounds about right….an excellent article ~ like and appreciate her work.
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July 30, 2018
The year the switch was flipped. That year was 1994, when Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa, the invasion of Haiti was orchestrated by the Clintons, the Rwanda genocide murdered 800,000 people while Bill Clinton was informed daily yet did nothing to stop it, John F. Kennedy Jr. sent a letter to then Senator Joe Biden calling him a traitor, UNAIDS was founded as well as the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, and cloning research was getting its kick-off in Argentina. Yes, 1994 was indeed a pivotal year, but that’s not all that happened that year.
On July 5, 1994 Jeff Bezos launched Amazon, while the Flavr Savr tomato saw its debut after a stamp of approval for the first commercial sale of genetically modified foods (GMOs). It was quite an exciting year for Whole Foods as well. Founded in 1980 by John Mackey, Mark Skiles, Renee Lawson Hardy, and Craig Weller, with their merger of Safer Way Natural Foods and Clarksville Natural Grocery, they decided to expand out of Austin, TX into Houston after seizing opportunity of growth through mergers and acquisitions. By 1992, Whole Foods was becoming a superstar and took their company public with opening shares at $1.06. Things were rockin’ and rollin’, and by November 29, 1993 they saw their first stock split. 1994 was looking good for everyone in this group.
By 1998, Fortune magazine was shining a spotlight on Whole Foods, and what started out as a small local grocer with a staff of 19, had emerged into a super expanding wonder. In 1999, they partnered with Marine Stewardship Council, founded in London in 1997, for more sustainable seafood choices of wild-caught fish. By 2001 they had chosen New York as one of their newest locations, and in 2002 launched their 365 Organic Everyday Value brand, becoming the first national commodity-priced, all organic product line in the United States. Incredible!
Meanwhile, the Flavr Savr tomato was an epic fail for the first ever genetically modified food designed and approved for human consumption. But that didn’t stop the desires of other companies to pioneer forward with their own ambitions, and just two years later farmers were utilizing 1.7 million hectares for GMO growth. By 2016, they were utilizing 185 million hectares, accounting for 12% of the global cropland. However, concerns were rising about the dangers of GMOs, and in 2013 council member Margaret Wille of the Maui Council Floor was introducing a bill to ban GMOs from the Big Island. It was getting a lot of traction and before long, anti-GMO activists from around the world were video-conferencing in to the hearing to speak in support of the ban, but scientists were not given as much time to speak. After a full year, the ban was approved only to be overturned in 2015 by a federal judge from the US Court of Appeals, ruling Hawaiian counties could not enact their own GMO bans. Despite this, more than 20 other states jumped on the bandwagon in trying to push legislation banning the products or requiring them to be labeled. In 2016, Barack Obama signed a national GMO labeling law requiring food makers to list any genetically-modified ingredients in their products, only the catch was that it would be determined by the federal government as to when a product should be labeled as bioengineered – how convenient. Being that 75-80% of food Americans consume is genetically modified, it’s safe to assume only a small percentage of foods are actually indicating this on their labels. Of course, by this time, it was no longer a big game issue for them because they had already been spearheading the “organic narrative” for 14 years, covering both sides of the industry equally. They had the market well covered.
THE Leader of “Organic Food”
Whole Foods was THE leader in “organics” after launching and heavily promoting their 365 Organic Everyday Value brand back in 2002 as the first organic product line in the United States. They even introduced “enhanced meat standards.” At the same time, they were outfitting their Berkley, CA store with solar panels to become the first retailer to introduce solar power for a green environment. Coincidentally, this is the same year Al Gore began his tour on climate change, with his slideshow he had compiled for a multimedia presentation around the US and worldwide. From 2004 through 2007, Whole Foods earned Environmental Protection Agency Green Power awards for its renewable energy purchasing. Whole Foods was booming, and that same year they set their sight on Toronto, opening their first location outside the US. By December, their stock was added to the NASDAQ-100 index. They were such an amazing trend-setter with their organic products, in 2003 they became American’s first National Certified Organic Grocer, and Ernst & Young named co-founder John Mackey its 2003 Entrepreneur of the Year.
Gluten was also becoming a bit of a health issue with many people, so in 2004 Whole Foods opened a gluten-free bake house located in Raleigh, NC, covering all angles of the “organic health food” industry. By 2009, they had accumulated countless awards and recognition by every major media source, from Newsweek’s top 10 list of ‘Greenest Retail Companies in the U.S.’ to Vanity Fair’s ‘Best Provider’. This is when they made their commitment to supporting the non-GMO Project. In 2013, Fortune magazine ranked them 19th as the ‘World’s Most Admired Companies’, and they became the first national grocery chain to set a deadline for full GMO transparency, announcing by 2018 all products in the US and Canada stores must be labeled to indicate whether they contain GMO. That is a lot of back-up and a lot of fame, yet, despite this expeditious effort, and unprecedented “firsts” in the “organic”, “green” and “non-GMO” fields, they let it all go on August 28, 2017 when Amazon bought them out to the tune of $13.7 billion.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, was getting one heck of a grocery chain that literally single-handedly pioneered the “organic food” industry.
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