In his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan criticized Whole Foods for not offering enough local foods and being "Big Organic", among other things. In response, John Mackey wrote Pollan a letter countering Pollan's criticisms and Pollan followed up with a response to Mackey's letter.Their correspondence led to a debate at Berkeley in February of 2007. The video is really long (around 2 hours) and covers many of the same points as the correspondence, but it's worth watching if you're interested in the environmental and social issues around food production and have some free time.
The letters and the video all bring up a number of topics we've discussed in class, like whether businesses that aim to be socially responsible are just opening themselves up to extra scrutiny and how good is good enough when you're an ethical brand.
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing Jenny. I really enjoyed Omnivores Dilemna and would recommend it for anyone interested in learning about where their food comes from. It was particularly interesting to hear Pollan's observations that small scale organic agriculture doesn't necessarily make good business sense and hence the move of Cascadian Farm to essentially sell out to General Mills. It was pretty interesting as well to learn about mass produced organics; the book definitely changed some of my perceptions about eating organic.
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