Whole Foods being too green?

Recently, Whole Foods Corporation has made a big decision. They announced that they're going to stop buying certain New England fish, including Atlantic cod and gray sole, unless they are up to their own standards for sustainable fishing. This has caused a sort of uproar in the New England fishing community, since there are many Maine fishers who sell their catch exclusively to Whole Foods. The reason they have an issue with this new regulation is because all of the fishers are already following government regulations. They say that Whole Foods is simply "doing it to make the green people happy."

As you probably know, Whole Foods has a reputation for catering to the "green people" (shown to the right), so this doesn't come as a surprise to me. BUT I do think that they've gone a little overboard, especially since their new regulation is based entirely on their own perception of "sustainable fishing." And this is especially outrageous considering the fact that they just signed contracts with companies who manufacture genetically modified food. So much for being green, eh? Perhaps this whole cod fiasco was intended to pacify their angry patrons. Either way, This just screwed up the year for those fishing companies.

This kind of stuff makes you wonder if you can really trust even the "green-oriented" corporations like Whole Foods because, at the root, they're still corporations. And corporations like money more than they like reason. Check out the article for yourself, and tell me what your opinion on the matter is. I will gladly throw it out the window if it's anything different than mine. (just kidding.)


Have a marvelously enriched week, friends, and thank you for taking the time to strap your eyeballs to my abridged stream of blithering foolery.

yours falsely,
max recke.


POST SCRIPT: This post was a bit overly ranty, now that I read it fully awake. Apologies. I failed to support my opinion on the issue, and may have seemed like I was attacking Whole Foods. I was a bit tired, and didn't get too deeply into the details. The fact of the matter is that Atlantic Cod is considered vulnerable, likely from overfishing. Though this isn't endangered or even really threatened, it means that continuing to harvest them at this rate will demote them to a threatened status. I just believe that cutting off fishermen who have sold their catches exclusively to Whole Foods for many years isn't really doing much to solve the issue. They can easily find new buyers, who will likely have higher demand and lower standards for what they buy than Whole Foods' old standards. And on a side note, Whole Foods also added that they will still accept cod caught with gill nets. This is a bit distressing to me, because gill net fishing in New England causes the deaths of hundreds of porpoises every year. That is all. Have a wonderful Monday.

source article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/to-new-england-fishermen-another-bothersome-barrier.html?_r=1

random picture of a nematode.