Talk:Whole Foods Market/Archive 2

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I feet that more should be said about Whole Food's environmental policies. Keremm May 9 2006

I think that there needs to be something said about Whole Foods' flagship store in Austin as it adds/changes a lot of things not normally found in a regular Whole Foods store. Dragonfire September 4 2006

The main problem is references and sourcings and possible POV and some OR/LIBEL and BLP violations

• There is a completely unsourced paragraph about court proceedings which appears to be about some anon postings made by teh CEO of the company. This is a serious BLP violation. They need to be sourced, and not from insider information
• History is very heavily leaning towards the last 10% of teh existence of the company. The last 3 years take up around 50% of the history section. More needs to be told about the early formation of the company.
• Lead is short and too PR friendly. The financial impact (which is the objective) is not covered at all but there is a bit about it being nice and responsible and so forth.
• Sources. Many of these are from teh company's own website, and hence are not thrid party but are likely to be partisan. Although some simply state the POV of the company, others assert "the company is doing..." when in fact it could be marketing hype and not actually true. I can certainly tell you that some educational institutions I have been involved in have put misleading info in their websites and annual reports.
  • Sources need to be filled out with full details of author, date of publicatn, publisher and access date where applicable. It is missing in some places.
  • Some {{cn}} lying about the place.
• POV
  • "Historical financial highlights" - what about the lowlights?
• Style
  • Please use "Mackey" after mentioning his full name the first time. WP:MOS
  • Please link USDA and FDA for non-Americans (like me)
  • Causes and Charity section is way too large -WP:UNDUE, compared to RL coverage. I would bet that labour strikes in RL would get more coverage than company PR exercises/.

Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

In the "External Links" section at the very end of the article, there is a link to an article in Slate. If someone wants the Slate material accessible, shouldn't they have a sentence in the article itself and then link to the article from Slate as a reference? There are tons of articles about Whole Foods — some pro, some against and some neutral. I don't see why this Slate article from March of '06 should have special placement in the External Links section. Thoughts? BradyWFM 17:51, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I don't think this particular article adds anything to this subject. Dragon Directories 17:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Although I agree there is little to make the Slate article stand apart from the many others out there, I think the External Links section needs to provide a more balanced list of materials for readers to pursue. I understand we have a Whole Foods unofficial moderator in here but I'd like to see a much more balanced approach to this whole topic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.203.83.189 (talk) 07:26, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback on this. I guess I'm unclear on the purpose of the External Links section. Why does this section exist and what is the purpose? There are a ton of links (positive, negative and neutral) to various articles and websites including the Whole Foods website in the References section. What purpose does the External Links section fill that the References do not? I couldn't find a Wikipedia definition of what this section is supposed to contain. If there are guidelines, I'd appreciate knowing what they are. Thanks, BradyWFM 19:29, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the function of the External Links section can be blurry at times. I am a little disturbed that you went ahead anyway and removed a negative link from that section without fully knowing why! I have a feeling it has more to do with the greater visibility of the links in this section in contrast to those in the reference section. There are no other critical resources in the external section so I would strongly recommend you (BradyWFM) stop removing more balanced links. Your justification, as a Whole Foods Director of Publications, for removing negative links from parts of wikipedia cannot be upheld by the explanations you've given. Would people allow this behaviour if the article related to the Monsanto Corporation and it was one of their corporate spokespeople doing the 'fixing'!?! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.203.41.190 (talk) 08:25, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

The post above should be attributed to my own account, I failed to sign in before posting. Sorry for the confusion... Wikipedia advises on the issue of external links that "On articles with multiple points of view, the number of links dedicated to one point of view should not overwhelm the number dedicated to other equal points of view, nor give undue weight to minority views." While it must be recognised that the majority of this article is generally agreed upon (as deduced from the discussion page) there are significant political disagreements. And Whole Foods Market bases itself as a more politically self-conscious entity, and patrons there often credited with being more socially aware. It must be agreed then that the external links section should be balanced out with at least one link that provides further information from a more critical standpoint. If one looks at the wiki articles on Raytheon, Monsanto, Boeing, etc they all allow sinle articles and websites that are wholly critical to be put into the external links section. At the very least I'd like some discussion as to whether it's acceptable to have an official Whole Foods Director of Publications, who claims to have been asked by the company this article is about, doctor and change this article to suit their own values, along with adding dry statistics and facts. No-one should be permitted to remove links without asking the community beforehand, especially if it's an individual asked to alter entries by the articles subject company itself!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Irishman77 (talk • contribs) 14:59, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it is a conflict of interest for a director of Whole Foods to be editing the company article. But that aside...I think that if the slate article is important enough to link to, it should be as a source within the article itself. There are plenty of corporate articles that only link to the official company website. See Microsoft, Starbucks, Trader Joe's, Applebees... Dragon Directories 04:21, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

To clarify, I removed the external link to the Slate article after posting a question about it in this Talk section, receiving a comment agreeing that it could be removed, and waiting for two full weeks to see if any other comments came in. Only after I removed it did this conversation ensue. I will gladly adhere to whatever the community decides about how External Links should be handled. I have always respected the Wikipedia community and will continue to do so. Yes, it is part of my job to ensure that the Whole Foods Market Wikipedia entry is accurate and fairly balanced. I do not edit out everything that is negative to our company and I do not edit it to suit my own values. I honestly try to take a very balanced approach. My main goal is to make sure that there is not blatantly false information and that both sides of a story are presented. You probably haven't noticed that I have deleted information that could be considered highly positive about Whole Foods but that was inaccurate. (You can blame other members of the community for the dry statistics -- I wanted to get rid of the financial highlights/timeline stuff but other editors did not.) If companies in general are not allowed to provide information about themselves and their policies, isn't that shutting the door on a valuable source of information? I agree that there should be many voices that come together to create a Wikipedia entry, and I feel that the company being written about has a role to play, as long as they do so responsibly. BradyWFM 18:33, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the article carps on things, descending not merely to pettiness but even to silliness, as for example in calling the grower profiles ‘glossy pinups’ and complaining about their placement.

It is, however, a good source for a pertinent John Mackey quote (“There's no inherent reason why business cannot be ethical, socially responsible, and profitable”) and for high wages and benefits (‘Whole Foods pays its workers a solid living wage—its lowest earners average $13.15 an hour—with excellent benefits and health care.’)

I added it as an inline citation in the labor relations section. — Athaenara ✉ 06:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Isn't it spelled "Whðle Foods Market"?

70.123.204.10 (talk) 15:59, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd like some help from the community in cleaning up some misunderstandings in this section. First, VIVA! USA were the main activists involved, not PETA. The link provided for this section is to a VIVA press release. The press release states and I confirmed that the protest took place in Santa Monica, CA, not in Austin, Texas. The protest was centered around the fact that Whole Foods got our duck meat from a company that conducted bill clipping and the company trucked foie gras to market for other vendors. Whole Foods never sold any foie gras and the company who supplied our duck meat didn't raise the ducks that were force fed to create foie gras. So, as written, the first paragraph is misleading. Also, I find the second paragraph too focused on ducks. While the information is accurate, the Animal Compassionate Standards deal with all species and this paragraph makes that confusing. Thoughts? Help? BradyWFM (talk) 21:29, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

This article has serious issues adhering to WP:NPOV.

Starting with the opening lines: "The company is consistently ranked among the most socially responsible businesses," it doesn't seem neutral to state something so complimentary of the business in the intro paragraph. Whole Foods may be socially responsible, but I think this belongs in the causes section, or could be reworded along the lines of "The company holds social responsibility as core mission," etc.

Concerning labor practices, the company is presented as treating workers very well. When an opposing opinion is introduced, it is immediately countered, and labor complaints are not allowed to exist without immediate refutation.

Some of the sentences describing food quality read as an advertisement, and though they are presented as "claims" by Whole Foods, their abundance does not qualify as NPOV.

Overall the article seems to need serious work in most if not all sections to adhere to WP:NPOV. Thoughts? --Alexbrewer^{talk} 16:28, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

First time reader of this article and I don't agree with the primary assessment above. Since Whole Foods appears to market its brand based on social and environmental issues, it strikes me as reasonable in the introduction to state whether or not third-party agencies support their official position. While I'm not certain about the labor comment above having not scanned the history well, that would only be one small subsection, so lacking further argument about the introduction, I'm removing the POV tag from this article until other concrete examples can be mentioned here.

No prejudice against Alexbrewer above as any article that deals with politically active topics can of course be subject to large POV issues that should be addressed and highlighted. -Markeer 23:42, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that any counter argument against Whole Foods supposed fair treatment of its workers is immediately suppressed in here. This article seems to be maintained and 'policed' by WF company representatives who have an influence which would not be permitted if this was an article on Walmart. This is indeed a political article and therefore needs to work harder on it's POV issues. As a European environmental activist I hope people will not dismiss me as some 'placed' anti-organics poster! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.203.52.229 (talk) 14:58, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Since the nature of progressive food retailing is such an important part of this article, I believe more should be said regarding criticisms of the product quality and of the negative role WFM plays in the organics industry as some groups and individuals believe. To this end I have included the sentence "Whole Foods now is a big-box retailer...[45], in the 'product quality' section. This whole article and discussion page seems to be dominated by those who are uncritical of WFM. However, the fact that many left leaning individuals and environmentalists now are starting to advocate a move away from WFM to what many see as genuinely eco-friendly and organic choices should mean that the sentence I added to the 'product quality' section should remain. Since I am new to editing pages on Wikipedia, I would appreciate people here correcting any mistakes or transgressions I have made rather than using it to simply silence yet another criticism of WFM. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.152.237.111 (talk) 09:46, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The section on product quality begins with the usual company's perspective on it's ethics and products. It's a positive portrayal of course, but then it's followed by some legitimate issues that are more negative and counter some of WFM's claims. But it seems someone then planted another positive company opinion about how WFM provides clarity in it's website regarding what is therefore assumed to be genuinely progressive products.

"Whole Foods Market's website details the company’s quality standards to provide clarity to customers about its criteria for selling food, dietary supplements, and personal care products.[39]"

It feels like someone added this simply to offset the criticisms. I wanted to see other people's opinions on whether this sentence serves any purpose in the place it's in. Should it remain where it is, deleted altogether or move upwards to the paragraph that begins the section? The problem is that compared to other companies this article gives a highly positive of WFM which may not simply reflect the positive nature of the company. I'd like to hear what other people think, especially the official representative of WFM itself, BradyWFM. Thanks.

• The statement that you added and the one you are concerned about both appear to have been reliably sourced and may even improve the WP:NPOV#Balance of the article. Perhaps the statements could be better placed within the article to be in context, but they should not need to be removed. As for your concern about the highly positive view the article portrays, you are welcome to add reliably sourced statements to the article, as long as they are factually based and do not represent a minority opinion (see WP:Undue weight). You can also edit the existing article text if you find any WP:PEACOCK terms or WP:WEASEL words. EagleAg04 (talk) 14:21, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I have moved the sentence "Whole Foods Market's website details the company’s quality standards to provide clarity to customers about its criteria for selling food, dietary supplements, and personal care products." up to the first paragraph which deals with the positive and progressive role WFM plays. This is so it does not act as simply a partisan counter-argument implanted into text critical of WFM. The sentence itself could be a weasel one. If it says the website details important information or is particularly clarifying to consumers of its products standards, should there not be a reference to back up this claim rather than a ref. simply to that WFM official website? Thanks for the advice Eagle.

The way that sentence was moved within the same section seems to put the statement in context. Be careful to avoid "segregation" of the article too much (see WP:STRUCTURE). The statement does not seem to use weasel wording, but more details about what the quality standards actually are would be welcome. Being a self-published source, certain restrictions do apply (see WP:SELFPUB). If there are any reliable sources contradicting the self-published claims, they would certainly be welcome as well. EagleAg04 (talk) 01:26, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the advice and help. I was concerned since if you compare the revision as of 14:42, 5 February 2007 of the article with the one immediately preceding it you'll notice that the sentence was implanted into the criticism of WFM by BradyWFM who is an actual Whole Foods representative! The newer sentence provides no real significant info. beyond what already could be found in the article and so I could only imagine its use was for offsetting the criticism of the company which goes beyond simply trying to improve the pov of the article. Anyway, I don't think there was a danger of 'segregating' since the criticism, and BradyWFM's sentence don't constitute a debate, BradyWFM line did not engage the other so it wasn't like moving it was ending a valuable dialogue. I'll finish providing my contributions and input for now since I'd like to see other people's opinions on this matter.

Balancing criticism is actually a good thing, and the statement does not seem to do much harm. However, since it does not provide a whole lot of added value it can be removed as long as the source is kept as a reference for the other statements in the paragraph. Also, while editing with conflicts of interest is strongly discouraged, it is not explicitly forbidden (see WP:COI). Thanks for your willingness to discuss the matter, and you're welcome to remove the statement if you would like. EagleAg04 (talk) 05:05, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

A new editor was bold and added information about the beef recall. Could someone with more time than me and knowledge of where to put this information put the section in the right place? Here are sources: [1] [2]. Dabomb87 (talk) 19:34, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to propose an external link, this page. While the main point of the page is to list some questionable aspects of WFM, what I think makes it valuable to info-seekers is the summaries of 28 separate articles about Whole Foods. It's a very handy resource for anyone interested in WFM, there's nothing else quite like it out there, I'm sure. I won't add this to the article myself, because it's my own site and I don't want to violate the self-promotion rule, so I'll leave it up to others to decide whether it is valuable enough or not. MichaelBluejay (talk) 15:17, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Both Mr. Mackey's statement about the current health care insurance proposals and the response and call for a boycott are news, and have been made quite public. I don't believe this falls under Wikipedia's Soapbox clause in any way. Darter (talk) 01:23, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Putting this into a section "Call for boycott" looks like a transparent attempt to support the boycott by making Wikipedia readers aware of it. That's where the "soapboxing" accusation comes from. There is nothing wrong with making sure certain aspects of a topic are not neglected, but you need to be a bit more subtle than that: The integrity of the encyclopedia comes first. If you write something that you would never expect to see in Britannica in this form, you should always think about whether it might be out of place.

A good reason for removing the information altogether was that your source for the existence of the boycott is someone asking for the boycott. Since it might well be that this is ignored by almost everybody, that's not proof of sufficient noteworthiness for inclusion in an encyclopedia. But I can help you with this: There is now an ABC News story about the boycott. [3] The information seems to belong in the article. Find the best section for it and put it there. I am not sure which is best; there are several possibilities. You may have to start a new subsection for this, but don't make the title too obvious.

I hope this helps. Hans Adler 11:07, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

• This item does not belong in the article per WP:NOTNEWS, WP:SOAP, WP:UNDUE and WP:RECENTISM. If you look, you can find WFM involved in a variety of boycotts, being both on the receiving and giving end - dolphins, ducks, planned parenthood, etc. Shall we fill the article upon with every kind of political campaign that the company has been involved in? I think not. It's a grocery store - let's keep some focus please. Colonel

Warden (talk) 20:13, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Here's another source, The Economist. There are also articles in The Washington Post and CNN Money. More to come, I'm sure. Yworo (talk) 06:06, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

It's relevant and it belongs. It's notable that the CEO of a major grocery chain had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal opposing the President's healthcare plan. It's not something you see every day, and it's a distinctly Whole Foods-style event. It's also notable due to the sheer amount of attention and press the issue received. And when over 13,000 people sign up for a boycott on Facebook in a few days, it can't really be argued that this wasn't a notable event in the history of the company. MichaelBluejay (talk) 15:17, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Yup, and the more coverage it gets, the more notable it becomes. It's already crossed the threshold for inclusion. Yworo (talk) 16:04, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

A one or two day non-event, does not noteworthy make. I'm going to delete this section after a week when it is obvious that nothing came of it. -- KelleyCook (talk) 19:27, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

[4], [5], [6], [7]. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:58, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Why is there a picture of a chocolate fountain at one of their company parties? Also leftists should stop trying to use Wikipedia as a propaganda tool...people already make fun of how factually inaccurate and biased Wikipedia often is..do you guys really want to expand this negative brand image of Wikipedia? So the next boycotts will be of the leftist dominated Propagandapedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.109.157.5 (talk) 19:44, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

You might be more comfortable at Conservapedia. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 18:57, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Here's an article that may prove useful for any needed citations. Not a bad read, either, if you have the time.... vulture19 02:55, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

This is somewhat subjective, but when I hear that "a large portion" of the base boycotted them, I think of a substantial enough contingent (1%? 5%?) to make an impact on their bottom line. I don't see any evidence that that happened - out here in Seattle, arguably the liberal heartland, Whole Foods continued to do quite well through the period of controversy.

Can someone try to quantify the size of the boycott attempts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arkaaito (talk • contribs) 09:01, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the Product Quality section could stand to be revisited. If you look at the WF website now they do not evaluate their products on "naturalness". Rather, they say this:

"Our business is to sell the highest quality foods we can find at the most competitive prices possible. We evaluate quality in terms of nutrition, freshness, appearance, and taste. Our search for quality is a never-ending process involving the careful judgment of buyers throughout the company." http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/quality-standards.php

108.6.2.66 (talk) 14:52, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I will recuse myself from editing this article because my strongly opinionated impressions formed over 9 years of being a customer of Whole Foods would inevitably push me into POV territory. However, after looking at the article, and briefly surveying one of the archives, I think that existence of this article in its present form raises serious issues irrespective of whether specific elements of it are tainted by POV or outright spin. The fact that the current discussion page -- unless you pursue the archives -- is bereft of insightful comment is a flag. The fact that a corporate representative openly and aggressively participated in contributing, and influencing, the editing is a huge red flag that seems on its face to be a reason to question POV for the whole article. All of this and more raises a question -- no doubt faced elsewhere in Wikipedia -- about whether articles in this form or with this kind of pedigree are appropriate in Wikipedia at all.

To be clear, encyclopedic articles should, in my view, definitely include those regarding the history and current societal role of major businesses. As with celebrities, authors, and politicians, however, there are often powerful opposing interests at play -- often in dire conflict over the characterization and mythology associated with the image, history and present practices of such businesses. The insidiousness with which self-serving policy statements and characterizations can become incorporated into the representation of such a business cannot be underestimated. In the end, to the extent that it reads anything like a corporate puff piece -- even if its factual content as such were to be verifiably correct in total -- it loses all objective credibility as an encyclopedic citation.

Business enterprises are nevertheless an important feature of modern life. I am simply not comfortable reading this one as written and would react similarly no matter whose enterprise was being discussed. I am no doubt motivated to say so in part by my personal knowledge of the topic, but even more motivated by the concern that it is merely representative of many similar situations. This article should be smaller, it should be more objective, it should not include any editorial influence by a representative of the enterprise. It should avoid overly personalizing the stories of entrepreneurs whose biographies are available for such a purpose. It should neither glamorize nor trash, but should acknowledge documented and historically relevant controversies along with the outcomes of public conflict resolution -- such as legal decisions (which it does, but seems not up to date). References to POV histories can always be provided for detail. My prediction is that forcing articles of this type to be much smaller would automatically address many of these concerns and recommendations.

Finally, I can see that some attempts to balance concerns like the ones I have emphasized are reflected in the current article. Some challenges were definitely made or identified. In the end, however, my personal impression is that they were not enough to salvage the result. In any case, the problem is more fundamental than how Whole Foods in particular is portrayed. scanyon (talk) 22:42, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

The reference link is broken. I had a hard time believing a CEO would bash his own company, otherwise I would have never even checked for the source. If anyone has an updated reference for this, please add, or perhaps this quote was vandalism and should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.37.171.164 (talk) 16:16, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Nevermind. I found it.... http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/04/100104fa_fact_paumgarten in which it has the quote followed by a comment about his foot-in-mouth antics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.37.244.68 (talk) 16:37, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

The controversy section, as is, just rattles off a list of areas of criticism against Whole Foods, but doesn't actually have any real information about any of them. If such controversy does exist, the inclusion of news items relating to each, and a brief summary thereof, would be a useful addition to this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.169.254.213 (talk) 02:19, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm puzzled by the text (Whole Foods Market) appearing multiple times in the Subsidiary Companies and Suppliers section -- Is there some reason I'm missing? Kevink707 (talk) 16:24, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I removed this from the criticism section:

In January 2013, CEO John Mackey was asked about his editorial in an interview on his new book about his previous comments on Obamacare. He compared it to fascism saying "Technically speaking, it's more like fascism," Mackey told NPR. "Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn't own the means of production but they do control it. And that's what's happening with our health care program with these reforms."

Can these political statements be moved to an article on Mackey himself? They don't really have anything to do with Whole Foods.

Umma Kynes 13:23, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

The main problem is references and sourcings and possible POV and some OR/LIBEL and BLP violations

• There is a completely unsourced paragraph about court proceedings which appears to be about some anon postings made by teh CEO of the company. This is a serious BLP violation. They need to be sourced, and not from insider information
• History is very heavily leaning towards the last 10% of teh existence of the company. The last 3 years take up around 50% of the history section. More needs to be told about the early formation of the company.
• Lead is short and too PR friendly. The financial impact (which is the objective) is not covered at all but there is a bit about it being nice and responsible and so forth.
• Sources. Many of these are from teh company's own website, and hence are not thrid party but are likely to be partisan. Although some simply state the POV of the company, others assert "the company is doing..." when in fact it could be marketing hype and not actually true. I can certainly tell you that some educational institutions I have been involved in have put misleading info in their websites and annual reports.
  • Sources need to be filled out with full details of author, date of publicatn, publisher and access date where applicable. It is missing in some places.
  • Some {{cn}} lying about the place.
• POV
  • "Historical financial highlights" - what about the lowlights?
• Style
  • Please use "Mackey" after mentioning his full name the first time. WP:MOS
  • Please link USDA and FDA for non-Americans (like me)
  • Causes and Charity section is way too large -WP:UNDUE, compared to RL coverage. I would bet that labour strikes in RL would get more coverage than company PR exercises/.

Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)