Saturday, March 13, 2010

Raw Milk Dropped By Whole Foods (Temporarily? Permanently?)

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Up until yesterday, Whole Foods sold raw milk in many states where they could.

As of today, Whole Foods no longer sells raw milk in CA, CT, PA, and WA (and maybe others). The above sign, seen outside a Whole Foods Market in Washington, makes it sound like they may start selling raw milk again at some future time. We shall see.

Mark McAfee suggests that this decision came from difficulties Whole Foods was having with insurers. McAfee observes that the store continues to carry spinach and peanuts, despite the fact that they have killed far more people than raw milk has in recent years.

While this may be a temporary blow to raw milk, it is a boon to independent stores and smaller chains that carry raw milk. And it will generate more bad PR for Whole Foods, who have been alienating key constituencies with some frequency over the past year. (See here and here.) Raw milk drinkers tend to think quite a lot about food, health, and wellness; other people are likely to seek their advice around food questions.

David Gumpert posts his thoughts on the subject, insightful as usual, over at his blog, The Complete Patient.

1 comment:

Raine Saunders said...

Thanks for posting about this important issue, Alex! I hope the word about raw milk continues to be spread both far and wide...and even though I don't really support Whole Foods, the fact that they removed raw milk from their shelves has not gone unnoticed. Everyone needs to write in and make commentary about this issue.

This issue is certainly important when you consider all the food recalls that continue to occur on a regular basis (I just posted about a massive recall today of 10,000 processed products). People are so afraid of raw milk, but they seem to not care about all these processed foods that are toxic and in the news regularly, but think raw milk is such a problem and has not caused nearly the amount of sickness as the processed foods.

http://www.agriculturesociety.com/?p=3898