"sourcing" news and stories

The prevailing food trends that say you should know exactly what you're eating and where it came from. This is generally accepted to mean that you should buy eggs are from free range chickens and beef from grass-fed, hormone-free cows. Whole Foods is reinterpreting that to mean that you should know the farmers who are responsible for producing the eggs, beef and produce that you are purchasing. They're introducing their customers to their producers by putting up pictures of the farmers in stores, which makes the shopping experience sort of like seeing the vendors at a farmer's market without having to interact with them in any way. The idea is not to make the farmers into celebrities, but to make sure that the customers know that they are buying locally and supporting these people by shopping at Whole Foods, not just supporting the store.

Whole Foods is supporting the farmers because it is driving their business, not just because they believe in the cause, but whatever the reason, the movement for buying locally is making a change for small farmers. Some report that nearly all of their products are now sold locally, whether through a venue like Whole Foods or direct to consumers, and that the increased interest in local foods and the willingness of consumers to pay slightly higher prices for them are, in many cases, saving these farms.

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When it came out that Ben & Jerry's, the socially aware ice cream company owned by Unilever, was purchasing eggs from a facility that was accused of mistreating its chickens by the Humane Society, which released a report that revealed the supplier had dead and dying chickens with living ones and that all were kept in small cages. Consumers were not pleased. They expected more from the activist ice cream producers. But Ben & Jerry listened to those concerns, as well as the concerns from the Humane Society, and has dropped the egg producer in question from its list of suppliers, though the CEO would not commit to switching to cage-free eggs for its US operation, though they use free range eggs in Europe.

Now we will just have to wait and see if this move affects either sales or production, given that Sarah noted the ice cream maker purchased over 30 million eggs each year from the egg company and that consumers might want the company to source its ingredients more responsibly in the future.

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