Face-Off: Michael Pollan v. John Mackey
We went to see John Mackey, founder/CEO of Whole Foods speak Tuesday night with journalist Michael Pollan of The Omnivore’s Dilemma fame and golden child for all things foodie and farm-related. We haven’t read Pollan’s book (it’s on our list!) but in it he takes a few jabs at Mackey and Whole Foods and how maybe Whole Foods is not the green do-gooder it claims to be. Maybe Whole Foods distorts the truth about some of its own food suppliers, and hurts the small local farmer by supporting large industrialized organic farms. (Something like that.)
The talk, held at Zellerbach Hall on the Berkeley campus, was supposed to be at a smaller venue but so many people wanted to watch Pollan and Mackey go head to head that they moved it to Zellerbach. Even the Berkeley crowd still wants a good SmackDown now and then.
Unfortunately, the face-off was pretty tame. No blood, except in Mackey’s opening film on animal factory farms.
By Jessie, contributing
Mackey accused Pollan of hurting Whole Foods’ sales by generating negative press about the stores. Pollan said (we’re paraphrasing here) “Ooops! Ha ha!”
Pollan asked Mackey what he was doing to make sure he was more transparent with consumers and that his food suppliers’ standards were up to snuff. Mackey said (again, paraphrasing), “I mean, we’re doing a lot. But yeah, there’s a lot more we could do.”
In particular, we were pretty disappointed with Mackey’s answer (and Pollan’s lack of follow up) to the ‘elitism in organic food’ question. Mackey gave a half-hearted response, but he didn’t talk about the need for outreach or education in low-income communities. But hey, who cares if the inner city can’t get decent food so long as our chickens eat organic…
The talk ended on the usual feel-good notes. Pollan sounded pretty witty and cool. Mackey was a little more on the defense– but hey, he’s rich. Everyone agreed that it was important to start the dialogue about our food choices and sources in order to effect change.
Yeah, yeah. That’s all true and nice. But we wanted a SmackDown.