I stopped in our newest Whole Foods a couple of weeks ago for something cold to drink before I hit the park with Kazmer for his midday romp, and on my way to the cold beverage case, I passed through the ‘bulk’ aisle. I had spent the week doing a lot of research on Japanese short grain rice varieties, and I stopped to see what they offered. Most of their rices were from the Lundberg Family Farms just north of Sacramento, a very high quality grower and processor. Since I’m always on the lookout for good organic dried beans and lentils, I just moved down the aisle to see what they were offering. There was a decent selection, but mainly the standard, Pinto, Cannellini, Great Northern varieties. What I did find interesting was that unlike the rices, flours and grains, the beans and lentils did not have any source information on the individual bins or anywhere in sight. This was not always the case, and it made me deeply suspicious. Back in early 2005, I tried to source organic Cannellini, Borlotti, and Marrow beans from the Western Montana-Idaho area, the same place I was buying my organic lentils. I inquired with my supplier, and while he said none of the farmers he dealt with were growing them he might be able to get them for me. Several weeks later when our pallet arrived, on it were four 25-pound bags of organic Cannellini beans from…China. I was surprised and a bit annoyed, but this was before all of the ‘tainted’ food incidents occurred.
I visited several other Whole Foods, and a few other supermarkets with bulk sections with the same result. At first, I thought, ‘well, maybe they source from a lot of different farms, and think it’s too much trouble to constantly change the information on the bin.” When I visited the local food cooperative near my home, all of their bean bins were labeled with the country of origin “USA.” Subsequent online research indicated that China is selling a lot more than just a few bags of organic Cannellini beans! I also found an article by the Cornucopia Institute about Pacific Natural Foods switching to Chinese organic soybeans to make its soy beverages without informing its customers or the public. Why doesn’t Whole Foods tell its customer the source(s) of its dried beans and lentils?
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