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Wal-Mart accused of ignoring claims of selling mislabeled "organic" products
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ryan
about 1 year ago about Wal-Mart
A recent Fast Company post titled Is Wal-Mart Really Organic? reveals that Wal-Mart, the largest seller of organic products, is facing heavy criticism for selling products that claim to be organic, but in fact are not.
According to the article:
The Cornucopia Institute, a farm policy research group based in Wisconsin has been taking a lot of shots at Wal-Mart concerning the retailer’s organic food labeling practices. For one, the organization charges that Wal-Mart’s signage misrepresents nonorganic food as organic. There are photos on Cornucopia’s web site backing up the organization’s allegations. According to The Wall Street Journal, “The organic-food industry has mushroomed into a juggernaut with nearly $14 billion in sales in 2005 and annual growth of roughly 20%,” and, “food empires like Dean Foods Co. and Danone SA now churn out organic products, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has become a major seller of organic food.”
If in fact Wal-Mart is selling products that are mislabeled as organic, that would be a pretty unfair misuse of consumer trust, as we tend to be willing to pay more for organic products, and the only information that we have readily available to us while shopping is labels.
Perhaps if Wal-Mart truly desires to become a trusted name is the sale of organics, it will have to work more closely with regulating agencies to define what “organic” is, and its suppliers to ensure that that definition is met, and the trust of consumers is not lost due to any future confusion.
This is a story about Wal-Mart
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Comments
submitted by ryanguill about 1 year ago
I think this is importaint, but not because of any mishandling in wal-mart’s case. Without well defined standards of what is organic and what isnt, how are they supposed to be held responsible, or even start to police their products and suppliers?
Wal-Mart can and will apply supplier pressure if it is a priority
submitted by ryan (verified representative for dotherightthing.com) about 1 year ago
I completely agree with you that it isn’t necessarily Wal-Mart’s responsibility to police its suppliers, but the company has definitely shown its ability to influence its suppliers when it cares about something, right? Check out the pressure they are putting on suppliers from an packaging waste perspective: http://dotherightthing.com/entries/2
Wal-Mart surely isn’t the only retailer selling products mislabeled as organic, and I don’t necessarily support picking on the biggest target… but the other way to look it is that Wal-Mart is the largest reseller of organics, and with great power comes great responsibility. I think I just quoted one of the recent Spiderman movies.
The last thing I want Wal-mart doing is creating standards...
submitted by ryanguill about 1 year ago
Again, it’s not wal-marts job to be creating the standards for what is considered organic and what isn’t. That would be the job of the fda, or some other independent group.
Now, once that standard has been reached, I fully agree that wal-mart has the weight to throw around to get the suppliers to comply, either its organic or not, label your package correctly or we don’t use you. But until that standard has been created, and not by wal-mart, I don’t see this as wal-marts fight.
That isn’t to say that wal-mart couldn’t push the right people into saying that we need the standards, but I don’t really think thats their responsibility either though.
submitted by LaurenS 10 months ago
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