Huffington Post: The Big Box Paradox: Should We Shop At Wal-Mart? [View All]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kerry-trueman/the-big-box-paradox-shoul_b_153580.html

I used to shop at Wal-Mart, until I figured out that low prices based on lousy labor practices and shoddy made-in-China schlock are not such a bargain. But now that Wal-Mart--America's largest food retailer--has jumped on the organic bandwagon, it's making organic products available to folks who lack the access or means to shop at farmers' markets or, say, Whole Foods. Wal-Mart has also made a great show of going green, and just shelled out more than $352 million in what may be the "largest settlement ever for lawsuits over wage violations."

As Elanor Starmer, the Ethicurean's resident agriculture policy expert, noted a couple of weeks ago, Wal-Mart has a terrible track record when it comes to workers' rights. So, I felt compelled to ask Elanor, can Wal-Mart ever be a force for good? Is it OK to advocate shopping there if it's the only way you can get your hands on organic stuff (even if it's industrial organic)? Elanor graciously took time out from her holiday sledding to shed light on whether Wal-Mart's been naughty or nice:
This is the perennial question, isn't it? Wal-Mart is so huge that it's easy to make the argument that any "good" thing Wal-Mart does - from stocking organic food to changing to energy-saving lightbulbs - makes a huge impact. And in a sense, that is absolutely true. But its potential to make a huge positive impact in one arena can't be viewed in isolation from its potential to hugely screw things up in other arenas. Looking at the sum total seems to be the only way to answer that question fairly.


On the plus side, it's pretty clear that Wal-Mart has gotten organic food into the hands of people who might not otherwise buy it or have access to it. But a major caveat is the quality of organic product that Wal-Mart actually provides. Wal-Mart isn't just a seller -- it's also a buyer, one that is able to offer lower prices to consumers (and still turn a massive profit) in part by lowering the prices it pays to its suppliers. In many cases, lower prices equals a lower-quality product. We saw this play out publicly when Wal-Mart decided to offer organic milk: Organic Valley was originally bidding for the contract along with Horizon (owned by dairy giant Dean Foods, which controls some 60% of the organic milk market in the US). Reportedly, Organic Valley dropped out of the bidding process because it realized that it couldn't maintain its high standards, including the tradition of offering its farmer-members a "fair" price for milk, given what Wal-Mart was willing to pay. Horizon ended up with the contract.

So is that good for consumers or not? Not so much. Consumers buy organic milk for a lot of different reasons -- because the cows aren't fed synthetic hormones or antibiotics, because they have access to pasture (and some studies suggest that grass-fed cows produce healthier meat and milk products than cows fed grain), because organic producers have to manage their dairies in more environmentally-responsible ways than conventional dairymen may, or because they want to help keep family farms in business by paying them a fair price for milk. What we're seeing with Horizon and other industrial-organic dairies is that the pressure to sell milk cheaply becomes pressure to cut corners on the organic standards. Horizon and Aurora, another big organic milk company, have been sued by the Cornucopia Institute for violating the standards by confining cows in giant feedlots rather than letting them out on pasture. The USDA has been pathetically lax in forcing the big guys to comply with the rules. As a result, consumers buying organic milk at Wal-Mart are getting milk that is far closer to the conventional stuff than most of them would probably ever imagine.


FULL story at link.