Vs.! Pollan and Mackey
"Pollan-Mackey Smackdown" was the entry on my calendar. Michael Pollan, the tall, thin journalism professor whose The Omnivore's Dilemma described Big Organic and the "supermarket pastorale" of stores such as Whole Foods, and John Mackey, the sandy-haired Average Joe CEO of Whole Foods, had engaged in an open, Internet-wide debate for months, and the two were going to continue it in public. The food blogs buzzed for days when the announcement came.
Mackey knows how to work a crowd. In front of a 2000-person audience where half or more of the members were critics, he tossed gold bits into his 45-minute preamble to tip the balance to his side. He outlined the gray areas around every food issue. He described, in a humble way, how The Omnivore's Dilemma caused him to rethink Whole Foods' business. He mentioned the company's investments, plucking the crowd's heartstrings with feel-good slides that showed farms and the equipment they had bought with loans from the chain. He peppered his talk with first-time announcements of new initiatives, from a "Whole Trade" label for ethically traded foods to a rating system for organic farms. He closed his talk with a question aimed to put his critics off-balance, "I've told you what Whole Foods has been doing about this for the last 27 years. What are you going to do to make these changes happen?"
It's easy to be cynical when the CEO of a major corporation speaks: For instance, a suspiciously similar amount of clapping greeted each announcement of Whole Foods' accomplishments. But Pollan underlined the point that few men in Mackey's position would engage in such an open debate with their critics. Mackey seems sincere enough about his ideals—he sacrificed three or four minutes of his talk to show a video detailing the horror of factory farms, prompting Pollan's comment, "you can tell a P.R. firm didn't make that for you." He has made real changes in response to critics. He has a passion for animal welfare (he's a vegan and good friends with Lauren Ornelas, the head of Viva! USA). He blamed Pollan for exaggerating the industrialization of organic food. "It doesn't seem to have hurt sales too much," said Pollan, alluding to the booming-business numbers for organic food in Mackey's talk.
Few of the men's questions, or the handful they took from the audience, shed new light on the debate the two have had since the middle of last year. Mackey noted that after The Omnivore's Dilemma came out, it became open season on the company. "Trader Joe's is our biggest competition," he said, "but the press hasn't touched them." Mackey asked Pollan what his vision would be, echoing the challenge at the end of the 45-minute talk. Pollan hemmed and hawed but then presented an answer: less corn and more grass, more thinking about food, and transparency throughout the food chain.
There's no doubt the two men disagree about a number of issues, but this debate, close to a year in duration, has created notable changes in the Whole Foods chain and has given the public much to think about. Even I have softened my view of the company; although their anti-union stance and the obliteration of small, established organic grocers remain sticking points that keep them off my normal shopping beat.
I distrust Mackey as I distrust any Fortune 500 CEO, but my hats off to him for setting an example that few other CEOs have the courage to follow.
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