Lawsuit Alleges Whole Foods Sold Frozen Vegetables from China Grown in a Polluted Region by Prisoners and Certified as Organic

June 19, 2011

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Source: Cryptogon

Ahh, imagine my shock.

Rant mode: On.

We buy some organic foods in bulk from wholesale distributors here in New Zealand. Increasingly, if we want to buy these ‘certified organic’ bulk foods, the country of origin is China.

We refuse to buy any food from China, regardless of which organic certification it has. We’ve indicated this to the distributors (Ceres and Chantal) and they said that they hear it all the time, but, according to them, they are just buying what’s available, and apparently, that means the only option is China for an increasing number of foods. (Becky orders thousands of dollars worth of products from these places for a co-op we’re in with other families.)

Now, that’s the organic stuff, where we can at least find out where the food originates. What happens with the supermarket duopoly here?

Part of New Zealand’s take over by Chinese interests is related to country of origin information on food labels. In New Zealand, there’s no requirement to indicate where food is from on the packaging. All kinds of nonsense reasons are given for this, but the main one (now) is that seeing “China” on so many food labels would cause difficulties for the politicians who exist to sell New Zealand down the river. People would really start to wonder, “WTF is happening here?” Why is a country like New Zealand, so easily capable of producing an abundance of food locally, importing F*@^!%$ beans from CHINA!? Nobody in polite circles will discuss this.

The short answer is that New Zealand is a company town, and that company is Fonterra. New Zealanders use a Fonterra Milk Buck as a national currency. You may know it as the New Zealand Dollar. The largest component of the agricultural sector involves maximum output of dairy products for export. Why grow food for consumption here when you can make more money by milking cows for Fonterra… As a result of this, we get the ubiquitous, “Packaged in Auckland,” on a lot of things, which just means “Made in China” almost all of the time. That food is cheap, cheap, cheap. High quality dairy products go out, and garbage from China comes in. The change is paid to foreign creditors, which is never enough, and the deficit grows by the day. The End.

Almost all fertilizer used commercially in New Zealand has to be imported. This is a company town, forget it. Water pollution? Never mind. Soil erosion? What’s that? Deficit getting worse all the time? More milk solids! MOOOOOORRRRRRE! “Packaged in Auckland”? Look away, and be a happy Kiwi.

In other news: Fonterra Selling Yuan Denominated Bonds in Hong Kong:

Fonterra Co-Operative Group Ltd. is poised to become the first company from New Zealand to raise funds in the offshore yuan bond market with a 300 million yuan (US$46 million) bond it aims to price later Friday.

The dairy giant’s treasury manager, Stephan Deschamps, said the company hopes to sell more so-called “dim sum” bonds in the future. The decision to raise funds in Hong Kong, the center of the rapidly growing international yuan bond market, reflects the growing importance of China to Fonterra’s business operations, he said.

Look at the Hell on Earth that the Chinese regime has created in their own country. Now, they want us to eat it, in, “Clean green New Zealand,” and everywhere else.

Not me. Not my family. No way.

Via: Bloomberg:

A Florida judge allowed a lawsuit to proceed that claims Whole Foods Market Inc. (WFMI) violated the state’s deceptive trade-practices law by selling frozen vegetables from China grown in a polluted region by prisoners and certified as organic.

Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Amy Steele Donner yesterday denied the grocery chain’s motion to dismiss the suit filed on behalf of the Southeast Consumer Alliance Inc., a non-profit organization based in Boca Raton, Florida.

The suit claims that Whole Foods knew that its Silver River supplier, based in the Chinese province of Zhejiang, was actually a front company for a network of farms where Chinese prisoners are forced to work and that the farms are irrigated from a highly polluted river.

The suit also claims that Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods knew that the company providing the initial organic certification is owned by the Chinese government, which also owns the farms, creating a conflict of interest.

“They’re doing everything they can to conceal this bogus or shaky certification,” Bruce Baldwin, the group’s attorney, said. “Whole Foods brags about its social accountability audits of all of its foreign suppliers. So either they knew about these forced labor camps, or they didn’t actually check.”

A spokeswoman for the grocery store chain didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment. Whole Foods attorney Christopher Wayne Wadsworth said he wasn’t authorized to comment on the case.

Research Credit: JH