John Mackey: Morning, great to be here!

Margaret Wittenberg: Mad cow disease is not really a problem in the United States. What happened in Europe is that some producers gave their livestock feed that contained animal by-products, and that is something that the USDA had banned several years ago. So that's something in the United States you don't have to worry about as much, although the USDA and the FDA are still monitoring feed mills to make sure they are complying.

Margaret Wittenberg: To be organic, there are several things that a producer must do, and one of the key ones is that the land should not have any prohibited substances for three years. They can't have any genetically engineered seed or ingredients, and no sewage sludge can be used for a fertilizer, and they can't use any irradiation products. Most importantly, they need to work with developing the soil fertility. That's real important in organic and sustainable agriculture.

Margaret Wittenberg: The worst pesticide is a group of pesticides called organophosphates, and they are used on many food crops, and also in residential and commercial buildings as an insecticide. The problem with them is they cause quick effects, harmful effects, and long term chronic effects, to both humans and wildlife. And right now, organophosphates account for about half of all the insecticides used in the United States. So it is used a lot on cotton, corn, wheat, and also mosquito control.

Margaret Wittenberg: If a food is genetically engineered, it means that the genetic material within the cell has been modified. It's not how nature intended it to be, and so they can include genetic material from animals, from plants, from whatever, even though you would never find that happening in nature. And the concern is that there is not enough research to make sure that this is actually OK to do. They are finding that cloned animals aren't working; they are dying and having unusual diseases. There is a lot of drift, with crops that are genetically engineered, and they are infiltrating organically grown crops, and they are also infiltrating plants that the farmers did not grow as genetically engineered. So it is affecting the environment, and it is not known yet if it is affecting human and wildlife health.

Margaret Wittenberg: We get our shrimp from aquaculture, and typically it could be in the United States, or it could be from foreign countries, and we only work with aquaculture companies that are concerned about the environment.

John Mackey: I suppose the creation and development and building of Whole Foods Market.

John Mackey: I think the hardest thing about my job is the way Whole Foods Market views itself philosophically is that we are a business dedicated to meeting all the various stakeholders of the company's best interests. And by stakeholders we mean customers, team members, stockholders, community, and the environment. Sometimes what is in the best interest of one stakeholder may not be in the best interest of another stakeholder, and as the CEO, I have to balance the various interests of the different constituencies and stakeholders to create win, win, win scenarios, and that can sometimes be very difficult to do. Everybody wants something from the CEO.

John Mackey: I would define Central Market as a perishable foods supermarket. I define Whole Foods Market as a natural products, organic foods supermarket. Our focus is on foods that don't have any artificial ingredients, flavorings, colorings and preservatives, organically grown foods, foods that don't have any pesticides or chemical fertilizers, meat that doesn't have any growth hormones or antibiotics. In other words, Whole Foods Market has very stringent quality standards for the products that we will sell. Central Market does not have, as far as I know, any quality standards.

John Mackey: We don't know.

John Mackey: Based on quantity of food consumed, I would say our Whole Foods Market private label vanilla soy milk, in the dairy case.

John Mackey: Whole Foods is a very decentralized company, so the recipes that we sell can vary from store to store and region to region across the company, so many of the ideas for recipes come from the people working in the stores. And the best recipes, and the most successful recipes, get exchanged from store to store, from city to city, from state to state.

John Mackey: I wanted to be a professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association. It didn't work out.

John Mackey: I have no idea; I never prepared for it. I began Whole Foods in 1980 with one store, I opened a second store, third store, fourth store, and so forth, and until today we have 122 stores, 2 billion in sales. And so, I've been learning as I went along. I didn't prepare. Life is an adventure, and we learn and grow as we grow through the journey of life, the adventure of life. However, if I was to make recommendations -- my recommendation would be to follow your heart.

John Mackey: Yes, we are. We have a store opening in Toronto, in Canada, next fall, and we are looking at some international opportunities in Europe currently.

John Mackey: I think the most difficult decision, by category, that I've ever had to make is whenever we have had to close a store down, or exit a business that we were unsuccessful at, and laying off the team members, when they lose their jobs. It's a very, very painful, horrible thing. It's necessary sometimes, for bad decisions that have been made. But it is very painful, and certainly the hardest decisions I've ever had to make. Fortunately, that has happened only a few times in the company's history.

John Mackey: That question would be very difficult to answer, because it would depend upon how one defines unique, or what one's reference point would be for uniqueness. Some products that we might say are unique someone else might say are common, so it's all a reference point. Probably, we carry some very esoteric produce items which are seldom seen in other stores. Like certain types of mushrooms that you wouldn't see in an ordinary supermarket.

John Mackey: Whole Foods is right now just about to publish a cookbook that will have hundreds and hundreds of our recipes in it. But for book recommendations, we recommend "Good Food" by our very own Margaret Wittenberg, who is on this chat. We have a ton of recipes in that book, it's a great book about natural and organic products.

John Mackey: Not at this time. Our sales right now are very strong, however, economic conditions haven't yet really changed. They are just supposed to change; we are supposed to be heading into a recession, but it hasn't happened yet, so we haven't seen any impact yet. We have seen rising utility costs due to oil prices trending much higher, plus we have 29 stores in California. California's undergoing a severe energy shortage. That's affecting our business in California. But in general, our expansion plans are full steam ahead.

John Mackey: Thank you very much!

John Mackey: Yes. www.wholefoodsmarket.com

Margaret Wittenberg: You will find a lot about Whole Foods Market, including who we are, where our stores are located, various environmental and health issues that people should know about, our stock and financial information, information about some of our products, and recipes, a lot of recipes. Extensive health information on various supplements and foods, and also, we have a Jobs information portion on the site.

John Mackey: Approximately 90 to 95 percent of the promotions that occur at Whole Foods Market occur from within the company, as opposed to hiring outsiders from outside the company for those positions. So talent is developed internally. People start out as working on a team as a cashier, or a grocery team, or working on produce, or one of the other teams, our stores are all divided into teams. And the teams are self managing. They do their own hiring, they do their own firing, they do their own purchasing, they do their own merchandising, and they have profit responsibilities. For the best team members on these teams at Whole Foods we post all open leadership positions throughout the company. So when a position opens up on one of the teams, people apply for those positions. They go through an interview process with the team, and the most talented, most deserving individuals are promoted to higher leadership positions. To become a store team leader, store manager is the usual lingo, but we call it a Store Team Leader at Whole Foods Market, usually the best team leaders or associate team leaders apply and we pick the best of those applicants. That same process continues all through the organization. The Regional Presidents who run a region, (Whole Foods is divided into 8 geographical regions,) the best Store Team Leaders become Regional Presidents, and eventually the best Regional Presidents will become the next CEO of Whole Foods Market. So there are very few levels at Whole Foods Market in the hierarchy. Those positions are filled from inside the company through competitive applications from the most qualified team members. And that is basically how we develop our leadership team.

Margaret Wittenberg: Foot and mouth disease does not affect humans. And the United States has restricted meat imports and live animals from Europe and other places where foot and mouth disease is either happening or has potential. So at this point there is not a known problem in the United States, but again, even the meat from an animal that would have foot and mouth disease would not harm a human. What foot and mouth disease essentially does to an animal is that it loses a lot of weight for a period of time. It can recover, however, but what they have been doing is slaughtering animals, because they think that's a way to prevent the virus from spreading.

John Mackey: You know, there was an economist back in the early 19th century named Thomas Malthus, who predicted that populations would increase geometrically while food supplies would only increase arithmetically. But so far, Malthus has been wrong, because the intellectual capital of the human race, the inventiveness, and capitalism has fundamentally so far proven Malthus wrong. Food supplies have increased faster than population, and there are fewer people starving today as a percentage of the population than ever before in world history. So, food supplies have kept up with population growth for the last two hundred years since he made his prediction. He could still be proven right in the long term, but so far, agricultural productivity has outstripped population growth. I might add that one of the biggest consumers of food that's grown in the world today is food that is fed to livestock animals. Much of the grain, such as corn, is fed to livestock animals, and then the livestock animals are slaughtered for food. If more people were vegetarians, there would be greater amounts of food available, because the livestock wouldn't be eating so much of it. That being said, there is still agricultural productivity that's proven to be adequate to the task so far. There is a political question here that enters in. There is adequate food in the world to feed everyone, but getting that food to people that are starving, when we don't have the economic resources to pay for the food, has proven to be more challenging than actually producing the food. It's not a production question, it's a distribution question.

John Mackey: That's a good question. I got interested at about age 20. I walked into a food co-op, back in Austin, in the early 70's, and I saw whole food in bulk bins for the first time in my life. And, that sounds sort of trivial, but that was an "Aha" experience for me. Prior to that, food that I have always known came in packages, and frozen TV dinners, and in cans, and seeing all those whole grains and beans and nuts and seeds and flowers in all in these bulk bins got me incredibly excited to learn more about food. And that began my, I call it my "food consciousness awakening." I began to get books, I began to learn how to cook, I became a vegetarian, I learned more about nutrition, I learned more about the politics of food, and pretty soon, my girlfriend and I decided to open a small store. And that small store we opened back in 1978 was called "Safer Way," and it was a precursor to the first Whole Foods Market. That's how my adventure began.

John Mackey: Whole Foods Market does not grow any of its own food. We work with hundreds of organic farmers around the United States and increasingly throughout the world.

John Mackey: Yes, there are. If people are interested, they should come in to one of the stores and fill out an application.

John Mackey: I don't know. The requirements would be specific to the store and the prepared foods team. Probably the most important requirement is high energy and a good attitude. No experience necessary!

Margaret Wittenberg: Seafood sustainability is very important to us. And one of the ways that we are working to ensure seafood sustainability is to work with the Marine Stewardship Council, and that is an international group that certifies fisheries after they are inspected to see if they fish according to sustainable methods, and also protect the environment. In their website, so people can learn about that, is www.msc.org. So we've been working with them the last three years since they have been in existence, and we are on their advisory group and work right there with them to help develop the standards and help maintain integrity.

John Mackey: That depends upon the store. It can vary from store to store. In some of our stores, the produce department is the most profitable. In other stores, the nutrition department, which sells vitamins, herbs, and body care items is the most profitable. In other stores the grocery department is most profitable, which sells dry groceries, dairy, bulk foods, frozen foods. So it just depends on the particular store.

John Mackey: Yes, you should be. Some of the fishing fleets are using trawlers where they have these long nets that can go out for miles and miles and miles, and those nets can pick up EVERYTHING that is there in the ocean. What is not useful for the fisherman is just thrown away, discarded, killed. That's a tremendous amount of waste and biological and ecological destruction to gather in some desirable fish. There is too much waste; it is not sustainable, very harmful, and we believe that kind of fishing should be outlawed by international cooperation. There are also concerns, less so now, about the way tuna can be caught, because dolphins oftentimes swim near schools of tuna. There have been a lot of dolphins that have been killed inadvertently through tuna fishing. So how the tuna is caught can make a huge difference.

Margaret Wittenberg: There was a net called the encircling net that was causing the problem. And many years ago in the early 90's, is when you first started seeing dolphin- friendly tuna labels on cans, because consumers let the fisheries know that killing the dolphins to catch the tuna was not acceptable. And now there are international rules where there needs to be an observer on every tuna boat in order to ensure that dolphins are not killed unnecessarily, and if they end up killing a lot of dolphins, then they lose their license.

John Mackey: We already have one store in Tempe, Arizona right now, and we have a second store opening up in Paradise Valley either later this summer or early in the fall. That's all we have planned right now, but we are continuing to look as locations become available.

Margaret Wittenberg: Absolutely! The quality of water, right now, the water in the United States, when you are talking streams or ground water, is pretty polluted, and in fact, 90 percent of the samples on streams found that at least one pesticide would be found. In ground water, it is very similar, so finding good clean water is very difficult these days. One thing in organics, one of the stipulations is that they need to have a good clean source of water. So if you are using water that has pesticide residue or even microbiological problems it can absolutely affect produce. In fact, there have been diseases that have come through crops because of using water that had a lot of microbial problems with it, like E. coli. So cleaner water supply, whether it is microbial or pesticide residue, is a key for the United States, and across the world.

John Mackey: We don't know. Less than one percent!

John Mackey: Well, if it's a processed food, or in a package, you should read the label, see whether it has artificial ingredients, flavorings, colorings, or preservatives in it. In other words, how natural is the food, how whole is the food? If it's a fresh whole food, like produce, then we believe organically grown produce without synthetic pesticides or chemical fertilizers is desirable. At Whole Foods all the produce is labeled as to what type of produce it is. If it's a meat product, was the meat grown naturally, without growth hormones or antibiotics? I also believe, and I know Margaret does as well, that how the livestock was treated before slaughter is a very important ethical question that most people aren't aware of. In the last 50 years, livestock animals have entered into what is called "factory farms," where they are frequently given inadequate space, terrible living conditions, they are unable to move around. They oftentimes have inadequate ventilation and food and water supplies. Livestock animals for most meats that you find in a typical supermarket are raised very inhumanely; they are virtual slaves. The animals are not treated with respect or dignity. At Whole Foods, we researched all of the producers of our animals to be sure that they have been raised in humane conditions. So, that sort of a process that you go through when you shop, and obviously, you should shop for nutritional quality, foods that are minimally processed, and don't have a lot of sugars and added fats. Basically, it is important to shop intelligently; you have to be well informed about nutrition, and about food. I've been learning more for the last 28 years, and it's a process that continues. So I encourage the students there to become more conscious, to wake up, become better informed about the food you are putting in your bodies, because it has a huge impact on your health and well being. Most Americans eat very poor diets. We eat too much fat, too much sugar, and too many artificial ingredients. We don't eat enough fresh produce. Americans tend to be overweight and obese. There is only one way to stop that, and that's to become better informed, better educated, and take responsibility for your own health and well being, because no one else will if you don't.

John Mackey: By politics of foods I mean there is so much more going on with food than the average person is aware of. For example, genetically modified organisms, Margaret already gave a definition of genetically modified foods, same thing, genetically modified organisms are increasingly in the food supply, and people aren't aware of it. They don't know that they are actually consuming foods that have been genetically modified. Those foods are not labeled, so there is no way for people to know. An example of politics of food that Whole Foods is involved with, is we are lobbying the government to require foods that have genetically modified organisms to be labeled, so consumers can make informed choices. That's one example of the politics of food. Margaret, do you want to add another one?

Margaret Wittenberg: Another one in the United States is that a couple of years ago there was a new law called the Food Quality Protection Act. And what this did is require the EPA to review all the pesticides that are reviewed prior to 1984, and there are many many MANY of them, hundreds of them, and they needed to reevaluate them to consider the effect that pesticides would have on infants and children, because before that, they only evaluated its effect on an adult. Children's and infant's immune systems are very sensitive. So the problem is that the EPA has actually done very good work on this, and yet there are the pesticide company lobbies, as well as the farm bureau type lobbyists that are working in Congress to stop this process. And it is unacceptable. That's another politics of food. If you have enough money to lobby, you can often get what you want.

John Mackey: There are many other examples. Organic Foods Labeling Act was a political act, we worked on it for over 10 years to get that as a national law, Margaret was personally very involved with that. I mentioned previously about the livestock animals, that is obviously a political issue, how we treat animals, do animals have rights, do they have the right to not be inhumanely treated, that's a political question. So there are dozens of different political aspects to food.

Margaret Wittenberg: That would be artificial colors. There is information that the FDA many years ago wanted to ban them, but were stopped by Congress from doing that, because of different lobbyists for the food industry who convinced Congress not to do that. Another one is aspartame, which you normally see it named as Nutrasweet-that's a trade name for aspartame-and there are a lot of concerns about that. You can find it in diet sodas, and foods that say no sugar added, and even though that sounds like a good deal, there are a lot of concerns about whether that artificial sweetener is safe for people to use. Some of the problems are related to neurological problems especially in children, and also in pregnant women. But there have been a lot of testimonies to Congress and the FDA about concerns, including pilots, airline pilots, who say they get disoriented after having a diet soda. So that's a problem! It is the one additive that the FDA has had the most consumer feedback of problems with that they have ever had in their history. So anyone drinking diet sodas and eating foods that are labeled "no sugar added" but contain aspartame should think twice about that.

John Mackey: My parting thought is Whole Foods is dedicated to helping people be healthier and live lives with more vitality and greater sense of well being. It is very important that as students you become aware of food, nutrition, and health, and that you take responsibility for your own health and well-being when you are young. You take it for granted, but nutrition and food are very important to your long term health and vitality. In addition, as you can see from the chat, there are many issues that we are concerned about at Whole Foods Market, from water quality, to organically grown foods, to livestock treatment, to genetically modified organisms, basically, food is under attack. The integrity of our food is under sustained long term attack, not from malicious evil people, but from the continued industrial technological revolution, and our food is being modified increasingly each day, more and more and more. Whole Foods is trying to do its part, but it will be up to the younger generation to continue the work we are pioneering at Whole Foods.