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  • 2016-07-07 (xsd:date)
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  • Monsanto Buys Whole Foods (en)
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  • In July 2016, a rumor began circulating on social media claiming that the agribusiness giant Monsanto corporation had purchased or merged with Whole Foods Market organic grocery chain Claims of that nature were not new in mid-2016, but blog posts published then reinvigorated social media rumors about a purchase or merger involving Monsanto and Whole Foods. An undated blog post published by Healthy Holistic Living asserted in a headline that Whole Foods Join[ed] Monsanto, linking to a 28 June 2016 Food Democracy article that utilized the same language (in part). Owing to the frequent truncation of titles on social media, many users were exposed only to partial headlines, leading to widespread misinterpretation and inferences that Monsanto and Whole Foods had merged. However, the Food Democracy article pertained to a dispute over a legislative bill that would allow the labeling of genetically modified foods (GMOs) to be effected through the use of Quick Response (QR) codes, not to a corporate merger: The underlying controversy over labeling of GMO-derived food products was widely discussed on alternative health web sites and blogs but received little news coverage. On 6 July 2016, political news outlet The Hill reported on a disturbance that had occurred that day during a GMO labeling vote involving the Organic Consumers Association (OCA): On 1 July 2016, Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb published a blog post clarifying earlier comments he made about GMO labeling at a June 2016 conference in Aspen, and those remarks ostensibly fomented the rumors about a Monsanto/Whole Foods merger. In that statement, Robb denied he or Whole Foods had ever supported only QR code-based labeling of genetically modified products: By 7 July 2016, the majority of comments published by users to Whole Foods' Facebook page pertained to rumors about a Monsanto/Whole Foods merger. Representatives for Whole Foods alternately linked to Robb's 2016 blog post and a 2 February 2012 Whole Foods article addressing and refuting earlier claims of the same nature: (en)
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