Name: Regenerative Farmer Will Harris on Whole Foods and Green Washing
Uploaded: 2022-11-03T17:38:44.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Regenerative Farmer Will Harris on Whole Foods and Green Washing' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-11-03. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Regenerative Farmer Will Harris on Whole Foods and Green Washing' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-11-03. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan Experience. So I'll tell you this, Whole Foods Market continues
to be my
biggest customer. They used to be my, virtually my only customer. But my
relationship with Whole Foods has been cooling for a decade and eventually I
won't be in there anymore. I, Will, Will, Harris, me, sold Whole Foods Market
the first pound of American grass-fed beef that they marketed as American grass-fed
beef
20 years ago. And it, well, at the time it was so lucky and it just, it caught
traction and they wanted to buy all I sold. And, but today it's a very
different Whole Foods and we won't be there long.
What's the issue?
You know what greenwashing is?
Greenwashing?
Yeah.
Greenwashing is big food advertising using words to make consumers believe that
the food
they're selling is the same as what I'm producing, even though it's not.
Hey, is that, if you've got that, uh, a global animal partnership, Whole Foods
video where
you can show what you can show what to show. Please.
So greenwashing.
Greenwashing.
Greenwashing.
Okay.
so what's this meat rating system about let me put it this way step one is like
step five foot so step five let's get a new york strip and definitely a filet
and do you have
what the hell does that mean i can't tell you how much that angers me tell me
what that means
is that their that's their question that i mean that is their video that they
made yeah
come on it makes you laugh it makes me mad i'm sure it does sir but as me as a
consumer looking at
like what come on man the you're supposed to be whole foods whole foods to me
is supposed to be
a place where i can go and get healthy food that's like the idea behind it
whole foods started by
hippies started here in austin great whole foods i want whole foods let me go
there but what is
and this is what does that mean you have so many things you can tell me in a
short period of time
healthier better for the environment you know low carbon footprint it's all
those things they
could tell me instead they go and that's their commercial all right so this
this is about
greenwashing okay whole food and whole foods and global animal partnership are
big on greenwashing
okay what is step five and step four what is all right so uh uh so let's let's
talk about the global
animal partnership okay the global animal partnership is an animal welfare non-profit
that whole foods
financed i don't know 15 years ago or something i don't know how long ago and i
went to the first
meeting producer meeting they ever had in denver of the whole foods had for the
global animal partnership
rolling it out and uh and it was all about this uh i thought and by the way i
thought it was a great
idea at the time this uh animal welfare system so that step one which is low-hanging
fruit a little bit
better than industrial two three four five and five was great animal welfare uh
no uh physical alterations
can't castrate what not we used to castrate everything born on my farm that
wasn't named harris and we
and then we quit castrating you know all the things we had to do to achieve
step five
and it was explained to us at the time that uh you know we want to bring the
industry into higher
animal welfare which was right up my alley i did too and we've got to have this
step one two which is
low-hanging fruit pretty much anybody so i can't get your foot in the door but
all companies are
expected to move up the continuum to the till everybody step four or five okay
i thought it was
great sounds great yeah so i embraced it and uh and became a step five plus i
don't think they have
but just a very few in the country we want them and they never would pay us
anymore if our product
it would you know just but as a result in the case in the meat case everything
was step one step two
maybe a little step three and they did allow producers mostly big multinational
corporations
to come in at step one and two and languish there you know 15 years later they're
still step one step two
which is not the way it was supposed to work so
now instead of even though there's five steps they talk about how it's all
great and it's not all great
if you're gonna do it with your hands and mouth like that guy you know so step
one's like step five is like
you're not
it just pisses me off i would imagine
but you go to whole foods you know and look and ask them how much okay step
five how much step four
and five you got back there and probably not much
so most of it here it goes jamie's got it here step one no cages no crates no
crowding
step two and grit enriched environment things to do step three enhanced outdoor
access step four
pasture centered based on outdoor system step five animal centered no physical
alterations that means
castration and then step five plus which is you animal centered entire life on
the same farm as
shoppers can know exactly what the animal was raised for the meat they are
buying just by looking for the
what does it say for the color coded step
rating on the product label as of october 1st 2014 step five program includes
two thousand five hundred two
thousand four hundred fifty one farms and ranches that range from step one to
step five plus and raise more than
one hundred and forty seven million animals annually but they added everything
together there oh yeah
step five and program look how they did that step five and program includes two
thousand four hundred fifty one
farms and ranches that range from step one to step five plus so by saying that
and includes these two thousand four hundred fifty one farms they're not
saying how many of them are actually step five they're like kind of with you
with the numbers there and i can tell you it's not many
it's not two thousand four hundred fifty one but that's step one to step five
one i'm not saying
they don't have that many farms i'm saying it's not not that many step five the
distribution would be
greatly skewed right so if you go to a whole foods and say hey um so i want i
want that yeah how many
you got it's less far less so they have to get very specific meat from places
like you well i mean i think the
reason they they had that particular segment now is because they didn't have
much step five back there
so that that allowed them to say hey man it's all good right it's all good it's
all better than
anywhere else you're going to get yeah and that's greenwashing that's greenwashing
that makes it devalues
what the step five plus does yeah it's a kind of a it's a moronic way of
describing it it's a different
whole foods than the one i started with is it because it's corporate now and it's
because
it's owned by big companies and it's all about when you're involved in a
gigantic corporation like
that it's about maximizing profits yeah everything you said is right the way i
would state it is that
industrialized farming and big food distribution co-evolved together you know
prior to the end of
world war ii there was no industrial farming and there were really no great big
food companies
retail companies you know local piggly wiggly or whatnot but they weren't and
those
those all co-evolved big ag big food and industrial farming co-evolved together
to what it is now
and you know the the guys that are managing the meat department whole foods
really need to pick up the
phone and say send me 48 000 pounds a truckload of 48 000 pounds of six ounce
filets to the following
five distribution centers every week for the next month thank you well the will
harris's of the world
won't ever see 48 000 pounds of six ounce rabies oh filets the only people that
can do that are
tyson cargill jbs smithfield so that's that co-evolution here so the only way
this is going to work
to do it your way is if someone's deeply committed to change yeah let me say
this i also sell to
a grocery chain called a grocery chain called market district one called mom's
one called public's one
called kroger and i don't feel as used as window dressing by those stores so
you feel that like
your way of doing it is is it's almost like it's a trick they're trying to
pretend that most of their
meat is gotten from people like you that's that's that's my perception what you
just saw it seems like
that was the perception that i got from it too based on the way they use that
giant number yeah and said
it's anywhere from step one to step five plus they kind of lumped everybody in
together you know i've
sold i actually sold public's supermarket prior to selling whole foods i sold
them before i did whole
foods and they public's i'm not it's not advertising they have ordered
consistently from me every single week
for 20 years they put it out there people buy it or not there's no there's no
uh smoke and mirrors and
pursue you know there's just no green washing no green washing it's just just
honestly buy it or not
and you know again whole foods is still my biggest customer i'm probably this
problem will get me thrown
out if you think so huh do you think they will i don't know you just don't seem
to care though
well i ain't much in the ass kissing business i like it
oh they uh they do what they want to do i mean it you know we'll have to work a
little hard and sell a
little more online you know but uh but you'd prefer that that to bullshit yeah
yeah yeah i mean i i uh you
know uh there was a time that well that's not good but it's but yeah it's uh it's
it's it's just that's
very different company