Dear Coop Friends,

As a co-op member, I recently noticed that Silk had stopped being organic and called this to your attention. A report from Cornucopia Institute shows that Dean Foods has been very aggressive with its producers to make this change.

I very strongly support organic foods and shop at the co-op because I know that anything you carry will be organic whenever possible.

I strongly urge you to stop carrying Silk. You don’t carry many, many other “natural” (or even organic products) from mainstream brands. Silk has chosen to move into this category. I urge you remove all their products from your shelves.

Tom, our grocery manager, and I would like to answer your question about Silk soymilk and how we are handling their products since the mislabeling occurred.

In early 2009, Silk was our number one selling alternative to dairy milk in the refrigerated grocery department, representing about 80 percent of sales in that category. Today, in early 2010, Tom estimates that Silk products are less than 20% of sales in refrigerated non-milks.

There are two main reasons for this. First, our customers, like you, tend to be more aware of issues with labeling and product integrity—and so are our staff members. While we do not have a policy that allows staff, customers or board members to institute a boycott of particular products, we do try to provide information via signs, action alerts, and on our website about issues like this—and we especially encourage people to sign up for similar services from the Cornucopia Institute and the Organic Consumers Association. So many people stopped purchasing Silk by choice.

The other reason is that our grocery staff worked to find alternatives to Silk, both in the refrigerated and the nonrefrigerated sections of the store. And once we found these alternatives, we priced them all lower than Silk. In the refrigerated section today, for example, Silk half-gallons cost $3.99, whereas Organic Valley soymilk is $2.99 and Wildwood soymilk is $2.79. So we were able to direct customers towards better choices through pricing.

Whenever we can, we try to find local, organic, Fair Trade alternatives to products from larger non-local companies. Honestly, though, getting people to change their buying preference from a brand that can afford lots of advertising to one that has nearly no advertising can be a tough job. We’re glad we were able to get our customers to shift their buying habits in this case—and appreciate that you contacted us.

Best wishes,
Jeanne
Marketing & Member Services