Apparently ethics are not organic
Fresh Inc.: Whole Foods's Half-Baked CEO
Techdirt: Whole Foods CEO Caught In Embarrassing Message Board Brouhaha
Reason Magazine - Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business:
Putting Customers Ahead of Investors
John Mackey
In 1970 Milton Friedman wrote that "there is one and only one social responsibility of business--to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." That's the orthodox view among free market economists: that the only social responsibility a law-abiding business has is to maximize profits for the shareholders.
I strongly disagree.
Emphasis mine, and yes, I did take the last sentence out of context (it is the start of a whole paragraph). But Mackey's quote from the October 2005 article, subtitled "A Reason debate featuring Milton Friedman, Whole Foods' John Mackey, and Cypress Semiconductor's T.J. Rodgers." does point out his hypocrisy.