Former Whole Foods employee claims mold, conventional produce contaminated organic offerings
Published: November 9, 2010, Missouri Lawyers Media
A former employee is making some unappetizing allegations about a Whole Foods store in a lawsuit over her firing.
Elisha Wellman sued the Brentwood store manager and the company for allegedly firing her after she complained that the store’s organic produce was contaminated with mold and wasn’t actually organic.
In the lawsuit, filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court Nov. 5, Wellman claims she worked at the Brentwood store from December 2001 to August 2010. Before she was fired, she complained verbally and through e-mail to her direct and regional supervisors about the handling and labeling of produce, she said in the lawsuit.
“Over the last two years,” wrote Wellman in an August 2010 letter sent to Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey and attached to the lawsuit, “I have personally observed multiple violations of the organic integrity standards in our store. These violations include failing to properly prepare organic produce for sale to our customers, mixing conventional produce and organic produce, selling conventional as organic and most recently, allowing produce to be sold as organic when it has been exposed to mold discovered in our store.”
She alleges that two weeks after she sent the letter, she was fired.
“She’s a protected whistle-blower who lost her job,” said Wellman’s attorney, Gary A. Growe, of Growe Eisen Karlen in Clayton.
Whole Foods spokeswoman Kate Klotz declined to comment on the litigation.
“Unfortunately, we are not able to discuss this matter publicly, given the nature of the situation,” Klotz said in an e-mail.
The case is Elisha Wellman v. Whole Foods Market Group, Inc., et al., 10SL-CC04485.
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