Its all natural though!

Blame the victim - its their fault for stocking and selling food!!

A Whole Food in my area (kansas city) was closed down over a year ago for the same problem. They have yet to reopen.

dirty hippies

Aww.... c'mon. It doesn't get more "organic" and "all natural" than that!

In fairness, saying there's "Over 100 rodent droppings in one cooler alone" is kind of sensationalistic. It doesn't take a whole lot of rodents to create 100 droppings. If you've ever seen mouse turds, where there's one, there's usually a few hundred. That said, mice are attracted to food, and they've got plenty of that.

At least they're trying. If it probably wasn't a health violation in itself, they could do like the bodegas do and get a cat.

They'll kill mice on a glueboard trap but won't sell lobster, because it's cruel. Hrm...

I don't know if anyone else has observed this, but I believe the Whole Foods Market chain has some of the nastiest grocery stores out there. Have you ever sat down to eat at their tables, only to find them covered in ages-old smeared goo? Or have you ever tried to visit one of their bathrooms? Just disgusting!

I've been to a lot of Whole Foods Markets in various parts of the country, including NY, LA, SF, and Chicago. They're always nasty, although the urban stores are far worse than the suburban stores.

For some reason, cleanliness just isn't part of Whole Foods' mission.

Apparently rat poison isn't organic.

(God I hate that word - organic = HAS CARBON!!!)

@Rufdawg: I KNOW RIGHT?

Sucks for them, its on the news, that means major loss of business :[

I guess the rat doodie is justification for the higher prices.

@sleze69: Actually, the use of the word "organic" to refer to natural methods predates the term "organic" as applied to chemistry. Who knew!

@Rufdawg: My thoughts exactly! That place is always so disgusting - the bathrooms alone are enough for several health department violations.

Whole Foods Lincoln Park - We're Now Rat-Free!

@modenastradale:

We have a very nice Whole Foods in Bellevue WA. Clean, well stocked, with coffee bar (of course! It's Seattle!) and deli.

The only problem is that it's on a busy corner with difficult access if you're travelling from the west or the north.

@illtron: My hamster could top that in 1/2 an hour. Rodents are just pooping machines.

I'm betting it was a Wild Oats turned Whole Foods...I've noticed that the original Whole Foods stores seem very clean, but the Wild Oats stores that have been converted to Whole Foods...not so much.

@illtron: You and I both know that if this was any other establishment you'd be over them like white on rice.

Me, I love my whole foods, but this is naaaaasty.

Subsequent testing showed the feces contained salmonella traces from the jalapenos and tomatoes.

I think this falls under the 'I really don't want to know the truth' heading. I can only imagine what happens in most grocery stores after hours.

I tried to stop at this store on my way home last night and the employees were in front of the store handing out $5 coupons (and trying to block the view of the NEON GREEN public safety violation sign.)

There's just something about upscale grocery stores in the 606 -- a few years back the Treasure Island on the Gold Coast was closed down for a slew of health code violations, including vermin.

Whole Foods? Dirty? Not in Arizona. The one they recently built in Chandler is by far the most impressive grocery store I've ever seen. Even the old one in Tempe is spotless.

I've been in three in California that we equally nice, and one in Washington State.

I'm actually shocked to hear that they're not the same way elsewhere.

@MeredithK02: nope, not a Wild Oats conversion. And actually, usually, a very clean store with minimal amounts of dreadlocks, tattoos and butt crack (something frequently seen at the Chicago - Lakeview Whole Foods).

At least they caught the one in the glue trap.

Okay, so what's the right amount of mouse poo? Is it possible to have too little mouse poo?

Wait, is this the Whole Foods Obama shops at for his arugula or whatever that was? Oh gosh, conspiracy! Someone is trying to kill him with rat poo.

I'm such a bumpkin. I've never even been to Whole Foods. All we have down here is Half Foods and Quarter Foods.

@melking: Wait, no dreadlocks? I call bs, then! :D I wouldn't recognize the Boulder Whole Foods without the trifecta you posted! Could the "droppings" have just been carob chips improperly stored?

@MadameX: Whole Foods? Dirty? Not in Arizona.

The Whole Foods in Milwaukee is immaculate. I haven't seen a cleaner, better kept store.

Only a mile West from there, the corner food stores are required to keep one claw on the Racoon so that shop owners don't try to pass off alley cats as "Southern Meats".

Yea, do we have any idea how many mice/rats there are? Don't get me wrong, having rodents at all is bad, and the store should have been more vigilant in cleaning up after it, but really guys, there's only so much you can do about a rodent in a store. We had a couple squirrels in ours for months. You call an exterminator, all they can do is set up traps. You have to wait until the animal gets caught, and just spend extra time checking the nooks and crannies for "clean-ups."

@failurate: Yup. I have a chinchilla and he poops literally every second he's awake. He doesn't even have to strain and try to poop like other animals--whether he's laying down or running on his wheel, poop just continuously falls out of his ass all day.

Whole Poos

Hey Ben is on NPR right now!!!

@drdom:

Well, that's a relief! I hate it when I've been hornswoggled at the corner store. Cat just doesn't compare to raccoon.

I live in an apartment building that's built on top of a grocery store and a mall. You'd think the mice would be satisfied with the pickings downstairs, but I've found several mice in my place (and have heard the screams from new neighbours who've found their own miceys).

But my favourite encounter was leaving a restaurant and having a large (LARGE!) rat (RAT!) cross my path. He had a chicken leg in his mouth. I wonder how many years bad luck that is?

@Wormfather is Wormfather: I agree it's nasty. But it's an uphill battle sometimes.

If you've ever been on the DC Metro and the NYC Subway, you'll notice rats all over the tracks in NYC and none in DC, despite the fact that DC has plenty of rat problems up on the ground. The difference is that DC strictly enforces the no food rule on the Metro.

There are no rodents where there's nothing for them to eat. That's hard to do in a grocery store. I give them credit for doing what they can, but they're probably in for a fight. The problem might not even be with the Whole Foods. It might actually be very clean and they might actually be getting overflow rodents from an adjacent building. If that's the case, good luck.

Hey... it that the Whole Foods location that they shopped at in Top Chef 4 in Chicago? I know there's 5 or so in Chicago, but since Lincoln Park is a fairly trendy area, I thought may be the one they used.

Hm. The Whole Foods in my city (Pittsburgh) is quite clean from what I recall of it. While the bathroom was small (only one stall), I had no issue with its cleanliness.

Tis a shame about this particular location though. This publicity is gonna kill their business for some time.

Eww! Why don't they have mouse traps? What grocery store in this day and age doesn't have basic rodent/bug traps?

100 rat droppings are too many. That last dropping is the straw that broke the camel's back. 99 I can see, but 100? That's an inordinate number of droppings.

@pixiegirl1: that's what the glueboards are. it's a horse a piece as far as traps are concerned, the spring traps get blood everywhere and the glue boards are pretty inhumane, not so much if you poison the bait.

@MadameX: Seriously. I shop at the Tempe one all the time and have always seen it spotless.

Hell even the ones back home in NY are clean. Not sure wtf is going on everywhere else.

How would you like to have the job of inspector who count's rodent poo quantity. I can imagine this CSI-esque scene:
We have to wait for the quantity analysis to come back from Jim.
It's official. There are 100 poos in this cooler. Shut er down boys!
Cops in black jackets and sunglasses descend onto the market.
*CSI Screaming/Opening Music Scene*

@MeredithK02: Ummm, no. Original Whole Foods stores have had this very problem for years. Either the infestation wasn't this serious or publicized.
This is not because they bought out Wild Oats.

All grocery stores face this problem, but I expect more from Whole Foods especially after the killed one of their major competitors and the amout of money spent on marketing products are organic, pesticide free and free range.

@syndprod:
The Whole Foods frequented in Top Chef Season 4 was the Lakeview location.

I was surprised they used glue traps, because they are said to be inhumane. A little Googling tells me that activists claim Whole Foods has previously promised that they will not use glue traps. So no doubt PETA et al will get on them about this incident. I would guess that Whole Foods probably has a no-gluetraps written policy, so someone locally violated it here. Poor management -- which is consistent with the idea that they couldn't get this right even though it was a *follow-up* inspection.

Glue traps are pretty lame. At my first official job (plant nursery and crafts store) the store contracted a pest guy who used them all over the place. When I would move some skids and see the stuck mice flailing around I would take them out and stomp them under a box.

Another reason not to buy their $6 pineapples.

I'm allergic to cats, and they scare the crap out of me (always afraid they'll get pissed at me and gouge my eyes out) but boy do my friend Rob's cats earn their keep by hunting down the vermin. mad respect

@syndprod: The Whole Foods on Top Chef was the one in Boystown, not in Lincoln Park. The new one (Boystown) is much larger and really well organized.

@MeredithK02: Nope, this has been a Whole Foods for at least 12 years....was the first one in Chicago.

I used to work there! (No kidding...) Oh, how disgusting. I could say more, but I won't...

Oh, and another thing... I belive (although I could be wrong) Whole Foods has a "humane" rodent elimination policy, meaning that they don't use traps or glue mats, etc. to get rid of pesky rodents. I wonder how they will deal with this...