Whole Foods Market (www.wholefoodsmarket.com/) was founded in Austin, Texas, when four local businesspeople decided the natural foods industry was ready for a supermarket format. Their founders were John Mackey and Renee Lawson Hardy, owners of Safer Way Natural Foods, and Craig Weller and Mark Skiles, owners of Clarksville Natural Grocery. The original Whole Foods Market opened in 1980 with a staff of only 19 people. It was an immediate success. At the time, there were less than half a dozen natural food supermarkets in the United States. Whole Foods market has grown by leaps and bounds since the first store opened.

Whole Foods Market is a major U.S. retail operations, with operations in 270 stores in the United States and England and is best known for selling food that is healthy and as pure as possible with sustainability as a major focus.

The company has also great interest in traceability of food and selling food that is free from contaminant. During their visit to Matís, Whole Foods Market executive were informed of Matís' strength in traceability research. and were shown a powerful database owned and operated by Matís. The database can be found here.

For more information on traceability can be found here.

Attached are some photos from the visit; here and here.

Also, here is a fun video by Whole Foods Market on the Icelandic sheep.