Source to determine true owner of organic companies....

[Guest guest]

Someone had left this as a comment on one of the Mercola articles discussing big

businesses (those that typically cut costs and produce junk) who buy

organic/natural companies. I thought the comments were just as useful because

the list of bought out companies was sooooo long. It may be just as easy to

search out those that are still owned by the original founders.....

 

Comments by remobec_203...

 

Here's a good way to figure out the connections of your favorite brands, which,

unfortunately, not everyone has access to.

 

Go to your local library's website. Look for a link to the databases. Usually

just called " databases " or " electronic resources " or some such. There are a few

different databases libraries can to that give the user business

profiles for nearly all businesses in the U.S. (and sometimes farther abroad).

Business & Company Resource Center is one such. However, the best for our

purposes is ReferenceUSA.

 

If your library has Reference USA, follow the link to that. You'll probably need

your library card to access it. Then search for the company (use the search link

sort of in the upper left corner). I put in " Burt's Bees. " When the search

results come up, look at the far right column where it says " Corporate Family. "

Click " view " and it will show you and parent and child companies affiliated with

it. In which case I can see the Burt's Bees is owned by Clorox.

 

Reference USA is pretty common. Both the local library systems I use have it,

but I live in a large city. If your library doesn't have it, oftentimes

neighboring (and larger) city libraries will let you get a library card for free

and then you can access their databases from home.