A Grand Rapids area mom’s Facebook rant about how her son was treated at a Lush store in Woodland Mall has gone viral.
Leslie Van Houten Parrish, of Caledonia, said her teen son was shopping for a gift for his girlfriend when an employee allegedly asked him to leave the high-end beauty retailer known for its “100 percent vegetarian” products.
The 17-year-old, who was wearing clothes that indicated he worked on a dairy farm, was told the beauty retailer “didn’t support farmers and stood against cruelty to animals and refused to sell to him,” according to Van Houten Parrish’s May 19 post, which had more than 6,900 shares by the morning of Monday, May 22.
An email to Lush’s spokesperson requesting a comment wasn’t immediately returned Monday morning.
Van Houten Parrish said her son explained how his family’s farm goes “above and beyond to care and nurture our animals.”
When the Lush employee refused to relent, Van Houten Parrish says her son said “I farm you eat!” before leaving.
The angry mom says she will never shop at Lush again, and unleashed her fury on what she sees as the ignorance about the connection between farms and food:
“So for all you LUSH employees I hope you don’t drink milk, soy or almond milk, eat ice cream, cheese, yogurt, eggs, cereal, bread, pasta, steak, chicken or pork, eat your vegetables or put your creamer in your coffee at Starbucks. EVERYTHING here is provided by a farmer. They work hard to provide for you AND your customers which keep you in business.
***And maybe you don’t realize that the ingredients YOU USE (soy yogurt and soy milk) in your products are available because of FARMERS!!!*** I supported your business because you didn’t test on animals. We treat our animals with love and respect. But I refuse to support you when you can’t support those help make your business profitable. This world needs farmers more than it needs bath bombs. #Ifarmyoueat
Van Houten Parrish followed up with a comment in the post on May 20 after talking to the store’s manager, who says he is looking into the incident.
“At first he thought it was a miscommunication. But after telling him it clearly wasn’t when the clerk made a statement to him ‘how would you like to be chained up most of your life?’ He was caught a little off guard. This was not what was told to him by the employees working that night. I am continuing to work with them to educate their staff,” she wrote.
Lush, a UK-based beauty company with a passionate following for its handmade skincare and cosmetics, opened its lone West Michigan location at Woodland in 2014. The company also has three stores in metro Detroit and one location in Ann Arbor.
The retailer’s products are described as 100 percent vegetarian, 82 percent vegan, 60 percent preservative-free, and 38 percent free of wasteful packaging. None of the products or its ingredients involve animal testing. These ethics are at the heart of the brand, the company says.
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Source: mLive
