However, even though I don't eat much yogurt, as I do the food shopping I do buy a lot of yogurt.
Now, though there are probably a dozen brands of yogurt on the supermarket shelf I've always just bought the cheapest brand - either the store brand or whatever's on sale.
But no longer.
Tom and I came to our Chobani agreement this past Tuesday morning after reading an article in the business section of Tuesday's New York Times about Hamdi Ulukaya, the owner of Chobani.
Mr. Ulukaya decided to hire some workers from a local refugee resettlement center and, according to the Times article, "Mr. Ulukaya provided transportation for the new hires, and he brought in translators to assist them. He paid the refugee workers salaries above the minimum wage, as he did other workers at the factory."
When Hamdi Ulukaya opened a second Chobani factory in 2012 in Twin Falls, Idaho, he once again went to a refugee resettlement center to hire workers, wishing to pay back this own opportunity in this country, for, as Mr. Ulukaya has said, "The minute a refugee has a job, that’s the minute they stop being a refugee,”
Today Chobani is a billion dollar industry that employs 2,000 workers, 300 of them resettled refugees from The Middle East and Africa.
Last year, Mr. Ulukaya signed the Giving Pledge, promising to give away a majority of his fortune to assist refugees.
He recently gave away 10 % of his company's shares to his employees.
All his employees receive paid parental leave.
And Hamdi Ulukaya is currently the target of a hate campaign.
Last April a far-right website called WND published a story about him entitled "American Yogurt Tycoon Vows to Choke U.S. With Muslims".
Then over the summer Breitbart, the extreme-right news outlet formerly run by Donald Trump's campaign CEO Stephen K. Bannon,
https://www.facebook.com/Boycott-Chobani-1305015739514679/
This hate crusade has included death threats against Ulukaya and Twin Falls Mayor Shawn Barigar, a stauch supporter of Ulukaya and the city's Chobani factory.
I've always told my children,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/business/for-helping-immigrants-chobanis-founder-draws-threats.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobani
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/chobani-founder-gets-threats-calls-boycott-employing-refugees-n676776
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/02/the-disgusting-breitbart-smear-campaign-against-the-immigrant-owner-of-chobani.html