Blog Posts: Consumers

Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch Executive Director

By Wenonah Hauter

Last week, some people questioned our opposition to China’s largest meat company purchasing Smithfield, suggesting that it could be construed as xenophobia. But prejudice against a particular country has nothing to do with our concern. The globalized food system poses real food safety risks and free trade deals with global partners encourage a race-to-the bottom in food safety standards, leaving U.S. consumers at the mercy of inadequate foreign food safety systems like China’s.

We should all be leery of deals like this that further consolidate our food system; especially when they involve companies with a history of food safety problems and countries with abysmal track records for food and worker safety. The horrendous Chinese poultry plant fire currently making headlines provides another powerful example of how the factory farm model endangers lives.  

As I explain in this 2011 blog when we released our report, A Decade of Dangerous Food Imports from China, putting profits above people is a cross-cultural problem. Besides, many of the companies and investors profiting from Chinese exports are U.S. companies or investors (Goldman Sachs own part of Shuanghui International).

Anyone who’s paying attention knows that risky food from China has become all too common. Last month, Food & Water Watch Assistant Director Patty Lovera testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats to discuss China as the leading producer of many foods Americans eat: apples, tomatoes, peaches, potatoes, garlic, seafood, processed food and food ingredients like xylitol and vitamin C.

As I explain on New York Times’ Room For Debate last night, the purchase of Smithfield isn’t just about exporting pork – it’s indicative of the American government’s fervor for exporting our consolidated, industrialized food system:

Shuanghui International became China’s monolithic meat company by adopting the U.S. factory farm model pioneered by companies like Smithfield. The merger is likely to increase the size, intensity and pollution of hog production in China. Furthermore, Smithfield’s anticipated increased exports to China would effectively convert U.S. factory farms into export platforms; Smithfield would ship out the pork, and we’d keep the hog manure.

In addition to the environmental consequences of the deal, it’s bad for consumers. Transnational deals in the food industry usually add to American imports, and a rising flood of imported food swamps U.S. import inspectors. In the long term, Shuanghui may offshore hog operations to China, and the U.S. could be importing pork. In 2011, Shuanghui recalled thousands of tons of meat after reports that it was laced with the banned veterinary drug clenbuterol, which is linked to serious human health risks.

Deals like this serve no one but the executives and bankers who stand to profit; everyone else is left with the manure.

(Read my full comment and the other experts’ perspectives here: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/06/02/smithfield-china-and-the-calculus-of-transnational-deals/food-industry-deals-hurt-consumers-and-the-environment)

Another debater, Thea Lee is the deputy chief of staff at the AFL-CIO, brought up another excellent point:

If Chinese consumers want to consume American pork, they can presumably purchase it on the open market. Our farmers have been trying to get their pork into the Chinese market on a sustained basis for many years. The decision instead to purchase a major producer indicates that there are other motives. As we evaluate this and other similar investments, we had better have a good sense of how those other motives will impact good jobs, food safety and regulatory balance in this country. Unfortunately, under current law, even if we determine that this or similar investments would have a negative impact on the U.S. economy – or any subset of workers – there is very little we can do to stop it.

 We’re not criticizing the deal simply because Shuanghui is a foreign company. Food & Water Watch has criticized Australia’s and Canada’s food safety issues plenty. And if other country exporting food to the U.S. had the same food safety problems that China has, we would be equally concerned. The bottom line is further consolidation of our food system is bad for consumers and farmers. When a handful of companies—whether it’s Shuanghui or Tyson—control the food we eat, Wall Street and high-paid food industry executives win. Consumers, farmers and the environment all lose.

By Eve Mitchell, Food & Water Europe

Click to see a larger image.

Watching UK’s National Farmers Union (NFU) President Peter Kendall testify to the UK Parliamentary Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ inquiry into horse meat contamination of the EU beef supply on March 5, I was struck again by the inconsistencies in the NFU approach when it comes to GM animal feed.

I have three questions for the NFU:

1) In his testimony, Mr. Kendall repeated the position that short supply chains are the answer to predictable control of our meat supply and regaining consumer confidence. How does this tally with the repeated insistence that UK livestock farmers need industrial GM feed from the Americas traded through complex international commodity markets?

Much is made about the allegedly dwindling availability of non-GM soy (known in the UK as soya), but the non-GM soya industry itself paints a rather different picture. On February 26, Augusto Freire, Managing Director of Cert-ID (a company certifying non-GM soya supplies), said, “20-25% of Brazilian soybean production is free from genetic modification for the 2012/13 crop. China’s and India’s soy production is 100% Non-GMO….Estimates for 2013 are strongly up compared to earlier years due to adoption of the CERT ID and ProTerra [non-GM certification] programs by new operators in Brazil, as well as increased demand in Europe.”

In the current climate, before supply and demand reduce the cost of non-GM feed, it may well be a bit more expensive per tonne, but according to our calculations if non-GM feed costs an extra £14/tonne (about $21.00), this works out to be a mere 3p/dozen eggs (about 5 cents). Mr. Kendall asks, “Are we going to produce chickens in this country that are non-GM, but buy them in from Asia because they are 20% cheaper and they are fed on GM [feed]?” Is he perhaps confusing feed costs with the poor animal husbandry that keeps meat from many non-European factory farms cheap?

We also need to be careful in working out how much animal feed is actually GM – any amount of GM feed comingled with an otherwise non-GM shipment means the entire quantity, and all subsequent feed bags, are labelled GM. This does not mean that feed is anything like 100% GM, and in fact the bulk of any animal feed is probably non-GM.

2) If, as Mr. Kendall says, UK farmers need “confidence” in the market to invest and improve UK beef production levels, why does this logic not apply to the farmers in Brazil already growing non-GM soya but unable to risk the costs of certification without confirmed advance orders from the EU to ensure they gets a return?

Augusto Freire notes, “An additional volume of Brazilian soy meal representing 1.5 million metric tonnes of soybeans could have been certified [as non-GM] if EU buyers had expressed their demand early in the year.” The non-GM soya is there, and more can be grown, we just need to say we want it. It’s not hard.

Consumer demand should boost confidence enough to take this step. A 2010 GfK/NOP poll showed fewer than 40% of supermarket shoppers were aware that imported GM animal feed fuels British factory farming, and 89% wanted these products to be clearly labelled. In January of this year the UK Food Standards Agency published research showing again that two-thirds of respondents want all use of GM feed to be labelled. Even among those undecided about GM food and crops respondents felt “some form of labelling should be in place to help them determine GM content and avoid choosing foods containing GM if they so wish”. Overall there is a clear indication this need to identify GM use applies to animal products in particular. People don’t want GM feed in the food chain, and they want clear labels to help them see where it is – or isn’t.

3) I completely agree that there is, as Mr. Kendall told the Committee, “too much focus on price” in the food industry. If this is the case, why are industrial crops feeding industrial megafarm production to produce cheap meat worthy of such vocal support?

True, there are vested interests on both sides of the discussion, and there are rumours that Indian soya is less desirable than Brazilian. Overall we’d be far better off moving away from the industrial meat model. Yet this does not explain why supermarkets can’t do their part in delivering what the market demands now by placing clear orders for non-GM soya (or non-GM fed products) to give Brazilian farmers the confidence they need to grow and certify non-GM crops. The NFU position invokes the market, but goes directly against the basics of supply and demand. The more non-GM feed is demanded, the more will be supplied, and the costs will come down—unless vested interests interfere with the market. Large supermarkets and dairies in other parts of Europe seem to be able to manage it, so it is very difficult to see why the UK is different.

Mr. Kendall told the NFU 2013 conference, “Today I want to talk about a pact with the great British consumer to get things changed…We now need supermarkets to stop scouring the world for the cheapest products they can find and start sourcing high quality, traceable, product from farmers here at home…That may mean more dedicated supply groups. It will certainly mean longer-term thinking and a shorter supply chain.” We agree, and we’re here to help.

Mr. Kendall, if you truly “Do not want food safety and standards to be politicised,” as you told the Committee, why do you say GM skepticism is “directly comparable to Nazi book-burning in the 1930’s”? Why do you not support your members in providing what the market clearly wants?

The situation with regard to GM animal feed looks increasingly like lucrative supply lines controlled by shippers and importers, not farmers, attempting to force an end to non-GM supplies on an unwilling market. The NFU position, which wedges farmers uncomfortably between their market and these vested interests, remains very difficult to understand. The sooner the NFU applies the logic it uses in the meat chain to the feed chain, the sooner consumers will begin to regain confidence in our food.

Mr. Kendall also told your 2013 conference consumers should demand answers from the people they buy from. We agree European consumers can and should get what they want.

This action is a good first step.

Volunteers in the field reach out to their fellow community members.

By Lynna Kaucheck

Floridians from Tallahassee to Miami have rallied in support of labeling genetically engineered (GE) food. Since Food & Water Watch hit the ground in Florida at the end of August, our allies and activists have helped generate over 8,000 petition signatures, over 2,000 emails and nearly 500 calls to key lawmakers. In addition, over 220 businesses and organizations from around the state have joined us in signing a letter to lawmakers, asking them to support labeling GE food in Florida, including Global Organics, Sierra Club Florida Chapter, Florida Farmworkers Association, Florida Right to Know, and Sunshine State Interfaith Power and Light.

Our “Let Me Decide” team is working hard to label GE food in Florida and we’re growing every day. We have solid local groups working in four communities and we’re focused on developing two more. The local groups are run by strategic and passionate volunteers that are out in the community educating people about the issue. They organize educational forums, community dinners and activist trainings, and are instrumental in growing the movement to support labeling.

And all the hard work is paying off! On March 1, GE labeling bills were introduced in both the Florida House and Senate. Representative Michelle Rehwinkel-Vasilinda introduced HB 1233 and Senator Maria Lorts Sachs introduced S 1728.  The whole “Let Me Decide” team in Florida applauds these lawmakers for their leadership on this important issue.

Floridians, like concerned citizens everywhere, want to know what’s in the food their feeding their families and how that food was produced. And labeling food is nothing new to folks in Florida, as they were one of the first states to pass country of origin labeling back in 1979.

When we sit down at the dinner table at night, we want to know that the food we’re eating wasn’t grown in a way that put a family farmer out of business, that it didn’t poison the land that it grew from or the farmworker that helped get it to our table. We want to know that the food that sustains us isn’t also harming us. Above all, we deserve to be able to make informed decisions about the food we buy.

This year’s legislative session runs March 5 – May 3, so we have just 10 short weeks to make something happen. But we’ve built army of activists and allies and we’re ready to fight to make GE labeling the law in Florida. Join us!

Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/FWWFlorida

By Wenonah Hauter

Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch

Tonight, millions of people will enjoy a beer. What the vast majority of them probably won’t realize is that the variety of brands they see in the stores come from just two foreign-based multinational companies that control 80 percent of the market here in the U.S.

While many of America’s favorite beer brands appear unchanged over the years, behind the label, the beer industry has become a global affair, along with the rest of our food system. Now, one of the largest beer corporations, AB InBev—which owns Budweiser, the king of American beers, wants to buy Grupo Modelo—which owns Pacifica, Tsingtao, and Corona brands. The Department of Justice (DOJ), after allowing foreign companies to buy nearly all U.S. breweries in the past decade, finally took some action in January when it sued to block the Budweiser-Corona marriage.

But AB InBev seems intent on forging ahead with the deal, claiming it is working to address the DOJ’s concerns. It is rearranging the trimmings of the proposed takeover (selling one factory and the Corona and Modelo brand rights in the U.S. to another company), but even these changes leave AB InBev in control of nearly everyone’s beer cooler. The company would have a bigger stranglehold on what brands of beer are available and the power to raise prices unilaterally.

AB InBev, based in Belgium, and SABMiller, based in the U.K., are indeed beverage behemoths. AB InBev owns over 200 brands worldwide including Budweiser, Becks, Stella Artios, Boddingtons, Löwenbräu, Michelob, and St. Pauli Girl. SABMiller owns 367 brands distributed on six continents, including Coors Light, Fosters, Miller Light and Milwaukee’s Best. Meanwhile, the nearly 2,000 independent craft breweries comprise less than 6 percent of the market.

Read the full article…

By Anna Ghosh

We all deserve the right to know what’s in our food and to decide for ourselves whether or not to buy and eat it. Concerned citizens have been fighting for protections to make sure their food was healthy for centuries and the fight for transparent food labels has been a major part of that effort.  

Food & Water Watch has been fighting – and winning – campaigns to defend consumers’ right to know what’s in their food since our inception in 2005. As a result of our campaign, Starbucks committed to make its stores rBGH-free in 2007, and in 2008, we successfully fought in nine states to keep rBGH-Free labels on dairy products. In 2009 we won a campaign to get the federal school lunch program to specifically allow schools to use federal dollars to choose rBGH-Free milk for their students.

Since 2010, we’ve collected more than 150,000 signatures opposing the FDA’s approval on AquaBounty’s GE salmon, and in 2011 and 2012, along with our allies Center for Environmental Health, Center for Food Safety, Sum of Us, Corporate Accountability International and CREDO Action, we collected more than half a million signatures from consumers refusing to purchase GE sweet corn and asking Walmart not to sell the biotech corn. We’ve also been involved in collecting and submitting official comments to oppose the approval of every new GE crop that has been considered since we started in 2005. Read the full article…

By Wenonah Hauter

If I were to ask you to imagine that the frying pan you use to prepare meals was slowly dosing you and your family with radiation, what would you say? Or how about the steel water bottle you use to tote water? It’s not a far cry from reality if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy have their way.

This past December, the DOE released a proposal to recycle an initial 14,000 tons of radioactive metals from nuclear reactors and weapons facilities back into commercial production for consumer goods. If it gets approved, you can bet they’ll dump more of this toxic nightmare into the supply chain. 

Sadly, this is nothing new. Since the 1980s, the DOE and the NRC have been cooking up a scheme to recycle radioactive scrap metals back into consumer products. These radioactive metals, which wouldn’t be labeled as such under DOE provisions, could be used to manufacture any of a wide variety of products from metal water bottles to your children’s braces. Read the full article…

Last week, a condensed version of Andy Bellatti’s interview with Wenonah Hauter on her new book Foodopoly ran on Grist: Aisle be damned: How Big Food dominates your supermarket choices. We thought our blog readers would appreciate seeing the entire interview, which goes into the specifics on how fractured our food system really is,  how it got that way and what we can do about it.

1. In Foodopoly, you make a very convincing argument that, unlike what many in the “good food” movement think, crop subsidies are not the problem to solve, but rather the symptom of a much larger problem. Can you expand on that concept? Read the full article…

By Tony Corbo 

The White House turkey pardoning ceremony, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

As the White House pardons two lucky turkeys today—Gobbler and Cobbler—I’m reminded of the fact that some months ago, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for information on the Virginia Cargill plant that the birds likely would have been processed (if not for the pardon). The results are in, and they aren’t pretty. The Cargill plant in Rockingham County, Virginia (where Cobbler and Gobbler are from) was cited for fecal contamination multiple times (see pages 1-4 of this PDF). 

It’s no wonder. The plant is part of a pilot project for HIMP, the HACCP-Based Inspection Models Project. It’s a USDA pilot project that allows workers in poultry plants to self-inspect, essentially privatizing food safety inspections. Line speeds in HIMP turkey slaughter plants are 72% faster than in plants that receive normal USDA inspection. USDA has proposed to expand the HIMP inspection model to all poultry plants.

As you sit down for Thanksgiving tomorrow, you might give thanks for the fact that there are two less turkeys from HIMP project plants on America’s tables.

Take action today—tell USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to reject privatized meat inspections.

By Wenonah Hauter

Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter

Listen to Wenonah’s post-election town hall meeting

Last night, voters rejected a vision for our country that would have taken our economy, environmental regulations and consumer protections back decades. If there is one overarching lesson this election taught us, it’s that political organizing CAN overcome industry money in elections. But we can’t sit back and assume protections for our essential resources will improve; instead, we need to take lessons from the last four years and redouble our organizing efforts to press the Obama administration, Congress, and state legislatures across the country to keep our food and water safe and keep our essential resources in public hands. 



Two ballot measures Food & Water Watch worked on this cycle illustrate the need and power of organizing, even in the face of entrenched and powerful interests. 



One of the most exciting victories from election night was in Longmont, Colorado where voters passed an historic and precedent setting ballot initiative to ban fracking. We were up against incredible odds in Longmont, with the oil and gas industry spending over half-a-million dollars for TV commercials, full-page ads and multiple mailers to try to scare Longmont citizens. Governor Hickenlooper sued the citizens of Longmont to slow down our efforts and the Denver Post editorialized against this vote to ban fracking, but we were on the ground, knocking on doors, talking to voters and doing the hard work to support a citizen-led effort to protect our health, safety and property, and the citizens of Longmont spoke loud and clear. We won with nearly 60% of the vote!  

We also worked hard in California with many of our allies to pass Proposition 37, which would require labeling for all genetically engineered foods. This popular measure was only narrowly defeated at the polls, due in large part to the massive spending by large chemical and junk food companies (which outspent our side by over $40 million.) Despite this loss, support for GE food labels has never been stronger, and we will continue to build a robust national grassroots campaign to push for mandatory labeling across the country.



These measures prove what we already know: An educated and mobilized citizenry can fight back against the corporate control of our common resources, but our work is far from over. 



If you aren’t already on our mailing list, please join it now to remain informed on an ongoing basis about actions you can take to help build power to protect our food and water. We need your support to keep growing the movement! As the election demonstrated, together we can fight for the food and water protections we all want and deserve.

By Wenonah Hauter

Ah, Nestlé, you’ve done it again. First, in the 1970s, campaigners boycotted you, charging that you violated World Health Organization guidelines on advertising and duped mothers (especially, and most tragically, in developing countries) into thinking infant formula was better than breast milk. Then Elisabeth Badinter, the heiress to Publicis (your PR firm that has long been pushing formula) wrote a book about how breastfeeding is bad for feminism. Now, you’re getting sued—again—for misleading labels.

A Chicago-based firm is suing Nestlé Waters for supplying them with purified municipal tap water instead of the “100 % Natural Spring Water” it uses in the marketing materials for it’s Ice Mountain Water brand (which apparently does not apply to the five-gallon jugs of Ice Mountain Water, a fact which is hidden in a document on Nestlé’s Web site, Forbes reports.) Forbes also reports that several years ago, Nestlé Waters settled a lawsuit over its Poland Springs brand, which was marketed as coming from a deep underground source when in fact it came from a well encircled by a parking lot.

It seems like a pattern, Nestlé.

You so badly want to corner the market on nourishment for all ages—whether it’s bottling our communities’ water and selling it back to us for an exorbitant profit, or using healthcare facilities to market your infant formulas to exhausted or uninformed new mothers. And your latest effort? Gerber Pure bottled water, which you are marketing as “made for mixing (infant formula and/or cereal).” Not only should you buy formula—you should also buy our bottled water to mix it with!

Nestlé’s strategy for growing profits is clear with its newest legion of Popularly Positioned Products (PPPs). Earlier this year, we blogged about Nestlé boasting in its investor materials that it is including its Pure Life brand (which is really filtered tap water) and its infant formula as products they are positioning in developing markets: “PPPs target less affluent consumers in emerging markets (UN/World Bank definition – those with an annual purchasing power parity between US$ 3,000 and 22,000 per-capita) as well as low food spenders in developed economies. Together, they represent some 50 % of the world’s population. Hence, PPPs target the biggest and fastest growing consumer base in emerging markets as well as important sub-groups in developed markets.” (Soon after the blog was published, they made the report accessible only via login.)

You can see how that strategy to expand its consumer base would sound good to Nestlé’s investors. But wait a minute—the company is blatantly marketing its products like bottled tap water and infant formula to the people who can least afford them?

Perhaps they have done their market research. Only 35 percent of women living below the poverty level in the United States reported breastfeeding at six months compared with 53 percent of women at the highest income level. And 31 percent of women living in poverty supplemented with infant formula within two days of giving birth compared to only 21 percent of women at the highest income levels.

Nestlé is still using dishonest claims to position their products as better than tap (or breast). That’s the way you’re going to get repeat customers, Nestlé—hoodwink exhausted new mothers, who are seeking the best possible ways to start off their little ones, into thinking that your product is better than much less expensive and more sustainable alternatives.

Mothers deserve better than the dishonest marketing claims they are barraged by everyday from Nestlé. Never has there been a more appropriate saying than Buyer Beware when it comes to the products Nestlé pushes and the nourishment of our families.