Blog Posts

Most every American has heard of the Pepsi Challenge but have you ever heard of the Conventional Milk Challenge? This is how it works. (Feel free to follow along at home. It’ll be fun!) Place conventionally produced milk, milk produced without artificial hormones and organic milk in unmarked cups side-by-side for you to sample. Can you taste which one was made with recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH)? No? Don’t feel bad. I couldn’t either.

Some pro-rBGH folks are taking the stance that consumers don’t need to know how the milk is produced if the end products do not differentiate compositionally (which is still up for debate.) Why bother the uneducated consumer with ‚extra-labeling?” It will drive “more children towards the soda aisle and away from nutritious products.” (We all know how diligent children are about reading labels!) This is some of the reasoning as to why a campaign has been launched to stop the labeling of hormone-free milk.

I admit I failed the Conventional Milk Challenge miserably. I couldn’t taste the rBGH. I also couldn’t taste the udder infections developed by some of the cows that are administered artificial hormones. My taste buds did not detect the increased use of antibiotics in animals caused by rBGH that creates antibiotic resistant bacteria, a huge human health concern. I was even unable to taste the chance of increased rates of colon, prostrate and breast cancer in humans. The lesson learned? I guess you really cant judge a book by its cover but you can certainly judge a gallon of milk by its label.

To find out more about what you can do to stop the use of rBGH, please visit www.holdthehormones.org.

(Please note that the Conventional Milk Challenge is a figment of this blogger‚ imagination.)

And you thought library staff were reticent? Well, you haven’t met Tony Del Plato, a university access services supervisor & reserve coordinator in upstate New York. In 1969, Tony started on a path of food activism, and has been bucking the food industry ever since. Realizing that the only way to get organic and wholesome foods at a reasonable price was to do it themselves, he and a group of students founded Staten Island’s first food cooperative, the excellently-named Shanti Food Conspiracy.

Tony eventually settled in Ithaca, New York to become a chef. Now retired, “after nearly 30 years stirrin’ pots n’ woks,” Tony spent 24 years as chef, co-owner, and menu planner for the famed Moosewood Restaurant. He is co-author “of 5 or 6″ of Moosewood’s popular cookbooks. (Anyone who can’t remember how many books he’s authored has led quite the life.) Tony also worked for many years with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) peoples on vegetarian protein alternatives to fish and meat in native cuisines. “Garlic is one of my many sacraments,” he says, a position we endorse wholeheartedly.

Most recently, Tony has been a standout volunteer here at Food & Water Watch. Well plugged into the New York food scene, we can count on him to spread the word about artificial growth hormones, irradiated food, or whatever nasty thing agribusiness has dreamed up. For our Starbucks Week of Action in July, Tony braved the mean streets of Ithaca many evenings in order to inform Starbucks’ customers of its unfortunate use of milk with artificial hormones. His action was featured in both the Ithaca Times and on a local country music station, an impressive feat!

In general, Tony prefers to encourage the alternatives to the conventional food system. “I buy local whenever I can and love to garden.” By living and preaching it, Tony is an inspiration to the sustainable food movement, and we are thankful for all his good works.

Editor’s Note: Activist Spotlight is a new series featuring a FWW volunteer who has worked hard to help ensure a food or water system that better serves the public. Stay tuned to our blog to see who we feature next! If you would like to volunteer, click here.

We can now add Starbucks to the “trans-fat-free” club that includes such noble members as KFC, Wendy‚ and Taco Bell. Apparently, they have been working on eliminating trans fat from their food menu for two years now and expect to completely phase out the health-adverse hydrogenated oil by the end of the year.

“This is just something we have been working on, and our focus has always been on providing our customers with healthy and nutritious food options,” spokesman Brandon Borrman said Tuesday.

Finally, doughnuts, brownies, and cookies that are healthy and nutritious! Now all we need is some rBGH-free milk to wash it all down with!

Talk about a Christmas bonus- A Japanese fisherman recently reeled in a moneybag containing 10,000 yen bills while fishing in Hakusan, Ishikawa Prefecture. This big catch is equivalent to $67,000! Police reported that the man was attempting to catch sea perch when he felt his line snag on something. When he reeled it in he didn’t find a fish but rather a moneybag filled with cash (and some antiseptic and paper.) The money is all his unless someone comes forward in the next six months to claim it. Talk about the catch of your life!

While Food & Water Watch was releasing a new report on the future of American Water, RWE’s other soon-to-be-former subsidiary Thames Water was busy infuriating British regulators and citizens for failing to notify customers of disruptive construction, not fixing massive leaks during a drought, and supplying dirty water.

Back on the other side of the ocean, communities are challenging proposed rate increases by American Water subsidiaries at utility commission hearings in three different U.S. states: California, Ohio, and New Mexico. And in other news about padding the bottom line, American Water announced that it signed its 500,000th so-called customer service line contract – a pipe fix guarantee program Food & Water Watch considers an unnecessary fee.*

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*correction 12/19/2006 – watch California organizer Adam Scow discuss a similar but entirely unrelated program on Channel 7 News.

Today, several Food & Water Watch members, accompanied by three bovine activists, held a dress rehearsal in Washington, DC for Starbucks National Call-in Day. These MOOtiful cows attracted a lot of attention from locals and are hoping to get an even bigger response next Tuesday when they descend about a local Starbucks to ask the company to buy better milk. (Tangential Finding: Apparently, construction workers will even catcall- cow call?- at women dressed as cows. No findings on reactions to other animal costumes, yet.)

Want Starbucks to hear your voice on the matter? On Tuesday, December 5, make a call and let Starbucks know you object to its continued use of milk produced with artificial growth hormones. It should only take a few minutes! You can call Starbucks at: 1 (800) 235-2883, Mon , Fri 5 AM , 6 PM (PST). Let Starbucks know that its decision to use rBGH milk is bad for cows and may be bad for people. Find out more here.

Sometimes, you work for years and years, and then you win!Earlier this month, a California judge ruled that the city of Stockton illegally privatized its water and sewer operations.

The Concerned Citizens Coalition of Stockton (CCCoS) led the fight and we congratulate their dedication, persistence, and patience. If the council now reconsiders private involvement they have to seek voter approval.

The victory in Stockton is only one of many things for which Food & Water Watch is thankful this day before Thanksgiving 2006. Read about some others here.

By the way, the effort in Stockton was profiled in the film Thirst.

Certifying products is all the rage these days. We see it with timber, bananas, coffee and even diamonds. In most cases, these certification schemes are designed to assuage consumer concerns about the environmental or social origins of the product, and of course, to encourage them to buy.

Increasingly, Americans are concerned about where their seafood comes from, how it‚ harvested and whether the fish is a safe and healthy source of protein. For this reason, new eco-labels for seafood are popping up on grocery shelves across the country.

However, there is a lot of debate about how this labeling should come to pass. The problems arise when companies with a direct stake in the sale of the product determine the labeling criteria and even decide which products receive a label – a clear conflict of interest.

So what are the alternatives? The safeguarding of our oceans and food sources should not be left to private industry. The certifier must be a third party with no stake in the sale of the product. Otherwise, it‚ awfully hard to know if that label really promises a more sustainable product or simply greater profits for a clever company.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will no longer identify Americans who dont have enough to eat as ‚hungry” when it conducts its annual survey of access to food. Now, instead of calling people who cant afford to put food on the table ‚hungry”, a term well understood by the public, the USDA will categorize them as experiencing ‚very low food security”. The USDA says it made this semantic change because it found ‚hunger” to be an unscientific term for which there is not a clear definition.

Bread for the World, an anti-hunger group, and others strongly criticized this word change, saying ‚We . . . cannot hide the reality of hunger among our citizens.” The amount of hungry people in the U.S. has been a source of shame for the Bush Administration, as the percentage of Americans that are the hungriest has risen over the past five years. Last year, eleven million Americans reported going hungry at times, and 35 million people could not put food on the table for part of last year. Considering that in 1999 then-Governor Bush claimed the USDA‚ hunger statistics (which rated Texas poorly) were fabricated, it‚ no wonder that this Administration would rather change the terms, than fix the problem.

While we found government attempts to call ketchup a ‚vegetable” and irradiation ‚cold pasteurization” disturbing, calling hungry people anything other than ‚hungry” strikes us as deeply wrong. Whatever the scientific reasoning, this linguistic gymnastics makes it easier to ignore a problem that shouldnt exist in a country as wealthy as the United States. [End of Sermon.]

There‚ a reason why in most businesses, if you get fired you pack up your things immediately and are forced to leave. The reason being, of course, that if you stay around, you might muck things up.

In Congress, however, if you lose the election, you stay around for a few more months before your successor takes over your seat. That‚ when the trouble starts (or is amplified, depending on your viewpoint). Right now, we are nervously awaiting this Congress last moves, with many bad agricultural and food bills waiting in the wings. Unfortunately, the “Animal Enterprise and Terrorism Act” (HR 4239, S3880), which we just warned you about, sailed through Congress yesterday. In fact, it passed on a‚ voice vote so you are unable to see how your Representative voted. We are worried that this legislation will limit the ability of people to work on animal protection issues. In the next several weeks, be ready for more calls to action, so that we can try to stop some of Congress last minute moves!

On another note, our Winter issue of the Food Alert has hit the stands! Click here to read about the spinach E.coli scare, the move towards better food on college campuses, and Starbucks National Call-in Day.