Blog Posts

By Lane Brooks

This past weekend I heard Sandra Steingraber speak before a concert to benefit several New York organizations working to ban fracking. Sandra recently won a Heinz Award, which came with a cash award of $100,000. She is using that money to do what she can to ban fracking in New York. Many people have told her that big oil is spending many millions of dollars on lobbying and advertising and that she is just wasting her money, which, even though she is a noted author, is more than she has ever seen at one time in her life. To the people who tell her that she can’t make a difference, she retells the following fable:

Once, a fire broke out in a dense forest. This forest was home to many animals of every kind. As the fire spread, the animals moved away from it, but the forest was dry and the fire raced through the trees. Now terrified, the creatures fled to the river edge and huddled in fear. But a little parrot, who could not sit and wait for the fire to destroy everything, flew over the river and scooped up a beak of water. Then he flew over the burning forest and let the water fall into the flames. He repeated this over and over, but the fire just grew wilder. The other animals shouted up at him to stop wasting his time, that it was too late to save their homes. But the parrot said, “I am doing what I can,” and kept on.

The flames grew higher, singeing his feathers as he flew over the raging fire, but he continued bringing water a beak-full at a time. Then the gods looked down and said, “Little parrot, you can’t save the forest. Stop before you perish.” But the parrot said to the gods, “I don’t need your advice. I need your help,” and continued to do what he could. The gods, touched by the little parrot’s bravery and humiliated by their own defeatism, began to weep. Their flood of tears put out the fire and saved the forest for all of the animals.

Yes, the oil industry is enormous and not easily stopped.

But what you do matters — whatever it is. Are you a parrot?

By Marie Logan

Seafood lovers beware: there’s a chemical that threatens to deceive you about the freshness of your flaky fillets of fish. You might be paying more for seafood that contains this chemical, because it can increase the weight of the products to which it’s applied. Worse, you might not even know it’s there, because labeling of this potentially toxic chemical is not mandatory in the U.S.

So what is it? It’s an additive—called sodium tripolyphosphate, or STPP for short—and it is used to make your seafood appear firmer, smoother and glossier. Seafood manufacturers may soak your seafood in a quick chemical bath of STPP in order

to achieve these effects. Some of the more commonly “soaked” seafood items include scallops, shrimp and anything filleted that’s very flaky—like hake, sole or imitation crab meat. (For those of you following food safety news, this is similar to the spraying of carbon monoxide on red meat, which can make older meat appear fresher than it is.)

If seafood is soaked for too long in an STPP bath, it may absorb more water, which means you’ll pay more for the product by the pound because the excess water makes it weigh more. A product may have been “soaked” with STPP if a milky white liquid oozes from the fish as you cook it, and it may also deflate in size a bit.

In large quantities, STPP is a suspected neurotoxin, as well as a registered pesticide and known air contaminant in the state of California.

How can one steer clear of STPP? Ask at your market or fish shop if the scallops or shrimp you’re being sold are “dry.” You can ask the same thing of waiters at seafood restaurants—they should have an understanding of the topic. (In industry-speak, “wet” fish means a product has been soaked in phosphates.) You can also check labels of packaged products, which may list STPP as an ingredient. Unfortunately, it’s not mandatory for companies and sellers to do so.

Remember, consumers have the power. Start wielding yours today! Find out where the fish you’re ordering comes from, and how it’s produced, to help influence your local food system.

Read up more on STPP in our fact sheet, “What’s on Your Fish?” As always, if you have any questions, please post them here in our comments section and we’ll do our best to respond in a timely manner.

By Hugh MacMillan

Faced with the current glut of cheap natural gas, the shale gas industry has begun to slow its overzealous pace of drilling and fracking in the Northeast. Chesapeake Energy has announced it will slash the number of new drilling rigs in Pennsylvania by 68 percent (from 75 to 24). Why? Because natural gas is simply too cheap to justify the financial costs of drilling and fracking; the public health and environmental costs, of course, are another story.

Now, with a convenient new report, the American Petroleum Institute (API) is artfully setting the stage for blaming the U.S. EPA for this slowdown in new shale gas drilling. The report decries soon-to-be-finalized EPA rules that would force the industry to gradually adopt “green completion” technology at new wells. This technology captures volatile organic compounds, which contribute to smog and other public health problems, and also captures methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas contributing to global climate change.

API argues that in the few years it would take to ramp up the availability of green technology, fewer new wells would be drilled. They then warn that this will mean government revenues will decline in these few years. But this ignores the fact that any near-term losses in revenues would be recovered as the finite source of shale gas is depleted in subsequent years.

Reading between the lines of the report, it is clear that API believes it is not economic to drill and frack for shale gas if the industry is forced to take just a small step in reducing its environmental footprint and address only some of its air pollution – never mind the rest of its pollution.

They think they’ve got us where they want us: at their mercy. But this fixation on near-term profit, whatever the long-term consequences, is fueling a response. Communities around the country are working to ban fracking.

These communities want sustainable solutions for economic growth, and they have come to recognize that being at the center of a temporary shale gas bubble will create more problems than it solves.

A display in the "slum" tent at the World Water Forum's Village of Solutions.

By Wenonah Hauter

Yesterday I walked around the “solution tents” at the 6^th World Water Forum, which is more clearly than ever a trade show for the water industry to sell expensive services and products. Arranged as a “village,” the exhibit offered no vision for a future that addresses the source of pollution or the reason that millions of people lack access to water. From the tents labeled “factory” and “slum” to the “bank” and “library” exhibits, the failure to address the real problems was Kafkaesque. 

Take the factory exhibit. In no place there was the cause of pollution mentioned. There was no suggestion that we should prevent pollution to begin with, or that waterways should not be the dumping ground for human waste or factory waste. In fact, pollution was never mentioned at all. The organizers of this corporate forum see pollution as a profit center to be cleaned by a range of technologies. So, instead of addressing water pollution issues, the exhibit featured an expensive machine that packages water in little plastic bags that are sold to people during disasters. It displayed the Hippo Roller, a nifty technology that is essentially a barrel on wheels that makes it easy for women to transport water. It featured a stand with two buckets, one above the other, that was for hand washing.

The slum tent, designed to mirror any of the millions of impoverished neighborhoods that have become the norm in urban areas, shows the real agenda at the forum—making money for the water industry. Most outrageous in the tent was Veolia’s water fountain with a coin slot and a place to use a smart card to access water. According to the provided literature, if the prepaid credit made available to a “target population” by authorities is depleted before the end of the month, users can recharge their card in commercial and mobile agencies at special prices. If this is the best the World Water Forum can do for the world’s poor—prepaid cards for water at a fountain—they should pack up today and go home. Read the full article…

 By Darcey Rakestraw

We’ve said that the World Water Forum is a corporate trade show masquerading as a multilateral forum. Others have pointed out that the high fee for full access to the conference (up to 700 euros) is prohibiting participation by the grassroots. Still others have reported that security is high, and activists are being profiled and arrested.

Now, we’re wondering if the organizers have fully thought out the logistics of welcoming guests.

The forum has two very different entrances, depending on whether you are a VIP or not. The first entrance is a nice, welcoming one, and yesterday we surmised that it was the general entrance to the conference. But the man standing in front of the barricade shooed us away because we didn’t have the proper credentials. The photo of the second entrance, taken today by a colleague, is a shabby side door. This is where they gained access to the conference today.

If the World Water Forum wants to maintain even the veneer of inclusivity, they might want to ditch the separate-but-not-so-equal approach to conference attendees each day as they enter.

By Darcey Rakestraw

A water activist at the World Water Forum provided us with this summary in English of yesterday’s action where five people were arrested:  

What a nasty surprise this morning! Walking out the metro station we stopped at the gates of the World Water Forum, and saw that a multitude of riot police had taken the place. It is difficult to talk about numbers, but certainly those policeman were more than the people walking on the street or registered for the official forum.

Meanwhile, a group of activists from the international movement for water justice, along with the occupy movement, did a peaceful action to highlight the lack of access for citizens to this space. The music, colors and smiles where a clear danger to public security to be avoided.

Forced by this offence to public security, police needed to arrest 5 persons and detain people walking by without giving any justification. Those arrested have been kept 3 ½ hours in the headquarters without receiving any explanation. Read the full article…

By Royelen Lee Boykie

As “pink slime” makes its way across social media — inspiring a collective heave along its slippery path — there are even more recent disgusting revelations.

This week we released our analysis from a pilot project of poultry slaughter plants and found that during an eight-month period of 2011, company employees missed 64 percent of feathers, lungs, oil glands, trachea and bile that remained on chicken carcasses and 87 percent that remained on turkey carcasses. Not only that, but 90 percent of the violations written up by USDA inspectors in these plants were for fecal contamination that company employees missed. Read the full article…

By Darcey Rakestraw

The United Nations recently reported that a key UN goal of halving the proportion of people lacking access to clean drinking water has been achieved five years early. This news comes on the eve of the 6^th World Water Forum next week in Marseille, France with the theme, “Time for Solutions.” Despite the rosy outlook the UN report suggests, activists are sounding the alarm that we’re not on the right path—and that no one should be confused about the dangers of letting corporations guide water policy.

Certainly, activists and the corporate-backed World Water Forum don’t agree on solutions to address the nearly one billion people without access to clean water and 2.6 billion who lack proper sanitation. The forum was conceived by the World Water Council, which promotes itself as an “international, multi stakeholder forum”. Its web site touts the tagline, “A global water movement for a secure world”. 

But the World Water Council’s strong ties to large multinational water companies like Suez and Veolia, who are currently under investigation in the EU for price fixing, have led activists to view the Council and it’s tri-annual World Water Forum as a means of furthering the industry’s influence over the development agenda. This includes promoting market-based tools like water markets, pollution trading, and other schemes by which corporations can both profit off of—and keep polluting—an increasing scarcity of clean water. Read the full article…

By Walker Foley

With the clock ticking down to the sixth World Water Forum in France, Food & Water Watch encourages you to Occupy this shameless marriage of corporate water lobbyists and our global leaders.  

We are dealing with a global water crisis due to the mishandling of our resources, which has left one in eight around the globe without access to clean water.  Water is necessary for life – it is a basic human right – but organizations like Veolia and Suez don’t see it that way.  Instead, water is a commodity, ready to package and sell.  All over the globe these organizations are manipulating the debate and using their influence to rewrite government policy on access to clean water.  The World Water Forum is just another means for these corporations to sit down with our politicians behind closed doors.   Read the full article…

By Gabriella Zanzanaini

Just days before the opening of the World Water Forum in Marseille, campaigners are getting read to attend the Alternative event taking place in parallel during the corporate Forum.

The European Coordination of the Alternative World Water Forum (FAME) — including Food and Water Europe – EPSU – AQUATTAC, Belgian Social Forum and CNCD — organized a public hearing at the European Parliament in light of the Resolution that the European Parliament is debating on March 15th regarding the World Water Forum. Meanwhile, the Alternative event today has more than 1500 registered participants while the corporate event struggles to arrive go over the 2000 participants despite the huge corporate and government funding. Read the full article…