Reports

RWE’s short, uneasy U.S. experiment is a cautionary tale for all concerned — water companies, regulators, elected officials and citizens alike. The American Water experience raises the question: Should a resource so essential to life be controlled by multinational, for-profit corporations, or safeguarded by the public with strong local oversight and accountability measures?

Over the last 20 years, the dairy industry has been transformed at all levels, from the cows that produce its raw materials to the cooperatives that secure its prices and the processors that turn milk into finished products for consumers. Massive mega-dairies, whose herds may receive antibiotics and growth hormones to boost production, ship milk across the country to be mechanically separated and resold as everything from ice cream to industrial protein concentrates. Consumers no longer know where their milk comes from — or what is actually in many of the dairy products they consume.

Aqua America is the second largest publicly traded water and wastewater corporation based in the United States. It has pushed its way to the top through a strategy of aggressive acquisitions and drastic rate increases. Aiming to make several dozen acquisitions a year, the company targets smaller systems to avoid a citizenry armed with resources to fight the takeover. And it pursues systems in states that have fast growing populations, corporate friendly regulatory environments and considerable investment needs. Of course, all of this is done with an eye toward its bottom line.

Why Public Funding - Not Privatization - is the Answer for U.S. Water Systems. From maintenance problems in Atlanta and sewage spills in Milwaukee, to corruption in New Orleans and political meddling in Lexington, the recent history of water privatization in the U.S. is marred by underachievement and failure. Faulty Pipes chronicles these stories, explains why privatization has failed, and advocates a national water trust fund as a solution.

The poorest people of Johannesburg, South Africa saw some measure of hope with a judicial reaffirmation of the country’s constitutional right to water in April 2008. However, their fight is not over because the powers arrayed against them have appealed the decision.

The 2008 global food crisis is compromising the survival of 860 million undernourished people and threatens to push a hundred million people into extreme poverty, erasing all of the gains made in eradicating poverty in the last decade. Record high prices have put food out of reach for the poorest people in the developing world, many of whom already spend more than half their income on food. Growing food insecurity is undermining tenuous civil stability in at least 33 countries, about one sixth of United Nations member countries.

Costly Returns: How Corporations Could Profit from Inflating the Already High Cost of Repairing the Nation’s Crumbling Water and Sewer Infrastructure

This report, Cargill: A Threat to Food and Farming, will show that Cargill’s vast influence on global agricultural trade threatens the health of consumers, family farmers, the environment, and even entire economies and governments.

After a series of safety scares about imported seafood in 2006 and 2007, U.S. consumers are recognizing that more than 80 percent, about 10.7 billion pounds of the seafood they eat, comes from outside the United States. Much of it is imported from Asia and Latin America, regions that have potentially unsafe production practices.

In today’s world, seeing is not believing –– at least not when it comes to meat. Because of an ill–thought decision by our Food and Drug Administration, the meat industry was allowed to inject the toxic gas carbon monoxide into your ground beef’s packaging. The gas kept the meat red and fresh looking long after it had already spoiled, and when you ate it (past its sell–by date; you looked at that, didn’t you?) you also consumed the bacterial condoplex that had sprung up in the interim.