Press Releases: All

The poultry industry, just one small part of our factory farm nation, has a massive waste problem. Today, national consumer group Food & Water Watch criticized the plans of poultry processing giant Perdue Agribusiness and Fibrowatt LLC to build a power plant on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that generates electricity from chicken manure.

Press Release: With children wearing t-shirts reading “Don’t Frack My School,” families from the city of Erie were joined by the national consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch as they delivered over 21,000 petitions to Encana President Jeff Wojahn urging him to halt plans to frack a well located next to Red Hawk Elementary School in Erie, Colo.

The petitions were collected by the national consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch in support of grassroots, parent-powered organization Erie Rising, which is fighting to stop Encana from fracking in their community. After delivering the petitions to Encana, members of Erie Rising and Food & Water Watch delivered to Governor Hickenlooper copies of the petitions along with a personal invitation to attend their June 2 rally to stop fracking in and near Erie’s backyards and schoolyards.

“Today, the state of Maryland became the first state in the nation to ban arsenical drugs in chicken production and took a significant step in addressing one of many issues associated with industrial agriculture.

“It is a testament to the power of grassroots organizing that this arsenic prohibition bill passed at all given the formidable opponents who fought for three years against removing the carcinogen from our food.

“Governor O’Malley’s cozy relationship with the poultry industry hasn’t helped, either. The poultry industry continues to push agricultural policy in Annapolis that pads their profits at the expense of Marylanders and the Chesapeake Bay—even though Maryland’s entire agricultural sector contributes only .35 % of the state’s GDP. We will continue to fight the industry’s attempts to block environmental regulations and reforms that would benefit the state’s farmers.”

Press Statement: “T. Boone Pickens’s recent divestment from Chesapeake Energy shows that natural gas is a house of cards, and that even one of its biggest cheerleaders has grown wise to this fact.”

Press Release: At a press conference today with one of the country’s largest urban oil fields in the background, national consumer organization Food & Water Watch joined with Josh Fox, the Oscar-nominated director of Gasland, Environment California, Citizens Coalition for a Safe Community, Grassroots Coalition, and residents of surrounding neighborhoods to call for a ban on the controversial oil and gas practice called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in California. Already, 50,000 Californians have signed Food & Water Watch and CREDO Action petitions supporting a ban.

Press release: While the UN officially recognized water as a human right in July 2010, lack of access to clean water and sanitation is not a far-flung problem, according to national consumer group Food & Water Watch, which today released the report Our Right to Water: A People’s Guide to Implementing the United Nations’ Recognition of the Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation In the United States.

“We can’t take our access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation for granted—even here in the United States,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. “Between a lack of federal spending to maintain our infrastructure to the rash of city sell-offs of water services to private water companies, to the risks that fracking poses to our drinking water supplies—more than ever, we need to make sure Washington is protecting our human right to water.”

Press Release: Emails released today by national consumer group Food & Water Watch reveal an unnervingly close and direct relationship between Governor Martin O’Malley and chicken giant Perdue. Seventy pages of emails, mostly between Governor O’Malley and Herb Frerichs, Perdue’s general counsel, illustrate the strong hold the industry has on Governor O’Malley on topics ranging from waste incineration to the lawsuit brought by the University of Maryland Legal Clinic against Perdue and one of its contract growers.

Press Release: Following revelations that Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon also ran a lucrative $200 million hedge fund (Heritage Management Company LLC), which traded in the same commodities Chesapeake produces, the national consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch today asked the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) to launch a formal investigation into possible market manipulation by these intertwined interests.

Media Statement: Nassau County’s selection of United Water to run its sewer system is one that the county will ultimately regret. Just ask the community of Gary, Indiana, where United Water Services is currently facing felony charges for violating the Clean Water Act and conspiring to defraud the federal government by misrepresenting the way it complies with wastewater treatment standards.

“Today the North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources (DENR) released its final report on the potential impacts of legalizing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the state. The final report concludes that the current ban should remain in place indefinitely.