| After several years of
preliminary consciousness raising around the GE food issue, Friends
of the Earth, Organic Consumers
Association, and other allies in the Genetically
Engineered Food Alert scored a major victory last fall.
Genetically engineered corn, StarLink, had contaminated
over 300 US brand name products
(Kraft and Safeway taco shells, Mission Food products, etc.) as well as
much of the entire multi-billion dollar US corn crop and hybrid seed supply.
Not only is the StarLink fiasco costing the industry,
according to Wall Street analysts, up to a
billion dollars in losses, but even more costly to the biotech
industry is the fact that the incident has thoroughly alarmed millions
of American consumers; not to mention millions of consumers overseas whose
governments import billions of dollars of US corn.
According to Dan Cekander, a top US grain trade analyst
in Chicago, the StarLink scandal has impacted and 'distorted' the entire
global corn export market, and will likely 'continue to do so for
four or five more years' due to the fact that StarLink- contaminated
corn will continue to show up in the marketplace, as reported in the Latin
American business publication El Financiero, 2/28/01
Now is the time, in the wake of the StarLink scandal,
for US consumers and food activists to go on the offensive. The
Organic Consumers Association and five of our closest allies (Friends
of the Earth, Rights Action
Canada, Center for Food Safety,
Pesticide Action Network, and Sustain)
have decided to target Starbucks, the largest gourmet coffee shop chain
in the world, as our first major North American corporate target.
On March 20, 2001, while Starbucks holds their annual
shareholders meeting in Seattle, we are organizing 'Frankenbuck$' protests
in front of Starbucks cafes in up to 100 cities across the US and holding
up signs. In a number of strategic cities there will be press conferences
as well This will be the largest coordinated protest against genetically
engineered foods (as well as the largest protest against agricultural
sweatshops) in US history.
You can go to the Starbucks www.organicconsumers.org/Starbucks
and check out this campaign. If you are willing to leaflet or do media
work in your local city or community, please contact Simon Harris, the
OCA's national Starbucks Campaign coordinator at simon@organicconsumers.org
Starbucks has over 2,500 coffee shops in the US and
Canada (3,300 worldwide) and sells its bottled Frappuccino coffee beverages
and ice cream to several thousand additional retailers and college campuses.
Twenty percent of all coffee shops in the USA are now owned by Starbucks.
Starbucks has partnerships with Pepsi-Cola, Marriott, Kraft/Phillip Morris,
and the Albertson's supermarket chain.
In addition, Starbucks now has outlets in 18 nations,
making them one of the fastest growing food and beverage companies in
the world. If you live outside the US and are willing to help organize
a campaign in your country, please contact us as well at campaign@organicconsumers.org
Why Target Starbucks?
The GE Food Issue
Despite rising consumer concerns, Starbucks stubbornly
refuses to guarantee that the milk, beverages, chocolate, ice cream, and
baked goods they are serving or selling are free of recombinant Bovine
Growth Hormone (rBGH) and other genetically engineered ingredients (including
soy derivatives and corn sweeteners). The bottom line is that Starbucks
needs to get rid of all GE food ingredients and label its packaged or
bottled products as being GE-free.
Several thousand Starbucks outlets are still using
milk coming from dairies that allow cows to be injected with Monsanto's
controversial Bovine Growth Hormone, a hormone often associated with higher
risks for cancer in humans. rBGH is a powerful drug, which cruelly damages
the health of dairy cows, forcing them to give more milk.
Milk from rBGH injected cows is also likely to contain
more pus, antibiotic residues, and bacteria. Monsanto's rBGH is banned
in every industrialized country in the world except for the United States
and Mexico. Starbucks is one of the largest buyers of rBGH-tainted milk
in the world. Labeling its bottled coffee beverages and ice cream, which
are sold in thousands of retail stores, as rBGH-free will send a powerful
message to Monsanto and the dairy industry that consumers want rBGH taken
off the market.
Although biotechnology corporations are currently
field-testing genetically engineered (decaffeinated) coffee beans, Starbucks
has not taken a public stand on whether or not it intends to purchase
these genetically engineered coffee beans in the future.
Why Target Starbucks?
Environmental And Social Justice Issues
Although Starbucks has recently bowed to consumer
pressure and begun selling certified Fair Trade, shade-grown (organic
or transition to organic) coffee beans in bulk, they are refusing to brew
and seriously promote Fair Trade coffee, unlike a number of other gourmet
coffee shops and companies.
Only shade-grown or organic coffee, which avoids the
use of the use of toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, protects
the environment and preserves the forest canopy and the priceless biodiversity
of plants and animals (including migratory songbirds). All coffee certified
as Fair Trade or organic is shade-grown, as opposed to corporate plantation
coffee, which is grown in the direct sunlight, utilizing pesticides and
chemical fertilizers, typically on large plantations where the surrounding
forest cover has been completely chopped down.
Wages paid to impoverished farm workers on the typical
sun-grown coffee plantations supplying Starbucks and other large coffee
buyers average approximately $600 per year, less than the annual cost
of a daily Starbucks latte in the US, Canada, Japan, or Europe.
Coffee is the largest
agricultural export commodity on the world market, with 18 billion dollars
in annual sales.
The US coffee import market, the largest in the world,
totals almost four billion dollars. Coffee is a widely cultivated crop
that can readily be converted to or maintained as 100% shade-grown and
organic. It is the most important export of dozens of developing nations,
including Mexico and the nations of Central America.
There are 25 million, mainly small, coffee farmers
left in the world, most of whom are growing coffee in a sustainable and
organic (shade- grown as opposed to sun grown and chemical-intensive)
manner. Many of these indigenous and small farmers, who inhabit the most
biologically diverse and fragile areas of the world (the mountains and
rainforests of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guatemala for example), are trying
to make a living in the face of intense economic exploitation, racial
discrimination, and government repression.
The only way these campesinos (farm workers) and small
coffee farmers can survive, and thereby preserve global biodiversity,
is to get a better price for their coffee. It is market demand in the
industrialized North that determines how much Fair Trade coffee gets sold,
and in turn how many of the world's 25 million coffee growers can be enrolled
in Fair Trade cooperatives and programs. Because companies like Starbucks
(and institutional food vendors like Sysco) are not brewing, seriously
selling, and heavily promoting Fair Trade coffee, most coffee sold today
is sun- grown, plantation coffee.
Only 550,000 or 2% of the world's coffee growers now
benefit from being part of the Fair Trade movement. We need to increase
this percentage, as quickly as possible, or else indigenous and rural
communities across the global South and tropical biodiversity will perish.
Analysts estimate that as many as 50% of shade-grown coffee producers
in countries like Mexico will abandon production over the next few years
unless market demand for Fair Trade coffee increases dramatically.
Unfortunately the world's small shade-grown coffee
producers, many of whom are indigenous people, are being forced out of
business and off the land by a ruthless global coffee cartel determined
to drive down the prices paid to coffee farmers and monopolize and control
the world coffee market supply process forcing their industrial, plantation
model of sun-grown coffee on the entire world.
Currently four food giants basically control the world's
coffee supply: Procter and Gamble (Folgers); Kraft/Phillip Morris (Maxwell
House); Sarah Lee (European brands), and Nestle (Hills Brothers).
Buyers for these conglomerates
have recently been paying small farmers as little as 30 cents a pound
for their coffee beans, a starvation price which is equal to less than
a third of what it costs these farmers to produce the coffee.
Fair Trade coffee, on the other hand, guarantees producers
at least $1.26 per pound, a price which will steadily increase as corporations
such as Starbucks are forced to begin to brew and promote Fair Trade coffee
on a major scale.
The world's millions of small coffee farmers desperately
need certified Fair Trade and organic coffee (which provides these small
farmers with a living wage for their coffee beans) to become the dominant
force in the 18 billion dollar world coffee market, not just a tiny niche.
Despite dubious claims that they have begun to fulfill
their promises (dating back to 1995) to improve the wages and working
conditions of impoverished workers on the coffee plantations of suppliers
in Guatemala and other nations, Starbucks has offered little or no evidence
of action. The public relations brochures in their cafes boast about social
responsibility, but they have refused to divulge to international human
rights monitors specifics on where and how they have made a difference.
Bringing Together Food
Safety, Environmental, & Social Justice Issues
Some people have asked why the OCA
is raising the issue of Fair Trade shade-grown coffee and social justice
along with the issue of genetically engineered food and beverages in the
Starbucks campaign.
It is our belief that the time has come to build a
broader and more powerful movement against genetically engineered foods,
factory farming, and chemical intensive agriculture. One of the best ways
to do this is to bring together people whose primary concerns are social
justice or preserving the environment and biodiversity, with those whose
passion is stopping genetic engineering and converting the world's agricultural
system to organic farming as soon as possible.
In reality, all of these crucial issues are inextricably
interconnected. Genetic engineering poses a mortal threat to public health,
biodiversity, and the environment, and, in addition, is being used as
a tool for agribusiness monopolies to drive most of the world's two million
small farmers and rural villagers off the land and replace them with a
US-style system of factory farming and industrial agriculture which is
more conducive to corporate profits.
When it comes to our food
supply; environmental preservation, sustainable development, and social
and economic justice go hand-in-hand.
Organic farmers, in this case shade-grown coffee growers,
cannot afford to grow the crops that we need and exercise a sustainable
and ethical stewardship over the land, unless they get a fair price for
their labor. If we allow the global coffee cartel and its accomplices
such as Starbucks to continue to control the food and beverage choices
of the world's consumers, restricting Fair Trade and organic coffee to
being nothing more than a small niche market, 20 million small shade-grown
coffee producers will shortly be forced off the land. The timber companies,
plantation owners, and cattle barons are waiting in the wings to chop
down the remaining forests and eliminate much of what is left of tropical
and semi-tropical biodiversity.
With your help, and the combined efforts of the emerging
global movement of consumers, food activists, and anti- sweatshop Fair
Trade organizations, we can stop this war on nature and indigenous people
and convert our global agricultural system to one that is organic, sustainable,
and equitable.
How You Can Help
If you are willing to help leaflet a Starbucks outlet
in your community, beginning March 20, send an email to simon@organicconsumers.org
or call 510-525-7054.
You can print the Frankenbucks leaflet from our website:
www.organicconsumers.org
Go to a Starbucks and ask to speak to the manager.
Show them the leaflet and tell them that as a customer of Starbucks you
expect GE free products that are humanely and sustainably produced.
Ask them for a verbal and written assurance that they
will change their policies (i.e. that they will remove rBGH and other
genetically engineered ingredients from their coffee beverages and their
foods; that they will start brewing and seriously promoting Fair Trade
coffee; that they will fulfill their pledge to improve the wages and working
conditions of coffee plantation workers; that they will pledge never to
use genetically engineered (decaffeinated) coffee beans.
Ask Starbucks to show you that the milk they are using
is labeled as rBGH-free (sometimes called rBST). If you order soymilk
with your coffee, make sure it's labeled as organic or as free of genetically
engineered soy and soy derivatives. Ask if Starbucks baked goods are guaranteed
to be free from GE soy, soy derivatives, corn sweeteners, and oils.
If you order a coffee from Starbucks, ask them to
brew it with Fair Trade coffee beans. If they won't, tell them you will
take your business elsewhere.
Patronize socially and environmentally responsible
businesses and products. If one of Starbucks competitors is brewing Fair
Trade coffee or avoiding genetically engineered ingredients, give your
business to them instead of Starbucks.
Join the Organic
Consumers Association and the growing Fair Trade movement
across the USA. Keep Informed by visiting our website: www.organicconsumers.org
Call, write, fax, or email Starbucks. Tell them to
send you a written guarantee that they will change their policies on genetically
engineered foods, Fair Trade coffee, and wages and working conditions
of coffee plantation workers, or else you will no longer buy their products.
STARBUCKS CONTACT INFORMATION:
Mr. Orin Smith, CEO; Starbucks Coffee Company; P.O.
Box 34067; Seattle, WA 98124-1067 Telephone: 800-235-2883 Fax: 206-447-3432
email: you can send an email from the Starbucks website: http://www.starbucks.com
Note: Starbucks may likely change its email or telephone
numbers to deal with the fact that they are being swamped with calls and
emails. Send them a letter or fax if you can, or better yet visit one
of their stores directly and voice your concerns.
Why is the resistance
against Frankenfoods so strong and successful in Europe?
And of course the fundamental question is: How can
we achieve this kind of success in the US and other countries?
A close look at the European anti-GE movement over
the past five years makes it clear that relying on the government or regulatory
agencies to stop the Biotech Express through labeling or safety testing
requirements is not the answer, at least in the short run. The way to
get Frankenfoods and crops off the market is to:
Up the ante through bold and creative direct action,
corporate campaigns/boycotts, and protests in the streets.
Aggressively publicize the emerging scientific evidence,
which shows that GE crops and foods are hazardous to human health and
the environment, and a socio-economic threat to family farms and rural
communities.
Use a variety of media-oriented tactics to encourage
the mass media to get the anti-Frankenfoods message out to a mass audience.
Focus on marketplace pressure, by waging a protracted
campaign against individual high-profile food and beverage corporations
to convince them to remove GE ingredients from their product lines.
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