No Problem With GMO Contamination – Unless You Want to Grow, Sell or Eat Safe Food
[see editor’s note, at end]
Genetically engineered food giant Bayer was hit last week with the first judgment in what is expected to be a series of losses for the 2006 contamination of rice by the company’s unapproved GMO variety. A Missouri jury ordered Bayer to pay $2 million to two farmers who suffered losses when global markets to U.S. rice exports closed following the contamination event. More than 1,000 farmers from every major rice growing state except California have filed similar suits.
The unapproved Bayer rice had been grown only in a few small field trials that were abandoned in 2001. Nevertheless, contamination from the GMO variety persisted and was detected in U.S. rice shipments in Europe, Asia and Africa in 2006. A report by an Ohio independent economic consultant for Greenpeace estimated the total costs to farmers, food companies, the rice industry and other related entities from the Bayer contamination could exceed $1.28 billion. The report estimates Bayer faces a potential additional liability to farmers and food companies that are suing the biotech crop producer of another billion dollars.
In addition to the economic losses, the Bayer rice contamination is significant as it contradicts a key argument by biotech crop proponents, who say that self-pollinating crops like rice will not contaminate neighboring fields, and thus can be safely used as “pharm” crops to produce experimental drugs. Even the usually pro-biotech science journal Nature Biotechnology has chastised GMO pharming companies for using food crops to produce these untested drugs and non-food compunds, comparing the risk to “conventional pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical manufacturer packaging its pills in candy wrappers….”
In fact, a near-disaster from contamination of the food supply from an untested pig drug grown in GMO corn was narrowly averted in 2002, when a ProdiGene pharm corn contaminated 500,000 bushels of soybeans destined for the 
food supply. Prior to the incident, the company’s CEO had stated that such contamination was impossible because the products of the drug crops are so valuable that “we never let it get out of our hands.” Two years after the ProdiGene contamination, a report by six independent experts commissioned by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that USDA’s oversight of pharm crop field trials was still inadequate and left the food supply open to potentially disastrous contamination by experimental drugs.
Despite the havoc created by GMO contamination episodes and risks of contamination from pharm crops, a recent Sustainablog post by biotech crop proponent Steve Savage describes contamination from GMO crops as “something that is actually a very old and very manageable.” After my initial response, Savage replied, but my next post in the exchange has yet to be published, even though there are other posts on the site that were sent after I submitted mine. What follows is my (revised and expanded) final contribution to the discussion.
As the StarLink, ProdiGene and hundreds of other contamination incidents show, there is nothing “old” and nothing manageable about contamination of natural food by GMOs. For consumers, GMO contamination means we cannot be sure that the food we buy is free from altered genes, even if we buy only organically grown products. This is a direct assault on consumers’ right to know what is in our food, and our right to food free from genetic experiments.
For farmers, GMO contamination has meant millions of dollars of lost sales and economic losses that hamper the U.S. corn, rice and other crop export industries to this day. For farmers and food companies, GMO contamination means millions of dollars spent in testing costs and verification of non-GMO status, costs for which the companies responsible for the problem, the biotech companies, are not held accountable. Organic growers are especially hard-hit; in a 2003 survey, one-third of organic growers rated the risk of contamination of their crops by GMOs as high or very high. Indeed, in legal 
judgments that found USDA illegally approved GMO alfalfa and sugar beets, two federal judges described the agency’s failure to account for potential contamination of natural and organic farms as contrary to the real economic threats faced by farmers in areas where GMO varieties would be grown, and threats to consumers who wish to eat safe, natural food. The judgment in the sugar beet case states that the “potential elimination of farmer’s choice to grow non-genetically engineered crops, or a consumer’s choice to eat non-genetically engineered food” is significant and should have prompted USDA to conduct a full environmental impact statement.
It’s interesting that Steve Savage boasts of his work on natural, biological pesticides while at DuPont and Mycogen. Those companies were among the leaders in bringing GMO “Bt” crops to market, despite concerns raised by scientists, environmentalists and organic growers who noted that the Bt crops threaten to destroy the usefulness of Bt sprays, valued by many as the world’s safest and most important biological pesticide. It’s curious that while Savage was purportedly working on biological pesticides, his colleagues were working to destroy the safest one known.
Savage also says that GMO Bt crops couldn’t present an allergy risk because they contain the same gene found and long-used in Bt sprays. But the version in GMO crops is not the same as in sprays; in crops it is an activated, high-dose (truncated) toxin. Moreover, regulatory agencies have failed to fully assess the allergenic potential of these Bt genes; Savage says the Cry1ac gene is safe, but one scientist’s review found that “There is now evidence that Cry1Ac is a potent, systemic and local immunogen, a strong adjuvant and that it binds to surface (gut) proteins” in animal studies. Also, an Australian GMO pea screw up showed that even genes long found safe in their natural hosts can create potentially hazardous allergens when transferred via genetic engineering, due to unexpected and uncontrollable side-effects of the process.
Savage claims that concerns about the toxic effects of pesticides are “out of date.” Yet today, the pesticide industry is promoting the use of methyl iodide, one of the most toxic carcinogens known, on food crops in California. Use of GMO crops has also hastened development of herbicide resistant superweeds, forcing farmers to return to highly toxic chemicals like 2,4-D and paraquat. GMO crop developers have also created crops engineered to withstand high doses of dicamba, a neurotoxin that has also been linked to reproductive and developmental health problems.
Savage omitted his tenure at DuPont from his Sustainablog bio, yet now says he is proud of his time there (after being outed, he updated his bio and claims he was not hiding anything. Really? Then why didn’t he list the affiliations in the first place?). Confronted with DuPont’s record as one of the worst polluters of the 20th century, he repeats a tired industry line, implying that such problems were a legacy of the past, and claims that during his time there the company was “a very responsible organization.” To another commenter who questioned DuPont’s record, Savage states that “anti-corporate forces” are unfair and have a “dehumanized perspective on corporations.” He also admits that he currently has projects with “agro-chemical companies,” but again fails to disclose which companies he works for.
Whatever one’s “perspective,” the facts about DuPont’s lengthy record of lies, crimes and misdeeds are well known, and the company’s efforts to deceive the public and cover-up risks of its products continue to this day.
Since Savage says that he found DuPont to be “very responsible” during his time there, a look at the company from 1982-89 is enlightening. Just a few of the company’s many misdeeds during this time include:
- DuPont lied about and covered up risks associated with its Teflon chemicals. For years DuPont knew a chemical in Teflon, a likely carcinogen, was persistent and toxic, yet the company covered up evidence and withheld safety data. In 2005, the EPA fined the company $16.5 million, the largest civil administrative penalty ever won, after DuPont was found guilty on three counts of hiding safety studies throughout the 1980s and beyond.
- DuPont’s disposal of the chemical in landfills, burn pits and injection wells throughout the 1980s polluted the Ohio River, leaving a legacy of water pollution that threatens community health to this day.
- Throughout the 1980’s, DuPont was the largest global producer of ozone-destroying CFCs. According to a 1991 EPA study, the ozone damage will create 12 million skin cancers, causing 200,000 deaths through 2040. DuPont denied the hazards of CFCs for decades, then continued to produce and sell the chemical in the developing world after being forced to end production in the US and Europe. DuPont CFC “alternatives” also destroy the ozone and one caused tumors in rat studies.
- DuPont funded the 1989 founding of the Global Climate Coalition, a phony front-group of gas, oil and chemical companies aligned to spread lies about the “myths” of climate change.
- Lead, mercury and other toxic pollution from DuPont’s plant in Pompton Lakes, NJ through the mid-1980s was responsible for cancer and other illnesses among residents there, according to a 2002 jury verdict. DuPont also paid $38.5 million to residents of a company-owned town next to the site. Ongoing high cancer rates in the town are raising concerns that clean-up and remediation efforts have failed.
- In 1989, the company was hit with $1.5 million in punitive damages by a jury who found DuPont guilty of fraudulently concealing health records of workers exposed to asbestos.
This is the record of the company that Savage calls “a very responsible organization”? To paraphrase Professor Harold Hill, “Friend, either you are closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge, or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of DuPont (and apologists like Steve Savage) in your community.”
[editors note: this will be the last daily post, check back for more corporate crime "occasionally."]
Since Steve Savage sent a lengthy reply, I’ve posted it, in italics, interspersed with my responses, in bold, below.
Really now Charles, why don’t we keep this discussion above the ad homonym [sic] attack level. At the end of the day this is not about me or you.
There is nothing ad hominem about my post. My responses in regards to your actions are factual. I am not suggesting that your arguments are wrong because you hid your background; but I believe it is relevant for people to know, since (as one other commenter stated), there is much pro-biotech propaganda created by industry front-men who pose as “neutral” observers.
What you never addressed in your comment on my blog or in this post is the central point I made which was that all these “contamination” events you are describing are things that occur through the entirely natural mechanism of outcrossing. They only get defined as “contamination” because of irrational, zero-tolerances. My point is that related plants exchange genes all the time. I don’t think there is any argument about that. This blog essentially says the sky is falling, so we will have to wait and see if you are right.
Outcrossing between related plants is natural; there is nothing “natural” about outcrossing of lab-created genes, genes from non-food sources that have never been part of the human diet, and genes intended to create biologically active, experimental drugs. And there’s nothing irrational about zero-tolerance for such events.
The post doesn’t say the sky is falling; but for thousands of farmers, the sky already fell. You say you want to help farmers, yet you seem completely unconcerned about those who have suffered severe losses from GMO contamination. Whether you think it’s rational or not, it costs farmers when their customers don’t want their product. I’ve talked to thousands of farmers who tell me, the customer is always right. You seem to think that when it comes to GMO food, the customer should shut up and eat whatever Monsanto tells them to eat.
Whether you think it’s rational or not, millions of people object to eating GMOs, for many reasons. Is everyone who wants to protect their right to safe, natural non-GMO food supposed to give this right up because you think that’s not rational? Some “scientists” believe life begins at conception – to them, every woman who believes she has a right to abortion is just being irrational, too. Control over our bodies, and what food we put into them, is not something you get to decide, even if you are a scientist.
As for the Bt. The most severe case of resistance occurred through over-use of the spray form against the Diamond Back Moth. You describe Bt in pretty glowing terms. It actually represents an extremely tiny part of insect control around the world. I should know, we were in that business when I worked at Mycogen. Biological control is a cool thing and interesting to me as a biologist, but I know that it will never make a big difference on keeping the world fed. The sort of Chemicals that are developed by companies like DuPont (another former employer 1982-89) are much more important to keeping us fed and protected from diseases spread by pests. The biotech traits are another important part of our food security.
The safety and usefulness of Bt is not just my opinion, many farm and gardening experts recommend it. Like any pesticide, it can be overused and harmful if misused (eg, as you can see, one farmer found out the hard way that you shouldn’t get it in your eyes). The idea that we need toxic chemicals and GMOs for food security is convenient for those who sell these products, but evidence suggests otherwise.
I take time away from consulting to write blog posts. I’m not in the least bit ashamed about working with the companies that help farmers to be successful. At some point I’ve worked with just about all of them. I think my diverse experience in this over the past 32 years is something worth sharing in civil conversations about these complex issues.
Steve Savage
Well, thanks for sharing.
[as I suspected he would, Steve Savage gave it another try. Below, his latest and my final response, in the same format as above]
Charles,
I actually don’t think you are right that there is much pro-biotech propaganda on blog sites.
I didn’t say that; I said there is much pro-biotech propaganda written by those who, like you, hide who they really are. Here are some examples, there are too many others to list.
Most of what is said about food and agriculture is written by people with a strong bias and very little knowledge. That is why I started writing this summer. The fact that you, a paid activist, even found my post is surprising. You say “I’m not suggesting your arguments are wrong…” then what were you suggesting?
I think you’re having some basic reading comprehension problems (or you’re intentionally engaging in contextomy, which is almost as fun to say as ad hominem). In response to your claim that I was making ad hominem attacks, I pointed out that I was in fact directly addressing the inaccuracies in your arguments, and was not using the fact that you were misleading people about your background as an argument against your positions. If you need me to clarify: I think your arguments are wrong, and I also think you covered up who you are so people wouldn’t know that you work for the industry who you were purporting to defend as a “neutral” scientist. Get it?
It seems that from your perspective I work for “FOOD Inc.” From my perspective you work for “FEAR Inc.”
If people are “afraid” of GMO foods, it’s because they are being developed and promoted by the same companies who developed and promoted their toxic pesticides (and dozens of other harmful chemicals) for decades as safe, effective and environmentally friendly – until the truth came out otherwise. Since industry is using the same unsubstantiated arguments about GMOs, and uses third-parties who hide their real identities to promote their message, it tends to breed distrust and fear.
You have been very successful. Because of your activism there is no biotech wheat meaning that we have less of it grown and it has higher levels of vomitoxin than it could have had. Because of your work we have no biotech potatoes meaning that far more insecticides are needed to protect the crop from beetles and virus.
You have a knack for making claims without backing them up. The evidence shows biotech crops don’t yield more, and lead to increased use of pesticides. While I’d love to take credit for killing the Bt potato, in fact it didn’t catch on because growers didn’t find it to be profitable.
Because of your work the poor people of Thailand can’t grow virus resistant Papaya as a good source of local vitamin C.
Perhaps they don’t want the GMO papaya because they want to protect their important export markets (unlike Hawaii, which loses money on GMO papaya exports, since they have to sell the GMO variety at a lower price).
Because of your work African elites have rejected food shipments even when their people are starving and rejected free virus resistant cassava that could have allowed their people to feed themselves.
Are they “elites” because they disagree with you? (the biotech industry seems happy to work with African “elites” when they help promote biotech). A group of African scientists at a UN plant science conference were found to be quite capable of speaking for themselves on this.
Because of your work Europe produces far less food than it could so that it is a more of a rich competitor with the poor in international grain markets than it could have been.
This strikes me as internally inconsistent, but whatever you mean, see reply above re: yields and pesticide use.
Because of your work, Bt sweet corn that does not require multiple insecticide sprays has been quietly rejected by food processing companies and retailers – not because there is anything dangerous about it but because you have so effectively exploited brand protectionism instincts of large companies.
Industry says GMO corn is grown on more than 70% of all corn acreage. I must be slipping.
You have been amazingly effective.
Well, thanks for that. As I’m certain this back-and-forth is getting tiresome to readers (not to mention to me), I’m going to leave it be here. If you’d like to continue with more unsubstantiated attacks on me, feel free to do so elsewhere (I promise not to respond).
A former worker on the TransCanada Keystone pipeline has accused construction and engineering company Henkels & McCoy of workplace discrimination. Charles Adams, an African-American former employee of the company is charging that he suffered racist taunting and had a noose thrown around his neck while at the company’s pipeline worksite in 2008.
A quote from Henkels’ founder “Jack” Henkels in a company history states,
Sometimes I would like to call ours a Christian business. It never was. I am a Catholic, which none of my partners were. Three of the real architects of the business were Jews… If we were never wholly a Christian business, we certainly were not all the same color. African and Caucasian have worked side by side in Henkels & McCoy since the beginning. We were never interested in the pigmentation of a man’s skin. If he could do the job, he was on; if he couldn’t, we didn’t want him — no matter what his color.”
In 2000, the state of Illinois sued Henkels and other companies for pollution related to operations there that “caused air pollution, caused open dumping, improperly disposed of waste,” endangering the health of local residents.
Earlier this week, a federal judge approved settlement talks in a case brought by Native Americans against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for the agency’s decades of discriminatory treatment of Indian farmers. The Native farmers and ranchers are seeking repayment for $600 million of losses due to USDA’s failure to treat Indians equally under USDA farm loan and assistance programs.
Earlier this year, the National Congress of American Indians called for a swift resolution of the claims, which were first filed in 1999, and pointed to an expert report showing that USDA bias cost Native Americans “$500 million to $1 billion dollars of economic losses (and) the denial of $3 billion worth of credit.” The judge’s order in the USDA case comes on the heels of a $3.4 billion federal government settlement with Native Americans for decades of mismanagement of government established Native Trusts.
Native American farmers may learn from African American farmers’ experiences with USDA. In 1999, Black farmers entered into an historic settlement with the agency, which promised hundreds of millions of dollars for farmers who the agency’s loans and assistance programs discriminated against for decades. Then Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman told the Washington Post that the agency was facing “substantial liability” and hoped the settlement would end the “painful chapter” in the department’s history. But just this year, a group of black farmers complained that USDA has still not paid compensation despite the decade-old settlement.
A citizens’ group in Tillery, North Carolina has established a Land Loss Fund to improve the lives of those who have lost land, especially in African American farm communities. The organization notes the power associated with land ownership and laments that “African Americans are losing land at a rate of 9,000 acres per week.” They also point to mid-1980’s USDA programs that funneled $1.3 billion to farmers nationwide to buy land, yet included just 209 Black farmers in the more than 16,000 farmers funded by the program.
The Tillery Resettlement Community is a legacy of a federal farm program for former sharecroppers. Today, Tillery is 98 percent African American; almost all of the community’s farming jobs have disappeared, replaced by low-paying factory jobs. The small farms have been mostly replaced by corporate hog farms, leading to water contamination issues for local residents.
Diploma mill Career Education Corp (CEC) has been hit with a class-action lawsuit by former students at its Portland-based Western Culinary Institute. The students allege that the pricey school saddled them high-interest loans while offering poor training that qualified students for nothing more than low-paying, entry –level kitchen jobs.
Other CEC culinary schools have also been under fire. A June 2007 expose in the San Francisco Weekly noted the changes at the company’s California Culinary Academy (CCA) after the Career Education Corp takeover. Two years after buying the school, enrollment more than quadrupled, jumping from 442 to 1,868. With high-interest loans for the nearly $50,000 in tuition for the 15-month program, some former students face a debt of more than $100,000 on graduation, yet most are qualified for little more than $10 an hour kitchen staff wages.
Two former CCA admissions reps told the Weekly that CEC imposed a high pressure sales approach, requiring admissions staff to meet enrollment targets and training them to entice potential students with visions of celebrity-chef stardom. Students were accepted for admission based solely on their ability to procure a loan, in some cases (according to other former students) despite severe learning disabilities.
In 2008, CEC paid $200,000 to settle with the Pennsylvania Attorney General over charges it duped students applying to its Lehigh Valley College into taking high-interest loans and overstated the opportunities for graduates. Students had charged the school lied about “low-interest government loans” that were actually private loans charging as much as 15% interest. Lehigh Valley charges tuition and fees up to $37,500 for an associate’s degree, compared with about $5,600 at local community colleges.
Career Education Corp President and CEO Gary E. McCullough took home over $4.8 million in 2008.
Faux futuristic pet company Allerca announced this month it would stop taking orders for its allegedly new breed of hypoallergenic cats, and will instead focus on veterinary diagnostics. Allerca (also called Lifestyle Pets or Allerca Lifestyle Pets) is one of the more shady operations in the pet genetics industry, a field cluttered with phony claims, unfulfilled promises, and bankrupt businesses.
Founded by longtime flim-flam man Simon Brodie, Allerca originally promised to use genetic engineering to create non-allergenic cats, but later stated its pets were created by natural breeding. National network news reports glowed about the benefits of the company’s cats for allergy sufferers, and Time magazine hailed the company for one of the “best inventions of 2006.” DNA analysis later revealed the company cats were Savannahs, a breed long known to have less allergenic potential. Allerca offered the cats for anywhere from $4,000 to $40,000, and planned to franchise cat sales territories for $45,000.
In fact, Brodie’s scheme is just the most recent in a series of business scams he has perpetrated. Over the past decade, Brodie’s scams have included a British hot air balloon franchiser (for which he served a prison sentence, after running out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts), creating the world’s most powerful computer processor, creating a national Wi-Fi network, and several genetic technology companies. In just about every case, he has left behind a trail of unpaid bills, uncompensated employees, angry landlords and others cheated by his fraudulent operations.
Still, while Allerca is probably the most outrageous fraud, the animal cloning and gene engineering arena is fraught with scientific fraud and companies making false promises and promoting dubious uses for animal clones. The biotech pet business Genetic Savings and Clone was hailed for the first commercial sale of a cloned cat. But the company failed to sell enough $50,000 pet clones to survive, despite promises that its clones came with “guaranteed health and resemblance.” Such “guarantees’ are nonsense given the inherent uncertainties and common abnormalities found in animal clones. Even dropping its cloned cat price to a mere $32,000 wasn’t enough to save Genetic Savings and Clone from bankruptcy.
Dolly, the 1st cloned mammal, suffered premature aging and early death
Other cloning companies, including Viagen and Cyagra (a subsidiary of the Massachusetts cloning company Advanced Cell Technology), were created to sell animal clones as livestock. Biotech proponents argue that the expense of cloning means the clones will be used only for breeding and not for food, but cloning companies have eagerly marketed cloned cows for dairy production, and the FDA, which has allowed the use of clones in food production (despite virtually no studies on the safety of food from clones), has acknowledged that nothing prohibits companies from slaughtering clones for food once their breeding capacity ends. The agency also says that even young, sickly clones could end up in the food supply if they die before becoming breeding stock. FDA has also refused to require labeling on cloned foods, despite advice from scientists that labeling is essential to trace these risky new foods.
The Arizona Attorney General has sued payday lender QC Holdings for deceptive business practices and for lawsuits the company won through illegal filings. According to the AG’s office, the lender would loan money to defendants throughout Arizona (and in some cases to lenders as far away as Nevada) but then file collections lawsuits in a county far from where the lenders lived, in violation of state law.
Since lenders would be less likely to appear in courts far from home, QC won hundreds of default judgments and orders to garnish lenders’ wages that the state is now asking the court to set aside. Payday lending is already under siege in Arizona, where Attorney General Terry Goddard previously campaigned to shut the usurious businesses, citing the “cycle of indebtedness” created by the predatory high-interest, short-term loans.
QC Holdings owns nearly 600 payday loan outlets in about two dozen states, operating under many banners including Quik Cash, National Quik Cash, California Budget Finance, First Payday Loans, Nationwide Budget Finance, QC Financial Services and other names. The company lending totals nearly $1.4 billion, while 2008 revenue totaled $227.7 million.
QC Holdings is also facing a Missouri class-action suit brought by a lender who paid $1,800 interest on an initial $450 loan. The company lost an appeal based on a clause in its loan contract requiring claims to be settled by binding arbitration. A Missouri appeals court called the company’s contract “procedurally and substantively unconscionable.” The state Better Business Bureau has also supported federal legislation to end “the usurious practices” of payday lenders and called for state rules barring interest rates above 36%, mimicking other states that have effectively ended payday lending.
A 2007 study of California payday lenders, including QC Holdings subsidiary California Budget Finance, showed that the companies routinely violated consumer protection laws. Visits to hundreds of retail outlets found that 32% did not post a fee schedule; of those that did post a schedule, the majority were indiscernible or inaccurate. When asked for the APR of their loans, 70% of payday lending staff didn’t know the APR or gave an incorrect figure. Those few tellers who knew the APR reported rates ranging from a low of 460% to as high as 2,147%. The figures were inconsistent even within the same companies. Customers were however consistently offered advice and encouragement about how to obtain more loans, from different outlets of the same company and between competing companies.
Leadership of QC Holdings revolves around founder Don Early, who serves as CEO. Wife Mary Lou Early serves as the company’s Vice-Chair and Secretary (she was previously Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, but really, what’s the difference?), while her son Darrin Andersen is company President. In 2008, Don Early made just over $1 million in total, while his wife took home another $756,503, and Andersen pulled in another $1.17 million.
Milk chocolate fanatics can now be assured that European companies are not committing food fraud by selling overly oil-adulterated bars, thanks to a new test created by the international lab JRC. The lab has previously created tests that can determine the quantity of added oils in dark chocolate, since EU rules allow no more than 5% of other vegetable oils in chocolate.
Adding oil to chocolate has long been controversial. In 2007, consumer opposition beat back industry attempts to oil-down FDA standards which prohibit any added oil to products labeled as chocolate. Just this summer, consumer pressure forced candy giant Cadbury to end its substituting palm oil for some cocoa butter in its chocolates.
Added oil is just one dark controversy in chocolate making. In 2001, European environmental and consumer groups exposed the industry’s use of the pesticide lindane, a chemical linked to breast cancer, endocrine disruption and other health hazards, in African and other chocolate plantations. Lindane is banned in the EU.
Corporate chocolate production has also long been linked to labor crimes, including the use of slaves and child labor, in West Africa. In 2005, the human rights advocacy group CorpWatch noted that in the Ivory Coast, where half of the world’s cocoa is grown, “hundreds of thousands of children work or are enslaved on cocoa farms.” Major chocolate pledged to a voluntary “Cocoa Protocol” to end “the worst forms” of child labor (permitting them to continue using whatever types of child labor they decide are not the worst) by 2005, but the companies missed their own deadline, and have also missed the three-year extension they granted themselves.
Chocolate lovers interested in responsible production can look to Fair Trade brands, which require fair compensation to chocolate growers and workers. In addition to labor standards, Fair Trade chocolates are required to meet environmental standards that prohibit harmful pesticides and GMOs. Many Fair Trade chocolates are also organically certified. A student group from the University of California San Diego also surveyed several chocolate producers and developed a useful online guide to slave-free chocolate.
Last week, after a four-year investigation, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) decertified the organic dairy Promiseland Livestock for inadequate record-keeping and refusing to provide regulators with records of its adherence to organic production standards. In addition to the record-keeping rules, Promiseland was investigated for numerous other violations, including not feeding organic grain to cattle, selling fraudulent organic feed and “laundering” conventional cattle as organic.
Under the USDA national organic standard, organic dairies are required to use organic feed for their herds. The GMO drug bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is prohibited, as is any use of other growth-promoting hormones or animal drugs. Also prohibited are feeding animals plastic pellets for roughage and feeding by-products of mammalian slaughter, practices common to conventional factory farms. Further, animals must be provided conditions that provide for their health and accommodate their “natural behavior,” including having access to pasture.
But USDA’s enforcement of the access to pasture rule has been a longstanding controversy. From the inception of the organic rule in 2001, the nation’s large organic dairies have sought a loose definition of “access to pasture” so they could continue their factory confined feeding model and still call their milk “organic.” In 2007, one of the nation’s largest organic dairies, Aurora Organic, was cited by the USDA for willful violations of the access to pasture rule and other organic standards. The violations were not publicized by USDA or Aurora’s state certifier, but by the organic watchdog group, the Cornucopia Institute. Cornucopia had previously exposed the decertification of the 10,000-cow Vander Eyk Dairy, which they alleged was “masquerading as organic” until it was shuttered by federal regulators.
An Organic Valley dairy farmer
Interestingly, one large organic dairy company has been a leader in the movement for stronger organic standards. The nation’s largest organic dairy cooperative, the CROPP coop (makers of Organic Valley and Organic Prairie brand products) is a farmer-owned company made up of more than 1200 small and mid-sized dairy farms in 34 states with products found in all 50 states, Canada and Japan. According to Cornucopia’s organic dairy report, Organic Valley ranks as “excellent” for its adherence to organic standards.
Kosher certifier the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations has settled its lawsuit against Indiana’s Luke Oil company, over the Orthodox Union’s (OU) complaint that the company was engaging in “consumer fraud” for using its trademarked “U” inside a circle logo. Luke Oil launched a similar “Serving U” logo in its gas station convenience stores, but apparently the OU was concerned that customers would think the mark indicated its blessing was granted on slushies and taquitos.
Asked if kosher certification is a profitable business, The Jewish Week (in a reprint on Kashrut News) said, “The Orthodox Union [The Largest certification agency] is not-for-profit, and proceeds from kashrus fund a good deal of the programs of the OU. Is it profitable? Big time, but they use it to fund all their other projects. How much money do you think the OU brings in from certifying kosher products? I’ve asked them a few times and no one ever tells me. That’s probably as secret as the ingredients of Coca Cola.”
Reached for their comment on the case, two rabbis had the following exchange:
Rabbi Jonathan: Well, on the other hand, Luke Oil is no small potatoes. They sell gas to 100 stations, they run 23 convenience stores, own car washes, a liquor store, they even own an apple orchard. What if their faux kosher symbol starts turning up on bottles of scotch and Granny Smiths?
Rabbi Bonnie: Sure, but on the other hand, kosher isn’t what it used to be. The largest kosher meat producer got busted last year for a slew of labor violations, including physically abusing workers, knowingly hiring undocumented workers, and paying below minimum wage.
Rabbi Jonathan: On the other hand, no one is complaining about the K in Circle K, which looks awfully much like another kosher symbol. And I can tell you, their microwave burritos are really trayf.
Rabbi Bonnie: But on the other hand, there are those who want kosher to be even more strict, and have it include labor and environmental and social responsibility standards. Now that would be a kiddush Hashem.
Rabbi Jonathan: Nu? I didn’t know that. What’s for dinner?
Well, not really…. But, in an uncharacteristically scintillating post, PBS’ MediaShift analyzed the legal issues around the recent lawsuit filed by TV star Eric Dane and wife Rebecca Gayheart against the internet company Gawker Media. The celebrities are suing Gawker for copyright infringement in connection with the site’s posting of a home video showing the two romping naked with former beauty queen Kari Ann Peniche.
The 4-minute Gawker clip from the longer tape apparently showed no actual sex (honestly, I haven’t watched but that’s what they say), leading some to speculate that the full 12-minute version is more explicit, and thus may be more marketable. Fueling the suspicion is the lawsuit claim of copyright infringement, as opposed to more common claims of defamation or invasion of privacy. Such a claim makes sense only if the couple intended to market the video.
Gawker, apparently pointing to the news value of the tape, claims that it violated no laws due to the “fair use” doctrine permitting circulation even of trashy videos as long as said videos are newsworthy, are not first viewings, and are appropriately trimmed. Gawker is no stranger to porn or to controversies around celebrity invasions of privacy: the company runs the FleshBot pornsite and is known for its GawkerStalker maps of celebrity sightings around New York City.
Gawker Media founder Nick Denton was the subject of a 2007 n+1 Magazine profile that noted his intent to produce an online media empire along the lines of print empire Conde Nast – by underpaying young inexperienced staff for trashy write-ups of celebrity gossip. As the magazine noted,
The purpose of Gawker Media was always to improve on the print publishing business model. It was never, as the content of Gawker sometimes seemed to suggest, to produce investigative critiques of the waste that model created. The content at Gawker, like most Condé Nast publications, is a service to the advertisers.
Gawker Media has earned Denton about $230 million, but he has recently laid off staff and sold or spun-off several online sites, including its Hollywood gossip site Defamer, its DC-site Wonkette, and Consumerist.org, among others.
Meanwhile, Gayheart recently announced her first pregnancy, stating that in preparation she is “…doing yoga, and walking on the beach every day with my dogs for about an hour.” No mention of romping naked as part of her prenatal routine.
