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Sierra Club Applies Pressure to Starbucks
Mr. Orin Smith, President and CEO
PO Box 34067 Seattle, Washington 98124-1067
Dear Mr. Smith:
I'm writing you on behalf of the Sierra Club, America's oldest and largest grass roots environmental organization, hoping to persuade you to take a specific action for the benefit of the environment.
Coffee is one of the pleasures of our lives, but as with all oft-repeated behaviors, we hope that drinking this delicious beverage is healthy both for ourselves and for our environment. I believe you're in a position to help coffee lovers feel more positive about this -- and also help your company and shareholders -- by taking an action regarding genetically engineered products. It's something you'll have to consider carefully, in any case, regarding your expansion into Europe.
Specifically, we at Sierra Club would like you to vigorously advertise that:
1. Starbucks coffee beans are never genetically engineered.
2. The dairy products Starbucks uses do not come from cows treated with recombinant BGH (rBGH).
3. Bakery products are also made without genetically engineered ingredients.
We realize that we're asking you to take a highly significant action, one which you'll need to consider carefully. We'd like to point out that in many countries including Canada where you already do business, and the EU where you are planning to open over a thousand stores, rBGH milk is banned because of official, evidence-based concerns that it may promote breast and prostate cancers. In the European Union, also, all genetically engineered products are under a cloud of public mistrust. Many markets outside of the US, such as Japan, Korea, and the EU are instituting mandatory labeling laws. Thus we're asking you to take additional action to extend a "not made with bioengineered ingredients" policy company wide, so that U.S. consumers get the same benefits as those in Europe. Sierra Club believes that the agricultural deployment of genetic engineering technologies presents unacceptable environmental risks until they have been properly tested.
I believe that there are sound public relations and economic reasons for taking the action we're requesting. The costs would be small, the benefits great.
I'll eagerly await your response.
Sincerely,
Carl Pope Executive Director, Sierra Club