Katherine's Blog
One look at the Happy Egg Co. website, and any reasonable consumer would think, wow, this company really cares about the welfare of the hens that produce the “happy eggs” it sells to consumers.
On one page, the company says:
“Freedom is key to being a happy, healthy hen. So we happily uphold the Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare, globally recognized as the key elements of animal welfare humans can control.”
On another Happy Egg webpage, consumers read that “Everybody’s Happy”:
“We all make choices in life. At the Happy Egg Co, we choose to make ours maximize health and happiness. We know happy farmers make for happy hens. Happy hens lay happy, healthy eggs. And Happy Eggs make everybody happy. Not to mention healthy.”
That’s a lot of happiness. So imagine our surprise when we sued Happy Egg for false and deceptive marketing, only to learn from the company’s attorneys that Happy Egg doesn’t believe that its own animal welfare marketing claims—at least not the claims it makes on its egg cartons—should have to be verified or regulated.
Should the labeling and marketing claims about your smoked Atlantic salmon product match up with your reasonable expectations for what those claims mean?
We think so.
That’s why we’ve sued Mowi, the world’s largest producer of Atlantic salmon products, for making misleading labeling and marketing claims about some of the company’s smoked Atlantic salmon products, sold under Ducktrap River of Maine brand name.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Ducktrap: Stop Falsely Claiming Your Smoked Atlantic Salmon Is 'All Natural'
With so many products and brands to choose from, many consumers rely on product labels, company and brand websites and social media pages for reliable information about ingredients and production and sourcing practices.
Our “Myth of Natural” campaign strives to hold companies and brands accountable for the claims they make about their products.
You’ve never seen this company’s name on a package of ground beef or steak. That’s because the world’s largest beef producer, JBS, doesn’t sell beef under its own name.
But U.S. consumers buy millions of pounds of JBS beef every year, under brand names like Cedar River Farms, Swift Black Angus, 5 Star Reserve and others, in stores like Costco, Walmart and Kroger, to name a few.
Consumers also unknowingly support JBS when they buy burgers at fast food chains like McDonald’s and Burger King, and at other restaurants supplied by the meat giant.
JBS isupplies Sysco, the world’s largest food distributor, which distributes to hundreds of restaurants, hospitals and nursing homes, schools and hotels.
Sysco, in turn, wholesales JBS meat and other food products to Aramark and Sodexo, food distribution companies that in turn supply institutions like schools, hospitals, government agencies, prisons and more.
JBS is big. In fact it’s the biggest of the world’s Big Meat companies.
JBS also has some big problems.
Would you consider a smoked salmon product, made from farmed salmon fed a diet of chemicals and antibiotics, to be “natural” or “All Natural”?
Or is it more likely that the company peddling that product just hopes the word “natural” will hook more buyers?
TAKE ACTION: Tell Ducktrap: Stop falsely claiming that your smoked Atlantic salmon is “All Natural.”
In 2016, Christine Sheppard traveled to The Hague, Netherlands, to testify before the Monsanto Tribunal (which Organic Consumers Association helped organize).
Sheppard told the panel of lawyers and judges she believed Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller had caused her life-destroying non-Hodgkin lymphoma. She later joined tens of thousands of cancer victims who sued Monsanto (now owned by Bayer).
Last week, Bayer settled most of those lawsuits, for a staggering $10 billion.
Sheppard, whose story began in 1995, on a farm in Hawaii that she and her husband were forced to sell after her cancer diagnosis, called the settlement a “slap in the face.” As she wrote this week in the Guardian:
“Bayer admitted no guilt, will continue to sell Roundup, and refused to label it as carcinogenic. People will continue to get cancer from it.”
$10 billion is a lot of money to have to pay out to victims of a product Bayer insists is “safe.” We can probably count that as a win.
The industrial meat industry has been hogging the food-related news cycle lately. The COVID-19 outbreaks at meatpacking plants. The slaughterhouse shut-downs. The “depopulating” of farm animals. Meat shortages and rising meat prices.
And then there’s the corresponding good news: Consumers buying more organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised meat products from local farmers and CSAs—even online sales of these products are surging.
So far, the industrial factory farm dairy industry hasn’t seen nearly as much news coverage during the pandemic. But under the mainstream media radar, two organizations recently shone a spotlight on dairy producers.
The Institute for Ag and Trade Policy (IATP) issued a report on the role of industrial dairy in global warming. The report, “Milking the Planet: How Big Dairy Is Heating Up the Planet and Hollowing Rural Communities,” calls for “redirecting public funds away from industrial agriculture, regulating the public health, environmental and social impacts of this extractive model of production and designing incentives to regenerate rural communities through agroecology.”
Whether you’re looking to treat yourself to a breakfast garnished with smoked salmon, or planning to serve up pre-dinner appetizers of sliced smoked salmon atop crackers, buyer beware: When it comes to the claims made on smoked Atlantic salmon packages and websites, brands are often just blowing smoke.
Popular smoked Atlantic salmon brands entice consumers with promises like “premium,” “all natural,” “super fresh” and “healthy and nutritious.”
Some brands claim their products are “sustainably sourced.” On the issue of animal welfare, one owner of multiple smoked Atlantic salmon brands claims on its website that the company’s approach to fish health and welfare is “second to none.”
It all sounds great to the consumer. But here’s the real deal: All of these smoked Atlantic salmon products are made from salmon raised on massive industrial fish farms, and in some cases, nowhere near the Atlantic Ocean.
If your daily health regimen includes a dose of collagen supplement, beware.
Despite labeling claims such as “Pure,” “All-Natural” and “Cleanest Nutrition Possible,” and deceiving images of grazing cows, open pastures and cage-free chickens on packaging and websites, most collagen peptide supplements are derived from industrial factory farms—and many collagen products contain heavy metals.
Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Clean Label Project (CLP) tested 28 of the top-selling brands of collagen supplements on Amazon.com. Here’s what we found.
Organic Consumers Association was founded in 1998, in part to shut down plans by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow foods containing genetically engineered ingredients to be certified organic.
We won that important battle. But we’ve never stopped campaigning to end the genetic engineering of our food supply, out of concern for human health and the environment.
We’ve also never stopped fearing the worst: that genetic engineering of viruses could lead to a global public health disaster.
SIGN THE PETITION: Stop the Genetic Engineering of Viruses! Shut Down All ‘Biodefense’ Labs Now!
Monsanto and the rest of the Biotech Giants promised that GMO foods would reduce pesticide use, increase the nutritional content of food, boost farmers’ profits and feed the world by increasing yields.
Instead, they turned glyphosate into one of the most widely and recklessly used herbicides in history—and destroyed the natural biodiversity so critical for a resilient ecosystem.
Now, we’re fighting back . . . with a plan for regeneration.
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