Genetically Krafted: The Newsletter of the Kraft Safe Food Campaign
September, 2003 -- *Updated*

1)SAVE THE DATE: KRAFT WEEK OF ACTION FOR SAFE FOOD OCTOBER 25th- NOVEMBER 1st
2)Campaign Update: Turning Up the Heat in Kraft's Kitchen!
3)Fighting for Safe Food From Sacramento to Cancun
4)Ecopledge.com: Students Taking Action for Safe Food
5)Seeds of Deception National Tour Announced, Speaker Available This Fall!

Please join thousands of people in hundreds of cities across the continent in demanding safe, GE-free food during our upcoming "Week of Action for Safe Food," October 25th-November 1st.

This is our fourth week of action since the launch of the campaign in February of 2002 and we expect it to make a huge impact, but we need your support to make it happen and show the largest food company that its customers want safe food now!

If you are interested in joining us in this fight for safe, sustainable, GE-free food, please go to http://www.organicconsumers.org/kraft and sign up online or contact one of our coordinators at action@foe.org or 202-783-7400 x190 and we will send you an week of action kit with everything you'll need to take action locally and make a difference globally! These materials will also be available soon on our website.

Actor Chevy Chase Speaks Out for Safe Food at Shareholder Meeting

When comedian Chevy Chase said, "I don't want my family to ingest a pig vaccine when they eat an Oreo," at Kraft's annual shareholder meeting held on Earth Day 2003- he wasn't joking. "And as a Kraft Shareholder, I expect you to do whatever you can to protect my investment by eliminating genetically engineered ingredients," continued Chase.

Advocates from the State PIRGs, Friends of the Earth, GE Food Alert, Green Century Fund and Ecopledge.com joined Chevy Chase and his wife and daughter at Kraft's annual shareholder meeting in New Jersey to raise concerns about Kraft's use of genetically engineered ingredients. It was Kraft Food's second annual shareholders' meeting since being spun-off from its parent company -- tobacco giant Philip Morris (now called Altria).

Demonstrators outside the meeting greeted shareholders with a banners that read "Kraft/Philip Morris/Altria: Stop Pushing Genetically Engineered Food on Our Kids" and "Kraft Listen to Your Customers: NO GE FOOD." In addition, volunteers in more than 100 cities across the United States thought globally and acted locally this Earth Day by leafleting and gathering petition signatures to send to Kraft.

It looks like Kraft is starting to listen. Kraft CEO, Betsy Holden publicly recognized the health risks of genetically engineered foods for the first time this February at the USDA's Agricultural Outlook Forum, saying that, "even a small amount of allergen could be deadly," and called on the federal government to strengthen regulations on these foods. In March, she made a speech to fellow executives calling for more corporate social responsibility and the need to listen to activist groups.

Fighting Back for Safe Food

Since February 2002, tens of thousands of people have called and written Kraft and demonstrated in front of more than 600 grocery stores and Kraft facilities in the United States, Canada and Australia demanding that the company stop using genetically engineered ingredients in its products. Kraft Foods is the largest food company in the country, and the second largest in the world. Its products are found in 99 percent of U.S. households, and many of them, such as Taco Bell taco shells, Boca Burgers, Lunchables, and Post cereals have been found to contain genetically engineered ingredients. Kraft refuses to label these inadequately tested foods, taking away our right to know what we are eating, despite the fact that between 85 and 95 percent of Americans want labeling.

Genewise Rocks Chicago! Taking Action in Kraft's Hometown

This March, Chicago group Genewise made headlines in Kraft's headquarters city with a month of demonstrations including a protest in front of Betsy Holden's grocery store in Winnetka, IL. In June, Genewise joined forces with local Earthsave activists and Friends of the Earth for a series of demonstrations and press events at the Institute of Food Technologists Annual Meeting and the World Food Congress held in downtown Chicago. These conferences were attended by more than 20,000 food industry executives, industry sourcers, ag policy makers and food experts and its main sponsors were pro-biotech companies and institutions such as Cargill, Monsanto, ADM, Conagra, and the USDA. Genewise and allies held a series of actions to pressure Kraft to remove GE ingredients and call attention to sustainable, non-GE solutions to world hunger.

At the opening of the conference, during a Kraft sponsored "fun run", attendees were ambushed by a giant box of "Mac and Genes" and over a dozen organic nudes with anti-GE slogans painted on their bodies, such as "I'd rather run naked than eat GE-foods". THONG (Topless Humans Organized for Natural Genetics) hoped to demonstrate their displeasure with Kraft's continued use of GE ingredients in its products. Genewise members also demonstrated outside the World Food Congress, holding signs that read "The World Food Con: Biotech makes hunger worse, not better" and wearing costumes that showed "big biotech" enslaving farmers, consumers and Betsy Holden, CEO of Kraft Foods, representing food companies. The demonstrations were covered by NBC, National Public Radio and the Chicago Sun Times, making a powerful splash in Kraft's hometown and getting the message across that biotech is not the solution to world hunger and that Chicagoans and people across the world are demanding that Kraft Foods go GE-free.

A Message That Traveled Around the World

This last December, the Kraft Safe Food Campaign made its film debut with its first "flash-animated" action alert video. This flash movie depicted a typical family enjoying a holiday meal and participating in the largest food experiment in history conducted by none other than Kraft Foods. At the end of the film people were given the chance to call or write to Kraft. This film was sent out to more than a quarter million people and generated tens of thousands of comments to Kraft. It also traveled around the world-so far we've gotten letters from concerned citizens as far away as China and Brazil. This film has to be seen to be fully appreciated, so we won't ruin the ending! If you haven't seen it yet, please visit http://krafty.org/flash/.

Progress so Far

Because of the your help in building strong grassroots pressure and generating media attention around the Kraft Safe Food campaign during the last year, GE Food Alert and partners have started a dialogue with the company. In addition, because of health and environmental risks and consumer pressure, Kraft may already be quietly removing these ingredients from its products. Tests of Kraft products last October revealed that Kraft may be phasing out its use of GE corn.
We encourage the company to continue along this path. However, without adequate regulation and safety testing of these experimental foods we will continue to demand that Kraft stop feeding them to our families.

Please Continue to Take Action!

Because of the efforts of thousands of Kraft Campaign volunteers, this campaign is escalating to a new level. However, we need to keep up the pressure on Kraft, so please take action locally and raise your voice for safe, GE-free food today! Contact Lisa Archer at larcher@foe.org or call 202-783-7400 x190 and see our Activist Resources page at http://krafty.org/join.html for downloadable petitions, factsheets, and ideas on what you can do to make a difference in your community.

In May, the U.S. attacked Europe's hard-won policies that kept GE food off supermarket shelves through a WTO challenge of this democratically created policy. In June, Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman gathered together agriculture ministers from around the world in Sacramento, CA, to push biotech food on the world in preparation for the upcoming WTO meetings in Cancún, Mexico. Meanwhile, family farmers, moms, students, chefs, policy experts and others in diverse movements demanding democracy, justice and ecological sanity converged on Sacramento to say NO to genetically engineered food and corporate control of the world's food supply. Close to 5,000 people joined the largest march, making it the biggest demonstration against industrial agriculture and genetic engineering in the history of the U.S.

There was also a strong set of voices from Africa and other parts of the Global South contesting the Bush Administration's assertion that biotech will feed the world, rather than proven local, sustainable agriculture and better distribution of the world's ongoing surpluses of food. Their message was that "biotech is misleading the world, not feeding the world".
In solidarity with these protests, from June 18-25, thousands of people called Kraft's Headquarters in Chicago, IL during our National Call-in for Safe Food Around the World. So many calls came in that at one point during the week, according to several callers, Kraft shut down its phone lines. Great work everyone-our message came through loud and clear to the second largest food company in the world!

The global struggle for safe, sustainable food continues as we push forward with this pivotal campaign and as global trade delegates gather in Cancun, Mexico for continued WTO negotiations and in Miami, FL for the next round of Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) talks to make decisions about whether such corporate globalization schemes as genetic engineering, water privatization, investment and social services privatization, and patenting of drugs and life forms will go forward.

Students working with ecopledge.com have been highlighting the need for corporate responsibility on campuses across the country. Yale, Dartmouth, Colorado University, UC Davis and many other schools have coordinated events this semester to show student opposition to unlabeled, untested GE ingredients in Kraft foods.

At Dartmouth College, sophomore Sue Dubois held a news conference in front of a campus eatery with other student activists. Assembled press heard them voice concerns about GE foods and their place in student dining. Sue then announced the results of their recent ecopledge survey on GE foods: 82% of the 700 students polled felt that Kraft should label its GE ingredients! Sue and others made sure to mail copies of the newspaper articles to the office of Betsy Holden, Kraft CEO.

Ecopledge students have also worked to gather "embargoed" resumes from fellow students over the course of the semester to deliver to Kraft. We'll make it clear students aren't supporting environmentally irresponsible corporations, and that thousands of Ecopledge signers won't work for Kraft if our demands for safe food aren't met. For more information and to get involved, visit: http://www.ecopledge.com.

Jeffrey Smith, author and expert on the health dangers of genetically modified foods and their cover-up, will be conducting a national speaking tour throughout the Fall to promote his groundbreaking new book, Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating. Your local group can take advantage of the considerable stir this explosive exposé is sure to create and learn about the local initiatives he is developing by hosting Jeffrey as a speaker in your community. Please contact Jeffrey as soon as possible to schedule an event in your town by emailing him at jeffrey@seedsofdeception.com or calling 641-472-8338.

Advanced copies of Seeds of Deception, which many sustainable agriculture leaders believe could become the Silent Spring of genetically engineered foods, are available now. You can order the book at 888-717-7000 or order online at the website, www.seedsofdeception.com.

PRAISE FOR SEEDS OF DECEPTION:

Larry Bohlen, Director of Health and Environment Programs at Friends of the Earth says, "After reading the truth about these foods, consumers will choose to avoid eating them and food company executives will want to take them out of their products" Ronnie Cummins, founder of Organic Consumers Association says the book "is the best written on the subject, and is essential reading for food activists and concerned consumers." Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet, wrote in the foreword to Seeds of Deception, "When you read this extraordinary and courageous book, you will never see your country the same way again." Andrew Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety says, "The revelations in this book are being made public at a pivotal time in the global GM debate, and could tip the scales against the biotech industry. The evidence refutes U.S. science and safety claims, and undermines the basis of their WTO challenge."

This exposé shows without a doubt that it was industry influence and political collusion-not sound science-that allow dangerous genetically modified (GM) food on the market.
--Scientists were offered bribes or threatened. Evidence was stolen. Data was omitted or distorted.
--Government employees who complained were harassed, stripped of responsibilities, or fired.
--Laboratory rats fed a GE crop developed stomach lesions and seven of the forty died within two weeks. The crop was approved without further tests.
--While industry feeding-studies have been rigged to avoid finding problems, the only independent in-depth study ever conducted showed evidence of alarming health dangers. When the scientist tried to alert the public, he lost his job and was silenced with threats of a lawsuit.

In September, Jeffrey will be speaking at the World Bank, National Press Club, natural foods industry's Expo East, and then participating at the World Trade Organization events in Cancun. He will be at Smith College on Oct 2, seeking events in New York and New England the following week, and in Austin Oct 11. He will set his itinerary based on local interest. Please contact him TODAY to reserve a stop in your community on this historic national tour.