ANNUAL REPORT 2010

2005-2010: FIVE YEARS OF DEFENDING OUR NATURAL RESOURCES

FOOD & WATER WATCH

works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainably produced. So that we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from; keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes; protect the environmental quality of oceans; work to ensure that the government does its job protecting citizens and educate about the importance of keeping the global commons our shared resources under public control. We envision a world where all people have access to enough affordable, healthy and wholesome food and clean water to meet their basic needs a world in which governments are accountable to their citizens and manage essential resources sustainably.

F O O D & WAT E R WAT C H A N N UA L R E P O R T 2 010

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

A Message from Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Board of Directors and Directors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Programmatic Activities and Campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Food Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Water Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Fish Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Financials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

A MESSAGE FROM WENONAH HAUTER , EXECUTIVE DIREC TOR

Dear Friends,
In just five short years, Food & Water Watch has achieved significant wins in the protection of our food and water resources, and we couldnt have done it without the generous support of our donors and members. Since we dont take money from the usual suspects corporations and government we rely on foundations, individual donors and our growing membership to remain independent. This independence, as well as our focus on grassroots organizing backed by fact-based research, is what sets Food & Water Watch apart among the countless organizations and lobbyists operating in Washington, D.C. to influence food and water policy. We seek to shift the balance of power back to consumers and communities and away from corporations and cronyism. In our fifth year, we saw our staff continue to grow, to 50 people. We opened new offices in Iowa, Chicago and Michigan, bringing the total number of Food & Water Watch offices to 12. We also continue to work with our partner organization Food & Water Europe, based in Brussels, to pressure European leaders and to share U.S. experiences with European consumers. Weve had a number of key successes in 2010: We released our updated online factory farm map, which the New York Times called truly eye-opening. We released our report on sustainable seafood labeling, critiquing private sustainability labels and calling for the federal government to introduce and oversee sustainability standards. We helped local groups in Hawaii organize into a coalition for sustainable aquaculture and had two bills introduced to challenge factory fish farming in the state. We defeated efforts to privatize waste and/ or drinking water systems around the country in places like Trenton, New Jersey, where our opponents spent over $1 million to support privatization. We worked with students at over 50 campuses across the country to raise awareness about bottled water. Highlights included a ban on the sale and purchase of all disposable bottled water on campus at the University of Oregon, and a resolution by the Rutgers University student government to Take Back the Tap, with the administration agreeing to install bottle filling stations. We doubled the number of Food & Water Watch activists online. We succeeded in the first step in ensuring that nanotechnology is not allowed in organic food production. With the support of our donors, members and volunteers around the country, our work continues to gain momentum. We look forward to growing the movement to protect our food and water. Wont you join us?

Sincerely,

Wenonah Hauter Executive Director

2010 Annual Report

P R O G R A M M AT I C AC T I V I T I E S A N D C A M PA I G N S

FOOD & WATER WATCH

BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Maude Barlow
CHAIR

Food & Water Watch works on issues across

three programmatic platforms: Food, Water and Fish. These programs are responsible for staying on top of the latest research in their issue areas and working with the organizing department to create campaigns backed by fact-based research materials campaigns that win.

Wenonah Hauter Rudolf Amenga-Etego Dennis Keeney Kelsie Sue Kerr Elizabeth Peredo Beltrn Mary Ricci Sue Rome

Food Program
Our Food Program works to improve food safety and food labeling so that consumers know what theyre buying. The program also promotes sustainable agriculture and opposes factory farming. Our organizers engage the public on these food policy issues all across the country. Below are a few of the Food Programs victories in the fight for safer, healthier food in 2010:

DIRECTORS
Wenonah Hauter
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Improving Food Safety

Food & Water Watch played a key role in the debate surrounding the Food Safety and Modernization Act passed in 2010. We were the first, and ultimately the only, consumer group to advocate for a provision that exempts small processors and farmers from the food safety plan and produce safety requirements, and we were a resource for both small-farm groups and Senate staff trying to make the bill better. We continued to provide accurate information to reporters and other organizations about what was, and was not, in the bill an important role given the huge amount of false information that has circulated on the Internet. We presented on this topic at several conferences and even at a training event for organic inspectors. The bill also provides mandatory recall authority to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as enhanced authority for the agency to access company records if it suspects that a firm is putting adulterated food into commerce two provisions that we fought for.

Lane Brooks
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER

Patty Lovera
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Marianne Cufone
FISH PROGRAM

Emily Wurth
WATER PROGRAM

Mark Schlosberg
ORGANIZING DIRECTOR

Darcey OCallaghan
INTERNATIONAL POLICY DIRECTOR

Darcey Rakestraw
COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR

An Interactive Factory Farm Map

In 2010, we released our updated online factory farm map at www.factoryfarmmap.org. The interactive map illustrates something that people in rural America
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Nanotechnology
In the battle against the spread of nanotechnology in the food system, one front has been an effort to make sure that this controversial new technology is not allowed in organic food production. This issue has been before the National Organic Standards Board for several years, and we successfully pressured the Board to call on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue guidance stating that nanomaterials are not permitted in organic production. We were successful in getting the Board to use a good definition of nanomaterials, classifying them as synthetic and therefore prohibited in organic production, which was contentious in some previous drafts.

Water Program
have known for a long time: family farms are being replaced by factory farms, and these facilities are overwhelming some regions of the country. By concentrating large numbers of animals into one factory farm, and by concentrating factory farms into one part of the country, we also concentrate the effects of their waste on the environment. The current U.S. food system sends products from unsustainable, potentially unsafe facilities far and wide before a problem is even detected, putting consumers all over the country at risk. We designed the updated Factory Farm Map to provide more opportunities for users to get involved in our issues and to take action. Our updated website also includes more data, which allows us to better illustrate trends regarding where factory farms are located. Along with the new map, we released a comprehensive report, Factory Farm Nation: How America Turned Its Livestock Farms into Factories, that explains consolidation into factory farms; the environmental, public health and community impacts created by these facilities; and the bad government policies that have fueled the farms growth. Events in Iowa City and Chicago helped bring the issue to the attention of local media and policymakers. The report and the map help relate the policies that Congress deliberates in the national Farm Bill to something that more and more consumers are familiar with: the negative impacts of factory farms.
Food & Water Watch

Our Water Program works with grassroots organizations to prevent the privatization of public water resources, which occurs both through the purchase of local utilities and through the bottling and selling of a communitys water. The program also works to reduce the sale and consumption of bottled water, which is far more expensive than tap water and creates mountains of garbage. Our campaign against bottled water is called Take Back the Tap. Below are some of the Water Programs successes in 2010:

Raising Awareness Around Bottle Water

We learned in 2010 that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had named Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Fiji Water as finalists for an environmental excellence award. Because companies that pack water into plastic bottles and ship them around the world shouldnt be recognized for environmental excellence, we alerted our activists and generated over 11,800 comments asking Ms. Clinton not to reward bad behavior. Hearing from activists had an impact, as she did not end up giving any of the water corporations the award. We continue to work to decrease the use of bottled water across the country. Sales of bottled water have been declining in recent years as cash-strapped consumers have realized that its not a necessary purchase.

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2010 Annual Report

Victory Over Privatization in Trenton

We won a hotly contested referendum to stop the privatization of two-thirds of Trenton, New Jerseys Water Works by a margin of almost 4 to 1 (79% vs. 21% of the vote). This victory is even more significant because the company New Jersey American Water spent over $1 million on its effort to privatize the water system. With the help of nearly 100 volunteers, who knocked on doors and made thousands of phone calls to raise awareness of the issue, our campaign showed that the power of the people can overcome wealthy special interests by using a traditional grassroots campaign strategy. To ensure that New Jersey American Water has heard the message against privatization sent by the residents of Trenton, we are now working with residents to urge the city council to pass a resolution asserting the importance of maintaining public control and ownership of water and urging increased federal investment in public drinking water systems.

Advocating for Improvements in Drinking Water and Sewage Infrastructure

In 2010, our Renew Americas Water campaign advocated for increased funding for water and sewer infrastructure. Water systems in the United States are severely underfunded, resulting in water main breaks, sewer overflows and water contamination. Lawmakers are looking to cut federal support for clean and safe water even further. By the end of the year, Food & Water Watch organizers had signed on 71 organizations across the country to support Renew. We also developed several materials to use for outreach for the campaign, including one that detailed the need for investment in water infrastructure in public schools across the country. This publication underlined the importance of having all schools provide safe public drinking water for students, particularly given the increased presence of bottled water in schools.

Reducing Bottled Water on College Campuses

Food & Water Watch recruits student activists at colleges and universities across the country to be campus coordinators. They work primarily on reducing the consumption of bottled water and increasing the availability of tap water at their schools. Exposing the myth of bottled water engages young people at a very personal level and opens the door to an interest in a broader range of water issues. The initiative also exposes young people to the skills needed to take action and advocate for change in their communities skills that are essential for an active citizenry. The coordinators participated in national student conference call trainings with Food & Water Watch organizers to discuss strategy and develop the knowledge base for campus organizing about water issues. They also participated in coordinated national events around World Water Day, Earth Day and a National Day of Action for Water in October to coincide with the global Blue October initiative. Some of the campuses we worked with included Rutgers University, University of New Mexico, Portland State University and University of Oregon, Eugene.

A Rising Threat: Hydraulic Fracturing

In 2010, Food & Water Watch began focusing on a new threat to clean water: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process of extracting natural gas from the earth by injecting a mix of toxic chemicals into the ground to break up rock, potentially contaminating groundwater.

Food & Water Watch

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2010 Annual Report

Fish Program
Our Fish Program works to promote safe seafood for consumers while helping to protect the environment and support coastal communities. Seafood consumers tell us regularly that they are paying more attention to the fish they eat, the value they get from that fish and what it does for them and the world around them. Here are a few highlights of the Fish Programs work in 2010:

Opposing Factory Farming at Sea

We continued to draw national attention to the dirty and dangerous practice of industrial factory fish farming, also known as open ocean aquaculture. Just as multinational corporations have forever changed the way food is grown on land to the detriment of public health, the environment, local communities and food quality itself, they are poised to do the same at sea. The factory farm model for aquaculture is rapidly replacing traditional methods of fishing that have been used to catch fresh, wild seafood for millennia, and will not increase the seafood supply in the United States. In Hawaii, we worked with local groups in a coalition known as Pono (native for sustainable and culturally appropriate) Aquaculture Coalition and worked to get two bills introduced, with several co-sponsors, to challenge factory fish farming in the state.We also launched our report The Empty Promise of Ocean Aquaculture in Hawaii, which featured new information about the negative impacts of industrial fish farming in Hawaiian waters, including troubling facts about the company Kona Blue, which claims that ocean factory farming is sustainable. Late in the year, Senator Pohai Ryan (D HI-25) confirmed that she would introduce state-level legislation that requires all ocean aquaculture facility applicants to complete an Environmental Impact Statement as part of the permitting process. This will provide the public with more formal opportunities to review and push back on proposals that are detrimental to the marine environment. At the national level, we began work on a set of principles for the Alliance for Sustainable Aquaculture and drafted guidelines to define how recirculating aqua7
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We released a report entitled Not So Fast, Natural Gas: Why Accelerating Risky Drilling Threatens Americas Water, which outlines the threats to our nations water from the rapid proliferation of fracking in states across the country. We also organized around federal and state legislation regarding this risky practice. The Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act of 2009, or FRAC Act, would lift the exemption from regulation that was granted to hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2005. It would also require oil and gas mining companies to disclose the chemicals used in fracking operations. In addition, we delivered comments and letters to members of the New York state legislature encouraging them to pass New York Senate Bill 8129-B and similar legislation in the General Assembly that would require more investigation into the impacts of natural gas drilling in New York before going forward. As part of the lobby day activities, we delivered copies of our report and generated phone calls to legislators. We engaged in similar activities around the issue with the Delaware River Basin Commission and in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
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2010 Annual Report

culture systems should be permitted, monitored and regulated. We also worked with Senator David Vitter (R-LA) to introduce the Research in Aquaculture Opportunity and Responsibility Act of 2010, which calls for a moratorium on ocean aquaculture and supports funding for research and development of land-based recirculating aquaculture systems instead.

Genetically Engineered (GE) Salmon

In 2010, we successfully delayed the expected FDA approval of genetically engineered (GE) salmon, a technology that is problematic on several levels. First, the FDA sought to push through the approval of the new technology as an animal drug, not as the food product for humans that it was intended to be. Furthermore, the agency was relying mostly on company-provided data regarding the safety of the fish, which proved to be questionable: the FDA called the companys claim that GE eggs would be sterile potentially misleading in fact, up to 5 percent of the fish may be fertile. We worked with allied groups to promote understanding of the known (and unknown) risks to human health and the environment that this product posed, getting media coverage from hundreds of U.S. media organizations that quoted Food & Water Watch experts and research. We also publicized our analysis that the biotech industry has lobbied Washington to the tune of half a billion dollars in the past decade, which has also been widely cited in the media coverage regarding the issue.

In New England, we challenged the implementation of a catch share program without a referendum, as is required by law, and in the Gulf of Mexico, we submitted a brief challenging the catch share program for grouper.We challenged both the programs insufficient referendum and its failure to develop an adequate environmental impact statement and assess the socioeconomic impact of the program.

Seafood Labeling
In 2010, we released our comprehensive seafood labeling report, De-Coding Seafood Eco-Labels: Why We Need Public Standards, which reviews the various seafood certification programs, including the well-known Marine Stewardship Council and Friend of the Sea labels. These programs are often relied on as a means for consumers to identify seafood items that are considered more sustainable than others but are they really? Our research showed that most of the certification programs are more marketing tools than good guidance for consumers. These labels are often created by the very companies that stand to benefit from seafood sales, and their sustainable standards likely do not mean what consumers expect. A number of fisheries that have been certified by eco-labels are very questionable in terms of sustainability, and assorted groups and prominent scientists have opposed various certifications. In light of this, we have called for the federal government to introduce and oversee sustainability standards for seafood.

Fair Access to Fish

After many months of public engagement and lobbying, we successfully pushed for congressional hearings on catch shares. These programs divvy up our nations fishery resources for exclusive use by the biggest and fastest fishing operations and then allow corporations and banks to buy and sell these shares for profit. Catch shares turn the opportunity to go fishing into a commodity, requiring fishermen to buy shares before being able to go fishing. As has happened with family farms on land, the added costs push smaller-scale fishermen out of business and consolidate the industry, paving the way for industrial fishing methods that can destroy sensitive ocean habitats.

Food & Water Watch

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2010 Annual Report

FINANCIALS In order to maintain our independence, Food & Water Watch does not accept corporate or government contributions. We are grateful to our 12,000 members in 2010 who provided generous support, without which our success would not be possible. They include the following foundations: Apono Hawaii Boston Foundation Goldman Fund Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation A component fund of the Maine Community Foundation Merrill Family Charitable Foundation Park Foundation Renaissance Charitable Foundation Rose Foundation Weeden Foundation

EXPENSES
Food Program Water Fish Total Program Management Fund Raising $7,003,632 $1,154,205 $553,296 $3,505,367 $2,149,339 $1,348,926 80.4% 13.2% 6.4%

INCOME
Grants and Contributions Interest Income Program Fees Other $9,452,533 $8,304 $1,500 $48,402

TOTAL INCOME ENDING NET ASSETS

as of December 31, 2010

$9,510,739

TOTAL EXPENSE

$8,711,133

$3,553,154

Food & Water Watch

www.foodandwaterwatch.org

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