ETHICAL FOOD CHOICES  

Some simple ways to make ethical food choices include supporting

fair trade, buying from local farmers, and learning to preserve foods;
increasing your plant and limiting your meat consumption; and
buying organic, non-GMO produce and grains and unprocessed or
minimally-processed foods.

https://foodispower.org/our-food-choices/ethical-food-choices/
For many people, it can be quite overwhelming to realize just how much suffering and
injustice goes into the familiar products that line our store shelves. Whether it’s the
abuse of animals, the exploitation of workers, the failure to offer healthy foods,
environmental devastation, or all of the above, there can be a temptation to throw up our
hands in defeat and conclude that it’s just not possible to make ethical food choices.

We understand that impulse, and it truly does feel overwhelming at times, for everyone.
It’s our hope that the resources on this website will help make these choices easier for
you. The fact that the problems loom large surely doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do what
we can to address them. And, armed with knowledge about the issues, we can do quite a
lot through the choices we make.

One of the easiest things we can do is to identify particularly “bad actors” in the
corporate world, so we know what products and companies to absolutely avoid. With
that in mind, the following are a few examples worth highlighting.

Coca-Cola

Even among companies with egregious environmental and worker’s rights records,
Coca-Cola stands out.[1]
In India, Coke unlawfully pumped 1.5 million liters (400,000 gallons) of water a day
from local reserves, leaving farmers without enough water to irrigate their crops, and
draining the community’s drinking water supply. The company also contaminated
fields, wells, and canals in the process – leading to widespread misery and community
upheaval[2] — and have sought to mislead investors about the environmental
consequences.[3] The world’s largest beverage company, Coke used 283 billion liters
(73.5 billion gallons) of water in 2004 … a fact put into perspective when remembering
that we live in “a world where over 1 billion people cannot meet their basic water
needs.”
In Colombia[8] and Guatemala[9], there is a long, documented history of anti-union
activities[10] at bottling plants on par with the worst episodes in labor history anywhere.
This includes the intimidation, kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder of labor organizers
and their loved ones, often via paramilitary forces in collaboration with local
management[11]. Union-busting efforts in Pakistan have included extortion, blackmail,
abduction, and death threats.[12] Workers in the Philippines report vast labor abuses, as
well.[13]
In El Salvador, Coke’s sugar suppliers have been caught using child labor in the
fields[14].

Monsanto

It’s hard to overstate the influence that Monsanto, the chemical and agricultural sciences
giant, has had over the food we’ve eaten in the last hundred years.[28] One of the largest
corporations in the world and a mainstay of the Forbes 500, the company is effectively a
gatekeeper to the global food supply.[29]
Beginning the 20th century as a pure chemicals company (producing, among other
things, the food additive saccharin[30], supplied to a fledgling Coca-Cola), Monsanto has
had a hand in everything from plastics to digital optics. In the 1930s, it began producing
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) for industrial use as lubricants, coatings, and sealants;
PCBs are also carcinogens associated with reproductive, developmental, and immune
system disorders[31]. Dioxin, a cancer-causing byproduct of PCB production, is very
much still with us, and remains a concern for workers, farmers, communities, and
consumers[32]. People who consume animal products are at greatest risk: according to a
2003 National Academies of Science report, “animal fat in the diet accounts for close to
90% of dioxin exposure in the United States.”[33]
Monsanto’s “life sciences” arms are most associated with insecticides, herbicides, and
defoliants, as well as genetically modified organisms. The company manufactured some
of the most infamous chemicals that exist, including DDT (notably profiled in Rachel
Carson’s Silent Spring and banned in the US in 1972)[34] and the defoliant known as
Agent Orange, which killed at least half a million people in Southeast Asia, sickened
millions more[35] and left a poisonous legacy that impacts local communities to this day.
[36]

The company also developed and manufactures bovine growth hormone (rBGH), which
has contributed enormously to animal suffering and led to such environmental and
public health concerns that it has been banned outright in many places outside the U.S.,
including Japan, Canada, and the European Union.[37] In order to combat the financially
undesirable (and horrifically painful) infections that rBGH and similar hormones cause
for cows raised for milk, farmers have dramatically increased the amounts of antibiotics
they use.[38] Today, farmed animals consume 80% of the antibiotics sold in the U.S.[39]
Monsanto is one of the most aggressive forces pushing for genetically modified
organisms. Alongside acquiring patents for products like Calgene’s FlavrSavr tomato
(the first genetically modified food reviewed and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration for human consumption[40]), it has patented numerous GMO seed lines,
aggressively marketed them worldwide, attacked traditional methods of seed-saving,
and both threatened and sued farmers.[41] It has also patented “Terminator seeds,” which
can be planted only once, compelling farmers to buy a new supply every year instead of
saving seeds from previous seasons.