Frankenbuck$.

• Author: Cummins, Ronnie

Why Target Starbucks? The GE Food Issue

Despite rising consumer concerns, Starbucks stubbornly refuses to guarantee that the milk, chocolate, ice cream, and baked goods they are selling are free of recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) and other genetically engineered ingredients (including soy derivatives and corn sweeteners). Starbucks needs to get rid of all GE food ingredients and label its packaged or bottled products as being GE-free.

Several thousand Starbucks outlets are still using milk coming from dairies that allow cows to be injected with Monsanto's controversial Bovine Growth Hormone, a hormone often associated with higher risks for cancer in humans. rBGH is a powerful drug, which cruelly damages the health of dairy cows, forcing them to give more milk. Milk from rBGH-injected cows is also likely to contain more pus, antibiotic residues, and bacteria. Monsanto's rBGH is banned in every industrialized country in the world except for the United States. Starbucks is one of the largest buyers of rBGH-tainted milk in the world. Labeling its bottled coffee beverages and ice cream, which are sold in thousands of retail stores, as rBGH-free will send a powerful message to Monsanto and the dairy industry that consumers want rBGH taken off the market.

Although biotechnology corporations are currently field-testing genetically engineered decaffeinated coffee beans, Starbucks has not taken a public stand on whether or not it intends to purchase these genetically engineered coffee beans in the future.

Why Target Starbucks? Environmental and Social Justice Issues

Although Starbucks has recently bowed to consumer pressure and begun selling certified Fair Trade, shade-grown (organic or transition to organic) coffee beans in bulk, they are refusing to brew and seriously promote Fair Trade coffee, unlike a number of other gourmet coffee shops and companies.

Only shade-grown or organic coffee, which avoids the use of the use of toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, protects the environment and preserves the forest canopy and the priceless biodiversity of plants and animals (including migratory songbirds). All coffee certified as Fair Trade or organic is shade-grown, as opposed to corporate plantation coffee, which is grown out in the direct sunlight, utilizing pesticides and chemical fertilizers, typically on large plantations where the surrounding forest cover has been completely chopped down. Wages paid to impoverished farm workers on...