So, the non-profit that I work for is actually considering accepting a sponsorship from Sweet&Low. Which is infuriating, since this nonprofit only does programs for children. The ethics of marketing a chemical sweetener known to cause cancer, seizures and other unpleasant things to children is completely lost on them. So I bring you other news from the Food world, that are gnashing my teeth and boiling my brain.
1 A new FDA(Food and Drug Administration) "guidance" document, published on the FDA's website, reveals plans to reclassify virtually all vitamins, supplements, herbs and even vegetable juices as FDA-regulated drugs. Massage oils and massage rocks will be classified as "medical devices" and require FDA approval. The document is called Docket No. 2006D-0480. Draft Guidance for Industry on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Products and Their Regulation by the Food and Drug Administration.
read on...
send FDA a "love" note (before April 30, when the comment period ends)
2 Nestlé buys Gerber foods. Sweet, considering Nesle is targeted with a boycott because monitoring conducted by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) finds it to be responsible for more violations of the World Health Assembly marketing requirements for baby foods than any other company. Nestle has a long and sordid history of pushing third-world women away from breast-feeding so they could sell them their vastly inferior infant formula.
and that's pretty damn sleazy, because
"Marketing practices that undermine breastfeeding are potentially hazardous wherever they are pursued: in the developing world, WHO estimates that some 1.5 million children die each year because they are not adequately breastfed. These facts are not in dispute." - UNICEF
Plus, as you all know, my Jewish self likes eating babies and drinking their blood, so this is completely unconscionable. My supply of healthy fatty babies is going to dry up pretty soon...
more on this...
4.26.2007 |
2 comments:
It's the name of the game for non-profits to be stuck with having to whore out to criminal elements, unfortunately. They are following the money...
Think of all the enviro organizations that have branded credit cards, urging you to consume more so that they make a little bit on the deal.
Of related interest is how the very wealthy, with their foundations, take the lead on policy issues precisely because of their wealth. Sometimes this is for the common good, but policy by wealthy whim is really antithetical to democracy.
On the otherhand, I'm not opposed to regulation of all the "patent medicine" scams out there. Supplements, herbs, even vitamins, are symptomatic of our fucked-up eating/health culture, with its fad diets, food trends (baby broccoli! pomegranate! kombucha!), and general hysteria.
Of course, with the FDA under the Bush Gang merely an arm of Big Pharma and the Food Industry, this guidance document is a power-grab.
I'll just have to add Gerber to my decades of boycotting the baby-killers at Nestle. Fuck their chocolate.
so i they gonna regulate mothers milk, oxygen, piss and cum next?
this is too depressing for me this morning.
i'm going to go become a turtle tomorrow.
see ya.
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