Four new victories illustrate consumer power

Daishowa, Daws, Starbucks, and Monsanto react to mobilized, angry consumers

By: Ish Theilheimer

  I'm always kind of shocked when politically "progressive" friends say "We don't understand why you started a consumer publication," or, worse yet, "We thought Straight Goods was just going to be just a consumer publication."
  Let me explain: Corporate power has usurped democracy in many ways. Citizens have less power than ever. With corporations calling the shots and operating beyond the reach of citizens, there's only one way to influence them and governments - attack the balance sheet.
 

Daishowa didn't suddenly sprout responsibility as a result of some born-again experience

  By getting people to look at what they buy and the services they pay for, consumer's movements naturally link to citizens' movements and vice versa. Just ask Ralph Nader. Like the famous Certs twins used to say, Straight Goods is two cyber-rags in one - a consumers' publication and a citizens' guide. We untangle spin and give consumers and citizens useful info to help them take charge of their lives and their world.
 

American consumers don't seem to want neat truck stuff made with aluminum produced by an environmental criminal using scab labour

Four news stories over the past week or so help bolster the consumers' argument:

• In Northern Alberta, the Friends of the Lubicon have agreed to end their seven-year boycott of Daishowa Inc. after the paper company dropped its court appeal against them. The Friends had informally dropped the boycott in early 1998 after Daishowa's Japanese parent company agreed not to log in a 10,000-sq.-km area claimed by the Lubicon Cree.
  Daishowa Inc. didn't suddenly sprout responsibility as a result of some born-again experience. They didn't do it to be nice. They did it because the worldwide consumer boycott of the company's paper bags cost about $20 million in lost sales.
  Daishowa now says "There will be no logging in that area until [the Lubicon Cree land claim] is resolved by governments." Now the company says it will pressure governments to settle the land claim.
  The boycott campaign began in 1991 after Alberta government gave Daishowa a logging permit in the land-claim area.
  Congratulations to the the Friends of the Lubicon - email: fol@tao.ca and all the consumers who flexed their muscles for the environment and economic justice.

• Coffee giant Starbucks woke up its corporate conscience as a result of consumer pressure. It recently announced it will be selling Fair Trade Coffee in its U.S. outlets. Now the push is on for Starbucks to take the lead in Canada among commercial coffee dealers. Straight Goods readers, start your engines! For more on this, see The state of Fair Trade coffee in Canada and Consumer news from the corporate front.

Monsanto closed a Maine potato lab because McCain's in Canada bowed to consumer pressure on genetically modified (GM) food

In the US, consumers have won two important victories recently:

• Pensacola, FL - You know those shiny aluminum tool boxes and other neat gear you see on other guys' trucks and wish you had. Many are made by a company called Daws Manufacturing Company Inc. It announced last week it has stopped buying metal from Kaiser Aluminum. Why? Because a whole lot of American consumers said they didn't want to buy neat truck stuff made with aluminum produced by an environmental criminal relying on scab ("replacement") workers.
  The United Steelworkers of America had made Daws the focus of a nationwide boycott of products produced with Kaiser metal.
  Daws joins a growing list of Kaiser customers who have stopped purchasing
  Kaiser metal. The company, bought up in the 90s by a corporate giant Maxxam, has illegally locked out thousands of workers at five plants for nearly a year.
  Last October the Pepsi Bottling Group announced it would stop buying can sheet from Kaiser as a result of the boycott. Since then, Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Crown Cork and Seal, and Dee Zee Inc. have also stopped buying Kaiser metal. Want to know more? Read the USWA Kaiser Council Bulletins.

• CRYSTAL, Maine - Worldwide protests of the use of genetically modified foods forced biotech giant Monsanto to close a transgenetic laboratory and greenhouse operation.
  Since 1992, it grew genetically modified seed potatoes that would repel Colorado potato beetles, which eat the leaves of potato plants. Each plant contained a gene from the microbe Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a soil microbe introduced into a potato chromosome through "transgenetics."
  When the potato cell carrying the Bt chromosome is grown into a new plant, the entire plant is able to produce the Bt protein, which controls the Colorado potato beetle.
  Last Fall, McCain's Foods announced it would no longer buy genetically altered potatoes due to consumer pressure, and that decisions "spilled over into Maine, where farmers most likely won't be planting any of the modified seed this year," according to the Bangor Times. The paper reports that other companies such as Gerber and H.J. Heinz Co. have stopped using produce from genetically modified plants in their baby foods. (Thanks for this to Straight Goods reader Richard Wolfson, PhD, who has an email mailing list on GM foods. To subscribe, write to rwolfson@concentric.net. For the straight goods on genetically modified foods, read Genetically modified spin.

- Ish Theilheimer
- May 8, 2000
- ish@straightgoods.com

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