US Advocates Call for Big Food Brand Boycott

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Leading Food Safety Advocates Call for Big Food Brand Boycott

Bellows Falls, March 13– Responding to the U.S. House of Representatives’ passage of the controversial “National Uniformity in Food Act,” the bill that would wipe out more than 200 state laws protecting consumers from infected, toxic and carcinogenic food, leading food safety advocates call for a boycott of the big food brands who wrote the legislation and lobbied Congress to secure its passage. The legislation is the most sweeping deregulation of our national food safety rules in the 100 years since the passage of the nation’s first food protections, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

This Act eliminates ways to alert the public to health hazards in our food and water with potentially deadly consequences for the most vulnerable-- infants, pregnant women, immune-compromised and elderly individuals. States have played the main role for many decades in protecting consumers from hazards such as mercury in fish, arsenic in water, genetically modified ingredients in common foods, carcinogens in processed foods, and pathogens in raw and undercooked foods, problems largely ignored or inadequately addressed by USDA, FDA and EPA, which have already been charged with this responsibility.

“At a time when we know that there are 72 million bouts of illness, 325,000 hospitalizations, and more than 5000 deaths each year as the result of food poisoning, what justification can there be for destroying the minimal food safety protections now in place? As we import more food from third world countries with poor food sanitation, we need more and better regulations, not fewer and weaker ones,” says former USDA insider, Dr. Luise Light, nutritionist and food safety activist, who is calling for a big food brand boycott to drive home the outrage of many consumers and food, health and environmental professionals to the legislation passed in the House on March 8, 2006, without public input.

Other groups on record as opposing the bill are: 30 state Attorneys General, the Association of Food and Drug Professionals, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America, the Organic Consumers Association, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and numerous other consumer and environmental groups all of whom urge the Senate to vote to undo the damage done by the House.

Join the boycott of big food brands whose parent companies steamrolled this legislation. For just one month, buy only local, regional, fresh, and organic food. Avoid all the packaged, bottled and bagged foods and drinks in grocery and convenience stores, and when eating out, avoid the chains. “If we speak with our wallets and our actions, we will be heard,” says Light.

Contacts: Luise Light - Vermont - luvalu365@yahoo.com
Mary Sparrowdancer -Florida - sparrowdancer1@earthlink.net
Pam Killeen - Canada - healthmaps@hotmail.com

For more about Dr. Light and her new book, ”What to Eat; the Ten Things You Need to Know to Eat Well and Be Healthy” (McGraw Hill, 2006), www.luiselight.com

Mary Sparrowdancer, science and health writer with extensive studies in clinical laboratory sciences; author of “The Love Song of the Universe,” (Hampton Roads, 2001). www.sparrowdancer.com

Pam Killeen, Investigative Consumer Reporter and Real Food Activist, www.pamkilleen.com

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