Every wonder about disease? Care about your child’s health? Do something about it! This is 2009 and we are still acting like stupid primates or worse.
– marvelous mouth

from the GoodGuide Transparency Manifesto

We start from a simple premise: People have the right to know what they’re putting in, on, and around their bodies.

There are three simple things everyone should know about their food but don’t:
Where did it come from? How was it made? What’s in it?

In the United States, manufacturers of processed foods are still not required to label where a product came from, whether it contains genetically modified organisms, or was produced using synthetic hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides.

Additionally, government agencies, such as the FDA, continue to face criticism for falling short (marvelous mouth – they suck!) of their responsibility to protect the public from contamination and other food safety scandals.

GoodGuide and consumers around the world have launched the “What’s In It?” Campaign to demand transparency from our food producers.

We call on food manufacturers to disclose the following information about all products:

1. Where it came from:

* Disclosure of where ingredients were grown and processed. For meats, this should include where the animal was born, raised, and slaughtered.
* Tracking and labeling throughout the supply chain, with a process for tracing contaminant issues.

2. How it was made:

* The use of synthetic pesticides.
* The use of hormones.
* The application of antibiotics.
* The presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
* Animal cloning in meat and milk production.
* Food Irradiation
* USDA Organic production standards.
* Explanation of a company’s food tracing and contaminant control program from farm to table.

3. What’s in it:

* Complete ingredient lists, with details of common allergens, applied to restaurant items as well as store-bought foods.
* Nutritional information normalized to a standard serving size.
* Explanation of levels of nutrients that may be harmful (such as saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, and sugar).
* Contaminants such as pesticides, methyl mercury, or PCBs that remain in the product, even in trace amounts.

read more HERE and join the campaign

In this week’s JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with Daniel Goleman, author of ECOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE, about how to find truly eco-friendly goods amongst the sea of products now marketed as ‘green.’

“Let me reassure you. Everything that we’ve done that’s ‘green’ is to the good. I recycle my papers and plastics, and I try to get the ‘green’ product. But once you realize, through the lens of the life cycle assessment, that every product has a thousand environmental, health, [and] social impacts, and you see that what we call ‘green’ has taken one slice and improved it, there’s still the 999 other things that we need to get better.” Daniel Goleman Read more HERE.

This was once again a great Bill Moyer’s Journal (I love this man) and what Daniel Goleman had to say was alarming, informative and he actually gave solutions that most reporting does not do. I haven’t read his new book yet, but I hope it does the same. No matter how little our present “green” effort is in fighting the big monsters, it is something and a start. Change happens generationally and of course we see some younger ones that may put us back some years, but it is never too late to try to reach people and get them to understand the impacts on a personal level so that they will give a damn and do the right thing. They have to see the personal impact for change to happen!! Sad, but true for most. It amazes me how many people I see with kids that don’t even try to be green. They don’t see the personal impact on their children. Wow!! Also know that most of these companies claiming to be green, going green or whatever, are full of crap. They will jump on any “bandwagon” that will bring them more sales. As Daniel talked about, this is one place we need to make change by telling them with our buying dollars and letters to their companies that we want them to change their ways and do the right thing.

The term “VOTE with YOUR dollars” is always relevant and this is a good place to apply this. Don’t complain, take postive action, big or small!