Article dated November 4, 2004

Healthy Eaters Beware

This SLOWER Network message reviews an article entitled "Corporate Ownership. Tracking the shifting sands of the organic industry" by Mark Kastel at www.cornucopia.org

The article is based on a thoughtful question from an observer of the natural foods industry regarding Kastel's article in the July-August Cooperative Grocer about how organic brands of food are being taken over by megacorporations including Heinz, General Foods, Dean and Campbell's.

The article explains that for example that Dean Foods, is a huge milk bottler with about 29,000 employees and sales in excess of $9 billion.

Dean has purchased White Wave, a soy drink maker and Horizon an organic food supplier. Then they merged these two entities with other specialty foods including international Delight coffee creamers, Hershey's milk/milkshakes, and Dean's dips. The latter products are less likely to meet organic consumer standards and combining the management of both gives cause for concern.

H.J. Heinz, well known for its tomato products and Kibbles n' Bits, invested in Hain, which then merged with Celestial Seasonings and now also controls Walnut Acres, Arrowwhead Mills and Health Valley brands.

More information can be found at

www.cornucopia.org.

P.S. This holiday give gifts that have environmental and social value such as the gift of flowers and fruit with bees!

One of the world's worst environmental dilemmas is almost unknown…a shortage of pollinators. The bees are dying in the pollution and without them we'll have quite a fuss. You can help overcome this threat by giving a swarm of ORCHARD MASON BEES (Osmia Lignaria) called Blue Orchard Bees.

This small black gentle bee is a native of almost the entire continental United States and is Mother Nature's great spring pollinator, having pollinated fruits and flowers for millions of years before the first colonists brought the honey bee to North America.

They are completely non-aggressive and perfectly safe to raise in a backyard even with children and dogs. The males don't even have stingers and the females only use theirs in times of true distress. In fact, unless you actually squeeze one of the females between your fingers, it is almost impossible to get stung.

The bees come in a tube and can be kept dormant in a refrigerator until Spring. Knox Cellars has been selling Orchard Mason bees since 1990 ships bees from November until spring. Go to knoxcellars.com or write Knox Cellars, 25724 NE 10th St.

Sammamish, WA 98074

 
 

 

 

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