“EcoGrain” Marketing Blitz — Greenwashing New Bread Produced with Toxic Agrochemicals as Something /Better/ Than Organic

*Cornucopia, Wisconsin:* With the growing success of organics, and increasing consumer interest in buying foods that were grown on sustainable farms without toxic chemicals, Sara Lee Corporation has launched, with much fanfare, a marketing campaign for its /Earthgrains /bread, chock-full of environmental-friendly catchphrases.

Sara Lee claims that “Eco-Grain™,” an ingredient actually used in small proportions in its Earthgrains brand breads, is /more/ sustainable than organic grain. What has been described as a “crass and exploitive marketing ploy” has angered many in the organic community.

“Corporations like Sara Lee clearly want to profit from consumers’ interest in ecological and healthy food production. But unlike organic companies, Sara Lee is doing practically nothing to ensure its ingredients are truly ecologically produced,” said Charlotte Vallaeys, a Food and Farm Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based organic industry watchdog. “It’s a crass example of a corporation trying to capitalize on the valuable market cachet of organic, while intentionally misleading consumers—without making any meaningful commitment to protect the environment or produce safer and more nutritious food.”

The Cornucopia Institute, a farm policy research group, points out that the farmers who grow Eco-Grain differ very little from most conventional grain producers who use petroleum-based fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides, and have little in common with certified organic farmers.

The one attribute that Sara Lee uses to differentiate Eco-Grain production is that the farmers, although they use chemical fertilizers, incorporate technology that has reduced fertilizer usage by 15%. In contrast, as mandated by federal law, organic farmers are required by law to reduce their synthetic fertilizer use by 100%.

Organic farmers use natural fertilizers, compost and crop rotations to enrich the long-term health of the soil, without damaging the environment or potentially contaminating the food produced.

However, Cornucopia’s Vallaeys points out that, “Even if their new fancy wheat were truly superior, each Earthgrains 24 ounce loaf contains only 20% flour from Eco-Grain, with the remainder of the bread’s wheat coming from regular, conventional wheat. The total reduction in chemical fertilizer use in a loaf of EarthGrains bread therefore amounts to a meager 3%.”

“Even though they’ve done a countrywide media rollout, including underwriting spots on National Public Radio, Sara Lee is, in essence, playing a shell game,” said Mark A. Kastel, Codirector at The Cornucopia Institute. “Even as they had the audacity to promote a bread with just 20% of their ‘value added’ wheat, the rest of their product line has 0% content of the Eco-Grain. If advertising executives could be charged with malpractice, this would be a major felony,” Kastel said.

The Cornucopia Institute has written to the CEOs of both Sara Lee and NPR <http://www.cornucopia.org/eco-grain/SaraLee_NPRletter.pdf> requesting that the “misleading and unethical” packaging and advertising campaign, and associated advertising and underwriting, be immediately suspended while the corporations investigate their propriety.

In addition to the organic prohibition against chemical fertilizers, federal regulations also prohibit organic farmers from using toxic pesticides that are commonly applied to conventional wheat fields, including those growing “Eco-Grain.”

One such pesticide typically used in conventional wheat production is 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), which EPA researchers have correlated with numerous birth defects of the respiratory and circulatory systems, as well as defects like clubfoot, fused digits and extra digits. Other research has linked the use of toxic pesticides on wheat fields to increased cancer mortality rates.

And, in addition to chemical fertilizers and pesticides, conventional wheat farmers sometimes use synthetic fungicides and other chemicals to treat their fields.

“For Sara Lee to claim that their wheat is ecologically grown and sustainable, when they appear to make no effort to reduce or eliminate their use of toxic pesticides, that have terrible effects on the environment and public health, is highly disingenuous,” says Nathan Jones, who grows organic wheat in King Hill, Idaho and chairs the Organic Advisory Board of the Idaho State Department of Agriculture.

In addition to shunning toxic agrochemicals, organic farmers are required to improve the long-term health of their soil, and increase biodiversity on their farms.

*/ /*

“Unfortunately, this is another example of a major agribusiness trying to blur the line between products labeled ‘organic’ and ‘natural’,” stated Kastel, who acts as Cornucopia’s Senior Farm Policy Analyst. “It seems that some corporations, like Sara Lee, appear more interested in corporate profit and greenwashing than true environmental stewardship, and are doing everything they can to take advantage of this confusion among consumers,” Kastel added.

“The term ‘natural’ on products like bread is not regulated by state or federal government,” says Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition at New York University. “Companies that use the term ‘all natural’ essentially come up with their own definition.”

In addition, some of Sara Lee’s other bread ingredients, such as soy oil and soy lecithin, are grown and processed using genetic engineering and chemical extraction with the toxic solvent hexane, both technologies that are banned in organic production.

In online marketing materials, Sara Lee even claims that farming methods used to produce its “100% Natural” bread “have some advantages over organic farming.” They cite only one ecological advantage, claiming that organic farmers require more land than conventional growers.

“This claim does not hold up against recent scientific data,” said Alison Grantham, Research Manager at the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, an agricultural research, education and outreach group. “Long-term trials, such as our nearly 30-year-old Farming Systems Trial, show long-term average organic farming systems’ crop yields match conventional farming system yields, and that the improvements in soil health achieved by organic management actually support higher yields during droughts.”

“I just can’t believe that Sara Lee would claim to be more sustainable than organic bakers like me,” affirms Daniel Leader, a certified organic bread baker and owner of Bread Alone Bakery in the Hudson Valley, New York. “In deference to my customers, I’ve made an investment in real sustainability by going organic, and for Sara Lee to tarnish the good name of organics, and even claim to be superior to organic bread, is simply unacceptable.” Bread Alone Bakery is certified by the Northeast Organic Farmers Association, a certifier accredited by the USDA.

Sara Lee’s longtime ad jingle campaign doesn’t seem to be ringing true for organic farmers, bakers and consumers—“Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.” It will remain to be seen whether spending more money on marketing and advertising than on Eco-Grain itself will pay off for the agribusiness giant.

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*More: *

For more information on the difference between Earthgrains bread and organic bread, The Cornucopia Institute has prepared a fact sheet, available at http://www.cornucopia.org/eco-grain/eco-grain-fact-sheet.html

The Earthgrains/Eco-Grain investigation is the first in a series of /Natural Versus Organic/ profiles that The Cornucopia Institute will be issuing in 2010.

The campaign is intended to empower consumers and wholesale buyers with marketplace knowledge so that they can make good, discerning purchasing decisions—providing their families and customers with truly superior food that pays dividends for human health, the environment and society.

*/The Cornucopia Institute, /*/a Wisconsin-based nonprofit farm policy research group*,* is dedicated to the fight for economic justice for the family-scale farming community. Their* Organic Integrity Project acts as a corporate and governmental watchdog assuring that no compromises to the credibility of organic farming methods and the food it produces are made in the pursuit of profit. Their web page can be viewed at *//www.cornucopia.org/ <http://www.cornucopia.org/>/. /

What our farm needs is a cannery that will do meat, broth, soups, and other meat-based products. We’ve made inquiries to ACENet and the ODA–even looked into starting our own facility–and all we heard was “You have to have a big industrial cannery to do meats.” After more than a year of searching, we finally found Keystone Meats in Lima, Ohio. They charge $1.35 per 28 oz. can, and the minimum amount they’ll process is 2000 lbs. of boneless meat.

They don’t slaughter the animals, though. You still need to have that done at an inspected facility somewhere else. Otherwise, the cans will be marked “not for resale.” That means I’d have to take my broilers to King & Sons (presently the only state-inspected custom poultry processor in the state) to have the birds processed first. The trouble with that is that they’re only equipped to do 800 birds a day. Conservatively estimating two pounds of boneless meat per bird, that means you’d need a minimum of 1000 chickens to get enough meat for Keystone to let you in the door. And King’s doesn’t slaughter every day. It’s just one or two days a week, never consecutive days, so I it wouldn’t even be possible to have them do 1000 birds at once. You’d have to drop off 800, store them frozen somewhere, then do another 200 on a different day.

Let’s say this was workable, though. By the time I pay around a thousand dollars for a thousand chicks, and buy feed for them at $11.35 per 50 lb. bag, then pay for fuel to haul them two hours to King’s, pay them to slaughter and de-bone, and pay Keystone $1.35 a can for 2000 pounds worth of 28 oz. cans, I’ve got over $11,000 tied up in cans of meat that I have to sell for something like $9.60 a can just to break even. If I sold it for $11 a can (too low? How much will someone realistically pay for a can of non-organic chicken?), I’d make about $1,500 profit. That’s not accounting for marketing costs, fixed assets, etc. Presently, I can make more than that on 300 birds I sell at the farmers’ markets, and I don’t have to raise them a thousand at a time or take out a loan of $11,000 for operating expenses.

And Keystone won’t do broth. That’s principally what I’m looking for. After my customers make a rush on the chicken breasts and buy about half the leg quarters, I’m left with a bunch of wings, backs, and the other half of the leg quarters. I’d like to cook these down into broth or soup to try to recapture some value, but try collecting 2000 lbs. of those pieces! I have a big pressure canner, but the state won’t let me sell broth or stock canned in it.

If some well-funded entrepreneur were to open a cannery that could do small, custom batches of soups, broths, canned meats, etc., affordably, it would be a fantastic opportunity for small farmers to sell value-added products. We have no shortage of Ohio produced jams and salsas, but there are no small farmers in Ohio doing direct sales of hot dog sauce or chicken noodle soup made from their own meat. And if a cannery is licensed and outfitted to handle meats, they could do other low-acid foods, too. That throws the door wide open to all kinds of canned vegetables. We could fill the grocery stores with locally produced, identity preserved goods, if only someone would package them for us.

Best of luck, though, to Mr. Leard and anyone who gets in on this new fruit cannery co-op.

Wayne Shingler
Frijolito Farm
Columbus, OH

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Renee Hunt
To: oeffaco_oeffadirect@oeffa.org
Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 09:18:49 -0400
Subject: [oeffadirect] [Fwd: Fwd: co-op cannery]
Anyone interested in forming a cooperative cannery, read on… This was originally sent and distributed to the OEFFA Athens Chapter. Best, Renee

*From: *”Ray Leard” <rayleard@purelyamerican.com >
*Date: *May 17, 2009 11:03:01 AM PDT
*To: *<perkaber@juno.com >
*Subject: **co-op cannery*

Hi!

I own Purely American, a specialty food manufacturing concern located in the Poston Station Road Industrial Park – www.purelyamerican.com . I am trying to determine the interest among the region s’ farmers for the creation of a cooperative cannery in which the farmers would contract with my company to provide certain fruits raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, apples for the production of a premium brand of creatively designed fruit based preserves. I would invest the required funds in building the commercial kitchen, product design, marketing, promotion, and distribution at the national level through my existing channels I have already established. The press attached release explains the basic idea.

Wanted to know if, as a member of the Athens Farmers Market, you (or other fellow farmers that you know) might have an interest in becoming an owner/member in our new cooperative. The main purpose in creating the co-op will be to enable the area farmers to join forces to obtain a fair and consistent price for their premium quality fruit. The fruit will be used in a line of preserves that will help establish the Athens region as one of America’s premier locally grown food artisan regions. This will be achieved by maintaining the level of “Athens Grown” fruit in the line of products at 100% thereby creating a product line similar to great wines in which all the grapes are from a certain winery or region. In the preserve world as a company gets larger and larger they start compromising on quality and begin sourcing their fruit from outside the region where the idea started thereby compromising the integrity of the product.

I would appreciate your serious consideration in this matter. Please feel free to ask any and all questions. Don’t have all the answers yet but will work with each of you to make this something we can all be proud of as we proceed.

See you at the market!

Ray Leard and dedicated foodcrafters

Purely American

5991 Industrial Park Road

Athens, Ohio 45701

740-592-3800

740-592-4610 (fax)

rayleard@purelyamerican.com

–
Renee Hunt
Program Director
Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association
41 Croswell St., Columbus, Ohio 43214
Ph: 614-421-2022 Fax: 614-421-2011
renee@oeffa.org

“So, the question is: how can we plausibly increase the amount of farmers? The answer seems to be to take farming to where most of the people are at: in the cities.” –Sam Rose

I very much agree. In bringing farming to cities, we face two major obstacles, neither of which are insurmountable.

The first is that, even with intensive models such as Square-Foot gardening, Grow Biointensive, or SPIN, farming still requires land. A person aiming only to feed his or her own family might find a backyard sufficient, but someone trying to grow enough to earn a living is going to need either a lot of land on which they can grow during the regular growing season, or a more modest space with a greenhouse in which they can grow all year.

For all romantic and idealized notions people may have about farming, most urbanites who have a steady paycheck coming in, especially from a white collar job that they’ve obtained through many years of college and career climbing, aren’t likely to chuck it all for a risky entrepreneurial venture that’s bound to mean less money (especially at first) and a life of hard, dirty, sometimes smelly, often uncomfortable, physical labor outdoors.

Of course, not all city dwellers have such cushy lives. Many are poor and/or unemployed. Many already perform physical labor with no hope of advancement. For these people, farming offers the promise of a better life. These people, however, don’t have the capital necessary to start, and usually aren’t financially savvy enough or well connected enough to get it. Even peasants farming in developing nations on plots of an acre or less have more land than most of America’s urban poor can afford to buy.

In a nutshell, those who have the means to farm generally don’t want to, and those who want to generally don’t have the means. This is true all over, but the problem is exacerbated in the city because of higher real estate prices. Community gardens are not the answer. They’re a good way for people to learn horticultural skills and to put some extra nutrients in their diets or a few dollars in their pockets, but the average community garden plot doesn’t come even close to what’s necessary to feed one person, let alone provide an income for an entire family.

This is where I put in my plug for Local Matters and offer high praise for the work Michael Jones and his colleagues are doing. They are developing a system to connect landless farmers with landowners willing to let others use their land. I am the beneficiary of their first test of this idea. They connected me with a man who owns about five acres in Columbus, maybe three miles from my home. In exchange for donating some produce to local food pantries and agreeing to manage a community garden on the front acre, I’ve been given access to the back acre for my own use. I worked out a similar deal on my own with another township’s community garden, and I’ve been leasing a vacant lot for $1.00 a year from the city of Columbus for the past few years. In aggregate, I now have around two acres on which to farm. This year, I’m offering a CSA for the first time. My gross sales to date this year (as of May 7th) already equal over 70% of my total sales for all of 2008 when I had only a half-acre–and the season is only starting!

I said there were two big problems. Getting land into the hands of the people who want to work it was the first. The second is the morass of municipal regulations criminalizing agriculture. I’ve written extensively about this elsewhere, so I won’t belabor the point here. Suffice it to say that in neighborhoods where hanging out laundry is prohibited and everyone’s Christmas lights have to match, the controlling authorities frown upon having livestock and hayfields next door. Until we can change urban sensibilities enough to eliminate or at least loosen up some of the agri-phobic codes and regulations presently in place, we can’t grow food in the city on a wide scale without constant harassment from health departments, zoning officials, and homeowners’ associations.