http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/933
'Big Food' funded ActivistCash.com attacks celebs, foundations:
ngin.org.uk: Murray 12.30.2 rmforall

Subject: GMW: 'Big Food' funded Web site attacks celebs, foundations
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 18:33:14 +0000
From: ngin@...
To: list@...

NGIN - GM WATCH daily: http://www.ngin.org.uk
---
The article below is about "ActivistCash.com", one of the front sites of
food industry PR firm Berman & Co whose self-declared "offensive
strategy is to shoot the messenger."
[http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2001Q1/berman1.html]

Berman & Co. are also behind the Center for Consumer Freedom
[www.consumerfreedom.com] which began life under the name "the Guest
Choice Network" with the help of $600,000 from tobacco giant, Phillip
Morris. The Consumer Freedom campaign on "Food Technology" involves
smearing organic food as dangerous and promoting what it calls
"genetically improved food". Despite being pro-consumer choice, the
Consumer Freedom campaign vehemently opposes GM food labelling. Berman
also paints biotech opponents as terrorists, asserting that
"anti-biotech extremists" are part of a "growing wave of domestic
terrorism" and that the people we need to worry about are not just
al-Qa'ida but "the middle-class kids down the street." [Terrorists On
The March -- In America]

The list of "anti-biotech extremists" includes mainstream environmental
groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, which it accuses of
conducting a "public relations jihad" on the issue, and even
organisations like the Five Year Freeze and Christian Aid, the
development agency of the British and Irish churches, whom Berman & Co.
labelled a "far-left leaning" group of "future-fearing radicals" that
"flat-out lies about GE foods" while hiding "behind a religious facade
to more easily malign farmers, scientists, food companies, and even PR
people who deal with GE foods."

ActivistCash.com claims to "root out the funding sources" of "the most
notorious and extreme groups that conspire to restrict the public's food
and beverage choices". In fact, as PR Watch points out, ActivistCash.com
draws on information already largely public mixed with distortions and
misinformation [http://www.prwatch.org/improp/ddam.html].

Ironically, Berman himself has taken extreme exception to attempts to
root out his own financial relationship with the various lobby
organisations run by Berman & Co. He even threatened a lawsuit for
defamation after attention was drawn to his "funneling millions of
corporate dollars - donated to non-profit organizations he runs - right
into his own bank accounts. Berman pays himself the cash both directly
and personally in the form of salary and benefits for his role as
'Executive Director,' as well as through payments he makes from the
non-profits to his own corporation, Berman & Company, Inc., for
'consulting.' " [http://www.vegsource.com/articles/berman_release.htm
http://www.parentalfreedom.com/response2berman.htm]
Berman was also implicated in a cash-for-favors scandal involving Newt
Gingrich.
http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2001Q1/berman2.html
---
'Big Food' funded Web site attacks celebs, foundations
By Andrea Coombes, CBS MarketWatch.com, Dec 27, 2002

http://netscape5.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B01E0D78F%2D9728%2D40F0%2\
D8FD9%2DF59A6B0F473A%7D&siteid=netscape

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Robert Redford is linked to "the
utility infielder of nanny groups;" Mary Tyler Moore dwells among the
"outer fringes of the animal-rights universe" and Woody Harrelson
supports a group that's "turning into a violent version of Forrest
Gump."

Meanwhile, renowned foundations such as the Pew Charitable
Trusts finance groups that are like "money-laundering enterprises."

Such are the characterizations of ActivistCash.com, a Web
site underwritten by food and beverage industry leaders to thwart
efforts of activists to change food and farming policies.

"You have self-appointed public interest advocates who are
neo-prohibitionists in disguise," said David Martosko, director of
research at the Center for Consumer Freedom, which operates the site.
"You've also got the anti-meat crowd.

"There are a lot of public health people that think America
would be better off without meat and dairy," said Martosko, who declined
to reveal companies supporting the site. "We want people to know who's
buying them, who's paying them and who's connected to other activities
with nefarious goals."

National activist groups and celebrities pumping a cause
often aren't the white knights they appear to be, but some groups
contacted were stunned at how their efforts were being depicted.

ActivistCash lists the Pew Charitable Trusts because it
gives money to the Tides Foundation, which "routinely obscures the
sources of its tax-exempt millions, and makes it difficult (if not
impossible) to discern how the funds are actually being used," according
to the site.

But Pew Charitable Trusts spokeswoman Barbara Beck
disagreed, saying the foundation spends considerable time vetting all of
its grantees, including the Tides Foundation.

"When Pew makes an investment in a project, there is an
enormous amount of fact-finding and research that is done before any
support is given to any project. It could take years. We do our due
diligence better than anyone," Beck said. "The Tides Center is a public
charity, tax-exempt, the purest form of nonprofit."

ActivistCash does not hide the fact that food and alcoholic
beverage producers, restaurant operators and individuals fund it.

"We're sort of like a trade association, but we're more like
a public interest group that educates the public," spokesman Mike Burita
said.

Last week Tyson Foods (TSN) , the nation's largest chicken
producer, suggested reporters check out the site to learn more about
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), which filed a
lawsuit against Tyson over product claims. See full story.

On the site, the Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine is characterized as a "fanatical animal rights group trying to
pass itself off as a physician's organization" with physicians
constituting "only 5 percent of its membership."

PCRM spokeswoman Simon Chaitowitz said the group promotes a
vegan diet devoid of all animal products, including milk and eggs, and
opposes "unethical human and animal research."

As for the group's membership base: "They act as if we hide
our membership. We're proud of our membership. It's nearly 5,000 doctors
and more than 100,000 laypeople," she said.

Most of the activist groups listed on the site work on
environmental, farming, or genetically-engineered food issues. Robert
Redford is slammed for being associated with the Natural Resources
Defense Council, and Mary Tyler Moore for her work for the Farm Animal
Reform Movement, according to the site.

But Mothers Against Drunk Driving comes under fire as well.

"We've seen MADD depart from their original mission which
was curbing the problem of drunk driving to one where they're almost
approaching a neo-prohibitionism," Burita said. "They've gone from
targeting dangerous drunk drivers to targeting social drinkers.

"Our primary focus is on food and drink ... (but) there are
a lot of tangential things that tie into that as well," Burita said.
"You see, there are groups that have a certain anti-food focus but are
also anti-corporate and anti-globalization."
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/932
aspartame: methanol, formaldehyde, formic acid toxicity:
brief review: Murray 12.28.2 rmforall:

Rich Murray, MA Room For All rmforall@...
1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 USA 505-986-9103

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/messages
for 933 posts in a public searchable archive

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/862 long review

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/910
formaldehyde & formic acid from methanol in aspartame:
Murray: 12.9.2 rmforall

It is certain that high levels of aspartame use, above 2 liters daily
for months and years, must lead to chronic formaldehyde-formic acid
toxicity, since 11% of aspartame (1,120 mg in 2L diet soda, 5.6 12-oz
cans) is 123 mg methanol (wood alcohol), immediately released into the
body after drinking (unlike the large levels of methanol locked up in
molecules inside many fruits), then quickly transformed into
formaldehyde, which in turn becomes formic acid, both of which in
time become carbon dioxide and water-- however, about 30% of the
methanol remains in the body as cumulative durable toxic metabolites of
formaldehyde and formic acid-- 37 mg daily, a gram every month.
If 10% of the methanol is retained as formaldehyde, that would give 12
mg daily formaldehyde accumulation, about 60 times more than the 0.2 mg
from 10% retention of the 2 mg EPA daily limit for formaldehyde in
drinking water.

Bear in mind that the EPA limit for formaldehyde in
drinking water is 1 ppm,
or 2 mg daily for a typical daily consumption of 2 L of water.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/835
RTM: ATSDR: EPA limit 1 ppm formaldehyde in drinking water July 1999
5.30.2 rmforall

This long-term low-level chronic toxic exposure leads to typical
patterns of increasingly severe complex symptoms, starting with
headache, fatigue, joint pain, irritability, memory loss, and leading to
vision and eye problems and even seizures. In many cases there is
addiction. Probably there are immune system disorders, with a
hypersensitivity to these toxins and other chemicals.

Confirming evidence and a general theory are given by Pall (2002):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/909
testable theory of MCS type diseases, vicious cycle of nitric oxide &
peroxynitrite: MSG: formaldehyde-methanol-aspartame:
Martin L. Pall: Murray: 12.9.2 rmforall
************************************************************************