August 2012 – Corporations and Health Watch

Historic Fuel Efficiency and Auto Pollution Standards Finalized

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Corporations and Health Watch

Cross-posted from the Union of Concerned Scientists News Center

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54.5 Mpg-Equivalent Standard a Big Step toward Halving U.S. Oil Use within 20 Years, Science Group Says

hybrid feature — 2013 Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid

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WASHINGTON (Aug. 28, 2012) – The finalization of historic new federal automobile standards covering new passenger vehicles sold between 2017 and 2025 is one of the biggest actions ever taken to reduce U.S. oil use and a huge step on the path toward halving the country’s projected consumption within 20 years, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) said today.

Under the new standards, which arose from a widely supported agreement between automakers, the White House, and California state officials, average fuel economy for new cars and light trucks would nearly double, and global warming pollution levels for the new vehicle fleet would be cut in half by model year 2025.

“This is truly a watershed moment. Twenty years from now we’ll be looking back on this as the day we chose innovation over stagnation,” said Michelle Robinson, director of UCS’s Clean Vehicles program. “These standards will protect consumers from high gas prices, curb global warming pollution, cut our oil use, and create new jobs in the American auto industry and around the nation.”

The new standards build on a similar set of regulations that are already saving consumers money at the pump and cutting oil use. The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation are implementing the standards for model years 2012 through 2016, which allow automakers to produce a fleet of vehicles that simultaneously complies with both the Clean Air Act and Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards.

According to UCS analysis, the combined standards will:

Cut oil use by as much as 3.1 million barrels per day by 2030 – roughly the amount we import from the Persian Gulf and Venezuela combined;
Save consumers $8,000 over the life of a model year 2025 vehicle, compared to the average vehicle on the road today, even after paying for fuel-saving technology; and
Reduce U.S. global warming pollution by as much as 570 million metric tons in 2030, the equivalent of taking a third, or 85 million, of today’s cars and trucks off the road for an entire year.

In addition to support from automakers, lawmakers, scientists, consumer advocates, environmental groups, and national security experts, a recent poll from the Consumer Federation of America found that 74 percent of Americans support the new standards. Most respondents also said they want higher fuel economy in their next vehicle purchase, but despite this deep popularity and the many benefits of the standards, a vocal minority continues to speak out against the rules.

“If you are against these common-sense standards, you are against saving consumers money, against consumer choice, and for leaving our economy open to being crippled yet again by our expensive oil use,” said Robinson.

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Automakers are already producing cleaner, more efficient vehicles that meet the standards.

“From advanced engines and transmissions to hybrid powertrains, automakers are already demonstrating what they can do with fuel-efficient technology,” said Jim Kliesch, research director for the Clean Vehicles program. “Thanks to these standards, this is just the beginning of the fuel-saving choices consumers will have on the showroom floor.”

The new standards are a critical step to turn around our nation’s growing rate of oil consumption, and just one of many. By tapping deeper into existing efficiency technology and promoting innovative solutions here in the United States, our nation can build on the groundwork these standards create and put the nation on a course to cut its projected oil use in half over a 20-year period.

UCS’s Half the Oil Plan lays out a practical and feasible path to reach that goal, and includes technologies and policies that make passenger vehicles and commercial trucks more efficient, hybrid and electric vehicles more practical, and vehicle fuels less polluting.

“Automakers are already showing us what they can do with a skilled and determined workforce,” Robinson said. “We need to build on that groundwork and take an even bigger bite out of our oil consumption.”

Click here to learn more about the new standards and the role they play in long-term oil savings.

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Survey Shows Small Arms Trade Has Doubled Since 2008

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Corporations and Health Watch

In its 2012 report released this week, Small Arms Survey found that legal global trade in small arms has grown to at least $8.5 billion a year. If the illicit trade were added, it would come to more than $10 billion, the weapons research group said Monday. The Small Arms Survey had estimated the global trade in small arms, munitions and spare parts at more than $4 billion four years ago. The countries that export more than $100 million of small arms were the United States, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Austria, Japan, Switzerland, Russia, France, South Korea, Belgium and Spain.

New York State Attorney General Investigates Energy Beverage Firms’ Marketing

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Corporations and Health Watch

The Wall Street Journal reports that New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating whether the multi-billion dollar energy-drink industry is deceiving consumers with misstatements about the ingredients and health value of its products. Schneiderman issued subpoenas to PepsiCo Inc, the makers of AMP, Monster Beverage Corp, and Living Essentials LLC, maker of 5-hour energy drink. The subpoenas asked for information on the companies’ marketing and advertising practices.

Gun Smuggling and the U.S. Mexico Border

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Corporations and Health Watch

A new video by Cuéntame and the Washington Office on Latin America, part of a campaign to stop gun smuggling into Mexico, shows the lines of accountability in the gun trade. According to official data, “Over the last 5 years, nearly 60,000 people have lost their lives in Mexico’s drug-related wave of violence. More than 70% of the weapons seized in Mexico in the last three years and submitted for tracing came from the U.S.”

Australian Tobacco Companies Lose Fight Over Packaging

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Corporations and Health Watch

Earlier this month, the High Court in Australia upheld that Government’s pioneering laws to force tobacco companies to put their products in plain packaging. Read an interview with various Australians involved in the tobacco controversy for varying opinions on the national and global significance of the decision.

New study shows alcohol advertisers use magazines to target youth

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Corporations and Health Watch

David Jernigan is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing to Youth at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. He has spent many years studying alcohol advertising to youth. In a new article published in The Journal of Adolescent Health, Elizabeth Rhoades, also at Johns Hopkins, and Jernigan reported on their study on alcohol advertising in magazines. Corporations and Health Watch’s Nicholas Freudenberg asked Jernigan some questions about the new study. In addition, David Jernigan’s recent column on state laws to control alcohol marketing to youth “Under the Influence” was recently posted Huff Post Science. To read it, click here.

CHW: How did you do this study?

DJ: We examined 1,261 ads for alcopops, beer, spirits or wine that appeared more than 2,500 times in 11 magazines that are popular among teens. These magazines have youth readerships equaling or exceeding 15 percent. The ads were rated according to a number of factors, such as whether they portrayed over-consumption of alcohol, addiction content, sex-related content, or injury content.

CHW: How common were ads with sexual themes?

DJ: Almost one-fifth of the ads contained sexual connotations or sexual objectification.

CHW: What kinds of alcoholic beverages were being advertised in the magazines you studied?

DJ: We found that in our sample, ads were concentrated across type of alcohol, brand and outlet, with spirits representing about two-thirds of the sample, followed by ads for beer, which comprised almost another 30 percent. The ten most advertised brands, a list comprised solely of spirits and beer brands, accounted for 30 percent of the sample, and seven brands were responsible for more than half of the violations of industry marketing guidelines.

CHW: And what were your conclusions?

DJ: The content of alcohol ads placed in magazines is more likely to be in violation of industry guidelines if the ad appears in a magazine with sizeable youth readership. We also found that the prevalence of problematic content in magazine alcohol advertisements is concentrated in advertising for beer and spirits brands. Violations of industry guidelines and addiction content appear to increase with the size of youth readerships, suggesting that individuals aged 21 and under may be more likely to see such problematic content than adults.

CHW: What does your study say about the alcohol industry’s voluntary codes?

DJ: The finding that violations of the alcohol industry’s advertising standards were most common in magazines with the most youthful audiences tells us self-regulated voluntary codes are failing. It’s time to seriously consider stronger limits on youth exposure to alcohol advertising.

CHW: So what’s the bottom line meaning of your study?

DJ: Alcohol is responsible for 4,700 deaths per year among young people under the age of 21, and is associated with the three leading causes of death among youth: motor vehicle crashes, homicide and suicide. Youth are getting hit repeatedly by ads for spirits and beer in magazines geared towards their age demographic. At least 14 studies have found that the more young people are exposed to alcohol advertising and marketing, the more likely they are to drink, or if already drinking, to drink more. This report should serve as a wake-up call to parents and everyone else concerned about the health of young people.

CHW: What’s the mission of your Center?

DJ: The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) monitors the marketing practices of the alcohol industry to focus attention and action on industry practices that jeopardize the health and safety of America’s youth. Reducing high rates of underage alcohol consumption and the suffering caused by alcohol-related injuries and deaths among young people requires using the public health strategies of limiting the access to and the appeal of alcohol to underage persons.

Photos courtesy of Center on Alcohol Marketing to Youth

Big Tobacco Shills Trying to Stop GMO Labeling in California

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Corporations and Health Watch

Cross-posted from Appetite for Profit

The food industry really hates it when you compare them to Big Tobacco. They try to deny the negative association by claiming that food is different than tobacco. Of course that’s true, but why are the same consultants that have worked for the tobacco industry now shilling for Big Food, opposing the ballot initiative that would require labeling of all foods containing GMO ingredients?

Hiring Secret Consultants for the Dirty Work

The latest financial filings in California for the “No on 37: Coalition Against the Deceptive Food Labeling Scheme” – reveal a $7,500 payment to the Sacramento-based political consulting firm, MB Public Affairs. Here is how the Los Angeles Times described the firm last year:

MB Public Affairs is headed by Mark Bogetich, a garrulous operative known to his friends as “Bogey,” who has helped a number of Republican candidates neutralize their opponents. In recent years, MB Public Affairs has worked for Altria, once known as the Phillip Morris Cos. …

Bogetich has also been called “the go-to guy for [the Republican] party,” and “the only game in town.” The L.A. Times article explains how last year MB Public Affairs filed more than 50 public record act requests to dig up dirt on a small but effective group called the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. No wonder, since the organization has scored such important victories as a living wage for workers, which would threaten plenty of businesses.

But which ones? Who knows, because by hiring MB Public Affairs to do its dirty work, industry gets to keep its nose clean – a classic Big Tobacco tactic. Well-known brands such as PepsiCo (which I wrote about last week) and Kraft don’t want to be associated with negative campaigning, so they farm out the job to consulting firms. In this case, they went right to the top, or the bottom. Things are likely to get ugly.

Creating Front Groups for the Dirty Work

Another tactic honed by Big Tobacco is to form a front group, which appears to be made up of small businesses and others designed to give the impression of a grassroots campaign, but in reality is funded by large corporations. This tactic, known as an Astroturfing, is alive and well with “No on 37,” which describes itself as, “A broad coalition of family farmers, scientists, doctors, taxpayers, small businesses, labor, food companies, biotechnology companies and grocers.

Small farmers and small businesses? I don’t see any listed on the “Who We Are” page. I do see many not-so-small trade groups representing numerous not-so-small corporations, some of them from outside California, including CropLife America, which is a trade group for the biotech and pesticide industry.

Also, the “No on 37” campaign is represented by the law firm, Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, which has a sordid history of stealth tactics such as Astroturfing. And no wonder, with former Phillip Morris outside council Tom Hiltachk as the campaign’s treasurer. (His firm’s address is listed on the webpage for where to send donations; can’t get much cozier with the No campaign than that.)

Hiltachk had this disingenuous quote about the GMO labeling initiative back in February: “Farmers and food producers strongly oppose this costly, ill-conceived labeling proposition.” There are those invisible farmers again.

No stranger to California politics, Hiltachk’s firm represents the California Republican Party and helped make Arnold Schwarzenegger governor by orchestrating the statewide recall campaign of former Governor Gray Davis.

According to PolluterWatch, Tom Hiltachk and his firm are well known for creating front groups that promote or attack ballot initiatives at the behest of the firm’s wealthy corporate clients: “In the past Hiltachk has attacked anti-smoking initiatives while being paid by major tobacco corporations.”

And this scathing article at ThinkProgress from 2010 describes Hiltachk’s attempt to repeal California’s clean energy policy and says his “under-the-radar tactics of shifting money around and using phony groups are nothing new.” Specifically:

During the eighties and nineties, Hiltachk and his law partners helped the tobacco industry, with funding from Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, coordinate a variety of stealth front groups. While his law firm received over a million from tobacco interests, Hiltachk helped organize “Californians for Smokers’ Rights,” a supposedly “grassroots” group that relied on tobacco industry consumer lists to mobilize opposition to anti-smoking initiatives.

Another Big Tobacco front group Hiltachk’s firm managed was “Californians for Fair Business Policy,” which fought local efforts to enact smoke-free bans in California in the early 1990s.

This is going to be a busy election season for Hiltachk, as he is also the mastermind behind the deceptive union-busting Proposition 32, about which a local California paper writes: “if you liked Citizens United, you will love Prop 32.” As the New Yorker sums it up in an article describing the firm’s shady operations, “They specialize in initiatives that are the opposite of what they sound like.”

Another group with Big Tobacco origins now spreading lies about the GMO labeling initiative is the unsubtle front group, “California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse,” whose executive director recently warned us to “beware of trial lawyers lurking in your food.” (It seems lawyers are scarier than altering the genetic code of the food supply.) According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s Sourcewatch, Philip Morris is a primary funder of various “Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse” groups, which under the guise of tort reform aim to make it harder to bring lawsuits for problems caused by hazardous products.

Doubt is Their Product

In sum, the food industry, to oppose a simple labeling law, is hiring lawyers and consultants with ties to the tobacco industry, to deploy stealth tactics such as creating front groups, digging up dirt on opponents, and spreading outright lies.

For decades the tobacco industry and its shills hid the truth by deploying its most effective weapon: manufacturing doubt about the health hazards of smoking. How many millions of Americans died as a result of Big Tobacco’s deceptive and cynical campaign? Why would we trust these same operators now?

You can hardly blame industry for calling on such shady characters. Big Food has seen the polling data showing that more than 90 percent of consumers want to see GMO foods labeled. When you don’t have the people or the truth on your side, all you have left is playing dirty.

Antipsychotic Drug Prescriptions for Off-label Conditions Increase for Children and Youth

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Corporations and Health Watch

In an article published this month in the Archives of General Psychiatry, Mark Olfson and his colleagues reported that between 1993-1998 and 2005-2009, visits with a prescription of antipsychotic medications per 100 persons increased almost eightfold for children, almost five fold for adolescents, and almost doubled for adults. Only a small proportion of child and adolescent antipsychotic visits included an FDA clinical indication; many prescriptions were for off-label use. An earlier commentary by the psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin on the Huffington Post links this increased use to unethical drug company marketing practices.

McDonald’s to customers: Eat more

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Corporations and Health Watch

McDonald’s new Breakfast After Midnight menu — available in locations across the state of Ohio and in Denver and Boston — offers limited breakfast offerings from 12 a.m. onward. Included are popular items like Egg McMuffins, Sausage McMuffins, hotcakes with sausage, breakfast burritos, fruit and maple oatmeal, hash browns, juice and coffee. The Huffington Post reports that the menu will be available in all 24-hour McDonald’s stores in featured markets. One slogan for the campaign is “the moon is full you should be too.”

Wall Street Journal editorials recycle anti-regulatory arguments

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Corporations and Health Watch

To forestall policy on climate change, the Wall Street Journal editorial board routinely downplays scientific consensus, overstates the cost of taking action, and claims that politics, not science, motivates those concerned about the climate. But in a new analysis of more than 100 editorials from 1976 to present, Media Matters for America shows that the Wall Street Journal used these same rhetorical tactics in previous decades on acid rain and ozone depletion and these arguments did not stand the test of time.

Month: August 2012