CCF

http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/headline/2054

http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/136

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Consumer_Freedom

HSUS

http://www.hsus.org/about_us/about_hsus_programs_and_services/eye_on_the_opposition/center_for_consumer_freedom.html

http://hsus.typepad.com/wayne/2007/07/desperate-disto.html

http://www.hsus.org/about_us/statements

http://www.satyamag.com/jun05/pacelle.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humane_Society_of_the_United_States

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ASPCA Group Discussion: http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=43&pst=751897&reply=1#754955

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Dang! I had a link that talked about one of the head guys at the CCF having his hand in the things like the NRA and pro hunting groups & also some shady stuff. I cannot find it now to save my life. I know I posted it in the ASPCA group because it was directed towards Bill C. I still can't fine it.  ERRRRRR  

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NEWS RELEASE

August 7, 2008

Washington—The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) responds to news releases published recently by the “Center for Consumer Freedom” (CCF), a group funded by the tobacco, meat, and junk food industries, and the American Meat Institute (AMI), a meat-industry organization that promotes consumption of processed meats and other unhealthful products.

Both organizations, which are funded by the meat industry, aim to confuse consumers about the genuine health risks posed by processed meats. Those risks are supported by extensive scientific research, including a recent landmark report from two prestigious cancer organizations—the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) and the World Cancer Research Fund. The AICR report concluded that when it comes to colon cancer, there is absolutely no amount of processed meat that's safe to eat. In fact, according to researchers, just one 50-gram serving of bacon, sausage, deli meats, or other processed meat daily increases our risk of colorectal cancer, on average, by 21 percent.

Other cancer organizations, including the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute, have also flagged processed meats as a cancer risk and recommend that consumers avoid processed meats or reduce their consumption of these products.

According to exposés in major media outlets, CCF was founded by tobacco lobbyist Rick Berman with more than $3 million from Philip Morris and continues to receive funding from industries that market unhealthful products. Through CCF and other front groups, Berman has fought against stricter limits on legal blood-alcohol levels, improvements in minimum wage, health information for consumers, and other progressive efforts that his commercial clients view as contrary to their interests.

Over the past few years, CCF has escalated its attacks against organizations that warn the public about the health risks associated with alcohol, meat, and other junk food products. Berman has admitted publicly that his MO is to “shoot the messenger” by trying to disparage the credibility of his opponents. His employees do not attempt reasoned discussion of the scientific issues about health. The long list of public health advocates in CCF’s line of fire includes former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for speaking out against drunk driving, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for tackling food safety, the World Health Organization for addressing obesity, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

As to CCF’s and AMI’s false statements about PCRM, here’s the truth. Founded more than 20 years ago, PCRM is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization working to promote good nutrition and higher standards in both human and animal research. PCRM conducts clinical nutrition research and helps educate the public about preventive medicine, especially the multitude of health benefits possible with low-fat and vegetarian diets. PCRM also opposes unethical research. PCRM exposed experiments in which short, healthy children were to be injected with a genetically engineered growth hormone in an attempt to make them taller. PCRM also exposed the practice of using massive estrogen doses to suppress height in tall adolescent girls. In addition, PCRM vigorously promotes alternatives to the use of animals in medical education and research through a variety of innovative programs.

PCRM’s physicians, dietitians, and scientists are leaders in their fields. They publish their work in peer-reviewed academic journals, present their findings before scientific conferences, and serve as consultants on government panels. PCRM’s president Neal Barnard, M.D. (www.NealBarnard.org), for example, is a respected nutrition researcher whose research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in major peer-reviewed journals. PCRM experts are also popular with lay audiences. PCRM doctors and nutritionists are frequent guests in the national and international media and popular writers in the lay press.

These industry organizations sometimes mistakenly charge that the American Medical Association (AMA) disagrees with PCRM’s nutrition policies or with vegetarian diets. This is patently untrue. PCRM did have disagreements with the AMA in the early 1990s (PCRM favored vegetarian diets, while the AMA was initially skeptical), but in February 2004, the AMA released a statement saying that its previous criticisms of PCRM’s stance on vegetarianism do not represent current AMA opinion or policy (www.pcrm.org/news/statement040218.html). There is no longer any acrimony between the groups. Many PCRM members are also AMA members. PCRM president, Neal D. Barnard, M.D., is an AMA Lifetime Member.

CCF and other meat-industry organizations also allege that PCRM acts as a “front” for other groups. This is another unfounded and defamatory claim. While CCF is indeed an industry front, PCRM is an independent, nonprofit organization, and has been since its founding in 1985. PCRM works with a wide range of organizations

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I found it!!!

http://www.consumerdeception.com/

What Is the Center for Consumer Freedom,
and Why Is It Attacking PETA?

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit corporation run by lobbyist Richard Berman through his Washington, D.C.-based for-profit public relations company, Berman & Co. The Center for Consumer Freedom, formerly known as the Guest Choice Network, was set up by Berman with a $600,000 “donation” from tobacco company Philip Morris.

Berman arranges for large sums of corporate money to find its way into nonprofit societies of which he is the executive director. He then hires his own company as a consultant to these nonprofit groups. Of the millions of dollars “donated” by Philip Morris between the years 1995 and 1998, 49 percent to 79 percent went directly to Berman or Berman & Co.

Richard Berman is an influence peddler. He has worked out a scheme to funnel charitable donations from wealthy corporations into his own pocket. In exchange, he provides a flurry of disinformation, flawed studies, op-ed pieces, letters to the editor, and trade-industry articles, as well as access to his high-level government contacts, who are servants of the industries he represents.

Berman’s name might sound familiar. In 1995, Berman and Norm Brinker, his former boss at Steak and Ale Restaurants, were identified as the special-interest lobbyists who donated the $25,000 that disgraced then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was hauled before the House Ethics Committee for influence-peddling over the money. Berman and Brinker were lobbying against raising the minimum wage.

Richard Berman is a spin doctor. For example, he has argued against a Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) initiative to lower the blood alcohol content (BAC) limit for drivers by claiming that the stricter limits would punish responsible social drinkers. He has claimed that U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warnings about salmonella-related food poisoning are just “whipping up fear over food.”

Here’s how an internal Philip Morris memo described Berman’s spin: “His proposed solution would broaden the focus of the ‘smoking issue,’ and expand into the bigger picture of over-regulation.” Smoking won’t kill you; over-regulation will.

Berman is “a one-man wrecking crew on important issues.” His approach has been described as “misleading” and “despicable.”  Berman has been called “a tobacco company whore,” but he’s branched out since then.

Using “freedom of choice” as his battle cry, Berman has now taken on PETA and a number of other groups and organizations whose points of view could have an impact on the profits of his clients by waking consumers up. Berman’s Guest Choice Network has an “advisory panel” whose members in 1998 included officials representing companies ranging from Cargill Processed Meat Products and Outback Steakhouse to Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association and Sutter Home Winery. Berman’s clients are companies with vested interests in low employee wages; cheap, unhealthy restaurant-chain food, particularly meat; and tobacco, soft drink, and alcohol consumption—companies like Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, Armour Swift, and Philip Morris, whose product line includes Kraft Foods and everything from Marlboro cigarettes to Oscar Meyer wieners and which is a major shareholder in its former subsidiary Miller Brewing, now known as SABMiller.

PETA’s recent successes in gaining fast-food industry concessions for more humane conditions for farm animals have sent ripples of fear through the food and beverage service industry. About the same time that McDonald’s buckled to PETA’s demands, Richard Berman changed his front group’s name and stepped up his attacks.

The key to Berman’s aggressive strategy is, in his own words, “to shoot the messenger ... we’ve got to attack their credibility as spokespersons,”—an interesting remark from someone whose background and funding so severely challenge his own credibility.

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Thanks guys for these contributions. It's good to place these references in one place for a quick look up from time to time to remind the ignorant...

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