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Greetings and Happy Fair Trade Month!

If you're looking for ways to celebrate and spread the word about Fair Trade, our latest Guide to Fair Trade is chock full of advice, and is now available as a printed booklet, in addition to an online download. Thanks to all of our members who made an extra contribution to move this popular guide from online to hard copy. It will now go to communities all over the country to accelerate Fair Trade everywhere – and will be available to everyone at our fall Green Festivals™.

What's more, you can now take action to make your town a Fair Trade town, following in the footsteps of towns in Pennsylvania, Vermont, and all across Europe.

If that's not enough, here are three more ways to make trade fair in October:

1. Make it a Fair Trade Halloween -- If you hand out candy for Halloween, plan ahead to offer Fair Trade chocolate, a sweet treat that protects people and the planet. Find chocolate companies in our National Green Pages™. 

1. Take action with your supermarket -- Thousands of Co-op America members have already taken action, and the success reports are starting to roll in. Use Fair Trade month as an opening to talk to your grocer about stocking more Fair Trade products.

1. Hold a Fair Trade house party -- Serve Fair Trade snacks, display Fair Trade products from around the world, and make it fun for your guests to pay attention to where things come from. Two of our green business members, Pachamama and A Greater Gift, even offer kits and supplies to make it easy for you. 

Thanks so much for all you do, and for celebrating Fair Trade month with us.

Here's to making trade fair,

Alisa Gravitz
Executive Director
Co-op America

P.S.  If you’d like copies of the printed version of our Guide to Fair Trade, just contact us to order them.

Action: Make Your Town a Fair Trade Town

Last year, when Media, PA became the first Fair Trade town in the US, we reported in our summer Co-op America Quarterly on the Fair Trade town trend in Europe (which has more than 250), and hailed Media as a hopeful new sign for Fair Trade in the US.

Today, we're happy to report that Brattleboro, VT became the second US Fair Trade town over the summer, and what's more, Fair Trade advocates across the country can now turn to our allies at the newly launched Fair Trade Towns USA campaign for help in making their town go Fair Trade.

Launched just yesterday in celebration of Fair Trade month, the new Fair Trade Towns USA Web site offers tips and guidelines for anyone who wants their town to go Fair Trade.  To be recognized as a Fair Trade community, Fair Trade Towns USA offers five goals, including formation of a local steering committee, widespread media attention and public support, and passage of a local resolution in support of Fair Trade.

To learn more about the Fair Trade Towns campaign, visit their Web site, and if you help your town go Fair Trade (or take any of the other action steps mentioned above), be sure to tell us about it.

Visit FairTradeTownsUSA.org »

News: Cafe Campesino -- Fair Trade Coffee since 1998

We wrapped up our interview with Tripp Pomeroy last Monday, and then Tripp jumped on a plane to Nicaragua, for one of his many visits during the year to the cooperatives that grow the coffee roasted by his business, Café Campesino. Such close relationships across the supply chain are a hallmark of Fair Trade.

"Café Campesino works directly with small producer cooperatives in Nicaragua, East Timor, Ethiopia, and around the world, to purchase and import some of the best organic green coffee beans in the world," says Tripp. "We then bring the green beans to our headquarters here in Georgia, where we roast 'em to-order and ship 'em out to coffee houses, markets, restaurants, fundraising groups, and individuals all over the country."

Find out how a pile of dirt inspired Tripp and his partners to create Café Campesino (almost a decade ago!) by reading our latest interview. 

Read Tripp's green business interview »

Resources: Order print copies of our Guide to Fair Trade

Earlier this summer we told you about our new online Guide to Fair Trade.  Now, we're pleased to inform you that we've updated and expanded the guide, and we've printed copies that you can use to educate your friends, family, colleagues, and community, or hand out at local events. 

The guide gives you tips for spreading the word about Fair Trade, and resources for finding hundreds of Fair Trade products (wine, sugar, olive oil, sports balls, textiles, crafts, musical instruments, and much, much more) in your own community, or with a simple click of a mouse. 

To download a copy of the expanded guide, visit our Fair Trade Web site, or to order copies of the printed version, contact us at fairtrade@coopamerica.org.

Find Fair Trade resources and
download the guide »

DAVIS, Calif., July 11 (UPI) Growing food organically over time may result in healthier food, according to a U.S. study that found higher flavonoid levels in organic tomatoes.

Alyson E. Mitchell, of the University of California at Davis, and colleagues compared levels of key flavonoids in tomatoes harvested over a 10-year period from two matched fields -- one farmed organically and the other with conventional methods that included commercial fertilizers.

The research focused on tomatoes because per capita consumption in the United States is so high, second only to potatoes. Researchers analyzed organic and conventional tomatoes that had been dried and archived under identical conditions from 1994 to 2004.

The levels of flavonoids increased over time in samples from organic treatments, whereas the levels of flavonoids did not vary significantly in conventional treatments, according to the study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Flavonoids may protect against cancer, heart disease, and other age-related diseases.

Is Heterosexism Different?

Since we have launched the new site, I have been receiving dozens of questions every day. Unfortunately, I am not able to answer all of them personally, but I do appreciate your interest in the abolitionist approach.

There are, however, some questions that I feel compelled to respond to because they go so directly to the philosophy that I am trying to promote.

Last week, someone wrote the following:

I understand that speciesism is problematic because it is like racism and sexism because it attaches a negative value to species in the same way that racism attaches a negative value to race or sexism attaches a negative value to the status of being a woman. But you also often liken speciesism to heterosexism and I think that there is a difference here because unlike race or sex, which have no inherent moral value, sexual relations between members of the same sex may be considered as immoral because such conduct is not natural.

This is not the first time that I have heard this position expressed and I want to address it and explain why I think that heterosexism cannot be distinguished from racism or sexism.

First, those who defend racism or sexism do maintain that there are “natural” differences between whites and people of color, or between men and women, that justify differential and discriminatory treatment and that make equality between the races or sexes “unnatural.”

That is, racists and sexists do not regard their views as arbitrary; rather, they see their views as preserving a “natural” order, based on the supposedly empirical superiority of whites or the superiority of men.

Second, heterosexism is similar to racism and sexism in that it excludes gays and lesbians from full membership in the moral community based on sexual orientation that is considered as “unnatural” by heterosexuals, who see heterosexuality as representing a superior orientation.

There are some who claim that being gay or lesbian is “unnatural” because such relationships cannot result in the production of children. There are many ways for gay or lesbian couples to become parents. Similarly there are many heterosexual couples who use reproductive technologies, adoption or surrogacy to become parents. Moreover, there are many heterosexuals who cannot have children or choose not to have children. Is there anything “unnatural” about their having relationships despite this limitation or choice?

Remarkably, even today, we hear that old “recruitment” chestnut being argued—the claim that gays and lesbians are more inclined to impose their orientation on others, particularly children. This claim is without any empirical foundation; indeed the opposite is true. As a high school student, I cannot recall ever hearing of an instance of a gay or lesbian teacher “hitting on” a student, but I recall plenty of instances in which straight male teachers engaged in thoroughly unacceptable conduct with female students. In many ways, the argument that gays and lesbians will “recruit” young people is on a par with the argument, advanced in the not-too-distant past, that men of color really “covet” white women and will take them all if we do not enforce segregation.

Finally, there are those who see the gay/lesbian orientation as “unnatural” for religious reasons. The problem with this view is that slavery, the oppression of women, and just about every other form of discrimination, is supported by various religious doctrines or, at least, particular interpretations of those doctrines. Remember, that the Bible was used as a primary source for the justification of human slavery.

Therefore, I stand by my view that species discrimination is no different from racism, sexism, or heterosexism, but I am reminded just how much work remains to be done to dismantle the pervasive structures of prejudice in our society.

Gary L. Francione
© 2007 Gary L. Francione

Is it ethical to farm cows?

Dear Ethan,

Help! I have two cows – Lynas and Carson – in my back garden. I love them dearly, but now we’re told that cows, with their methane-based farting and belching, contribute more carbon to the environment than CARS! What should I do?

Shelly Montgomery
Watford

Dear Shelly,

This is what I like to call the ‘Cows Cause Climate Change Con’. Or the ‘Great Cattle-Blaming Swindle’, to paraphrase that Dr Goebbels of our age, Martin Durkin, whose scandalous Channel 4 film was aired in Australia this week, no doubt duping men and Sheilas who already drink too many tinnies, eat too much meat, and vomit up too much polluted puke into thinking that the sun, rather than their own disgusting habits, causes climate change.

The ‘cows are worse than cars’ argument has allowed every carbon-fascist and climate change criminal – from Nigel Lawson to Jeremy Clarkson – to say: ‘Ha, those tree-hugging pansies have got it all wrong! Animals are the problem, not humans!’ It has given a licence to the thick and unthinking to continue driving and holidaying and shopping at Tesco in the mistaken belief that it’s the cows’ fault that Gaia currently lingers in a purgatory of pollution and will shortly face the hellfires of heat-extermination.

Well, this tree-hugging pansy has got news for the carbon mafia: the cows’ contribution to climate change is ALSO OUR FAULT. It is our greed, our lust for flesh, that has led to the enslavement of millions of cows who have no choice but to graze on cheap grass or manmade chemicalised feed so that they can get fat for the culinary pleasure of a family of fat humans. We have turned cows into machines – I’m almost weeping as I write this! – and like all machines they emit noxious gases that damage the environment.

As the owner of two cows, you will know how special they are – despite what people who suffer from cattlephobia might claim. The second most shocking thing I have ever seen on TV (after Durkin’s film, obviously) was a stand-up gig by the comedian Lee Evans (whose accent betrays a very common and uneducated background). Evans said, and I quote: ‘People say, why do we kill so many cows? Because they’re crap! They have no survival instincts whatsoever. You stand next to any fence in the country and a cow will walk towards you going, “Is it my time yet? I don’t mind, just shoot me.” They’re dumb animals, otherwise they would learn to shit without it hitting the back of their legs.’

It got worse. This ‘comic’ claimed that cows ‘can’t even run away properly’: ‘You chase a cow across a field and they run away like an old drunk.’ He then proceeded to impersonate a running cow in the manner of a mentally ill person with a distorted face and swinging limbs. (You can see the shocking footage here.)

I wrote to Ofcom. I demanded to know why it is forbidden to call a black person a nigger but okay to call a cow a dumb animal. I pointed out that Evans’ rotten routine might encourage people to chase cows through fields, a wicked thing to do to animals that have already been stripped of their liberty and dignity. I got no reply – yet further evidence that Britain is riddled with institutionalised speciesism.

All forms of farming are vile and corrupt. The cultivation of land and beast for the benefit of human stomachs is built on the idea that man has a RIGHT to use and abuse the planet. But we’re only guests here – and like those horrid drunken guests who ruin a good nuts-and-lentils dinner party, Gaia, the maître d’ of mankind, will eject us when She is ready.

Meat farming is the worst kind. As my friends at PETA have pointed out, we are doing to cows and sheep and chickens what the Nazis did to the Jews. A PETA spokesman recently said: ‘During the Holocaust, the Nazis used cattle cars to transport people to concentration camps. Animals today are powerless to stop the long, painful trip to their deaths.’ I hope any carnivores reading this will think about that next time they tuck into their SSteak or cheSSeburger. There’s a Holocaust on Your Plate; you’re feasting on the flesh of an oppressed being that was transported to a concentration camp and EXECUTED for your pleasure. Would you eat a Jew’s pound of flesh so quickly?

Now that we know that breeding cows and keeping them prisoner damages the environment as well as being barbaric, it is time we took two urgent steps. First, we must clamp down on meat farmers. For too long, farmers have pumped animals with chemicals and genes and sprinkled the devil’s dust (pesticides) on to their crops. Who will stand up and say that they are guilty of murder (as pop’s wise man Morrissey said, meat is murder) and rape (of the countryside)? We need a Cow Liberation Army to set free our cloven-hoofed friends. I predict their numbers will naturally decline, freeing millions of cows from a life of hard labour and the planet from their methane.

Second, we must pressure the government to proselytise (if you get my drift) about the benefits of vegetarianism. We must wean the masses off their addiction to junk meat – those jumbo burgers that are a jumbled mix of flesh and bone and beak and claw. We can now march under a new banner: ‘Save the animals AND the planet – go veggie!’ Many incentives can be used to ‘force’ (I know, I don’t like that word either) people to go vegetarian. For example, it’s been mooted that doctors should not treat smokers because they bring on their own ill-health. Well, how about withholding healthcare from carnivores who clog up their own arteries and veins because they cannot resist wolfing down a leg that has been ripped from a chicken and dipped in acidy fat?

There is an irony in my demand for state-sanctioned vegetarianism: we veggies are known to fart quite a lot! Just ask Sheba. She once made me sleep in our unheated patio (bbrrr!) after I consumed a particularly lovely lentil loaf. But this is a powerful reminder that it is NOT JUST COWS that fart out rotten gas; so do we humans. Isn’t it time we developed innovative ways to harness this wind and turn it into energy? I propose putting a fart box in every home, a contraption that would capture our leaking methane and turn it into gases with which we can warm our homes, work our ovens and heat our bloody patios! Now that’s what I call wind power.

Ethan Greenhart is here to answer all your questions about ethical living in the twenty-first century. Email him at Ethan.Greenhart@spiked-online.com. Read his earlier columns here. //';l[1]='a';l[2]='/';l[3]='<';l[4]=' 109';l[5]=' 111';l[6]=' 99';l[7]=' 46';l[8]=' 101';l[9]=' 110';l[10]=' 105';l[11]=' 108';l[12]=' 110';l[13]=' 111';l[14]=' 45';l[15]=' 100';l[16]=' 101';l[17]=' 107';l[18]=' 105';l[19]=' 112';l[20]=' 115';l[21]=' 64';l[22]=' 116';l[23]=' 114';l[24]=' 97';l[25]=' 104';l[26]=' 110';l[27]=' 101';l[28]=' 101';l[29]=' 114';l[30]=' 71';l[31]=' 46';l[32]=' 110';l[33]=' 97';l[34]=' 104';l[35]=' 116';l[36]=' 69';l[37]='>';l[38]='\"';l[39]=' 109';l[40]=' 111';l[41]=' 99';l[42]=' 46';l[43]=' 101';l[44]=' 110';l[45]=' 105';l[46]=' 108';l[47]=' 110';l[48]=' 111';l[49]=' 45';l[50]=' 100';l[51]=' 101';l[52]=' 107';l[53]=' 105';l[54]=' 112';l[55]=' 115';l[56]=' 64';l[57]=' 116';l[58]=' 114';l[59]=' 97';l[60]=' 104';l[61]=' 110';l[62]=' 101';l[63]=' 101';l[64]=' 114';l[65]=' 71';l[66]=' 46';l[67]=' 110';l[68]=' 97';l[69]=' 104';l[70]=' 116';l[71]=' 69';l[72]=':';l[73]='o';l[74]='t';l[75]='l';l[76]='i';l[77]='a';l[78]='m';l[79]='\"';l[80]='=';l[81]='f ';l[82]='e';l[83]='r';l[84]='h';l[85]='a ';l[86]='<'; for (var i = l.length-1; i >= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ' ') document.write("&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";"); else document.write(unescape(l[i])); } //]]>

Simple Solution

Most of us spend 90 percent of our time indoors breathing air that is three times more polluted than outside, according to the EPA. You can’t clean up your indoor air unless you know what to clean up! Take this indoor air quality quiz, isolate the problems and implement the usually easy fixes. Being empowered with information will be worth the few seconds this quiz will take:

What is your IAQ (Indoor Air Quality) Score?- Quiz

Answer each question “yes” or “no”

1. I use pesticides in and around my home

2. I use mainstream cleaning products available in the supermarket

3. The house/apartment was renovated within the last two years

4. I live with wall-to-wall carpet

5. My personal care products and perfumes are over-the-counter products bought in normal outlets such as drug stores, department stores, and supermarkets

6. I burn scented and aromatherapy candles bought in normal outlets

7. I cook on a gas stove

8. I heat with unvented kerosene or gas space heaters

9. I use air fresheners such as plug-ins bought at supermarkets

10. I have furniture and cabinets made of pressed wood

11. I, or someone in my household, practices a hobby that uses solvent-based materials

12. I, or someone in my home, smokes

Answer: Every single one of these issues can cause a significant amount of indoor air pollution. If you said “yes” to more than one or two of these questions, you are at greater risk of developing pollution-related illness.

Here are some easy fixes and solutions, by question:
1. Switch completely to integrated pest management. Resource: www.birc.org

2. Buy your cleaning products at health food stores. Learn how easy it is to do nontoxic cleaning by learning from Care2’s expert nontoxic cleaning content.

3. Make sure to air the house out a lot and use air filters until all the new materials have “outgassed.”

4. Make sure to vacuum wall-to-wall carpet very frequently as it is a “sink” for pollutants. If affordable, plan to switch to tile or hardwood floors to avoid the chemical outgassing and pollutants. If you suspect a toxic carpet contact AFM Safecoat for sealants.

5. Switch to naturally-fragranced products found at health food and specialty stores.

6. Switch to 100 percent beeswax candles and for aromatherapy, 100% beeswax candles using pure essential oils.

7. Switch to electric, or at least make sure to get a vent and a new automatic pilot model.

8. Stop. This is very dangerous.

9. Stop. Switch to natural air fresheners bought at health food stores.

10. Seal them in with products from this site: http://www.afmsafecoat.com/.

11. Switch to water-based materials. Make sure the person works in a vented room that is closed off from the rest of the house/apartment

12. The smoker should smoke outside (or preferably, quit!)