Corporations

Demonstrators are targeting the Starbucks coffee company for misleading the public about its "Fair Trade" coffee. Starbucks CEO Orin Smith has admitted that sales of Fair Trade coffee make up less than one-tenth of one percent of the company's revenues. Demonstrators also criticize Smith's support for coffee growers that operate "sweatshop plantations" in places like Viet Nam.

A new industry-sponsored cheering section for Bush/Cheney's energy policies has been formed, called the "Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth."

The Environmental Working Group has created an extensive, keyword-searchable archive of 37,000 pages of internal chemical industry documents, detailing what industry insiders knew but didn't tell us about topics such as arsenic, the dangers of hairspray and the active ingredient in Scotchgard, or about the severe contamination of a chemical company town in Alabama. Visit this site to find out how the chemical industry spins, distorts, and twists the facts to suit its purposes -- and to prevent the public from finding out how dangerous their products really are.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has posted on the Internet a database of more than 1,100 professors and scientists who consult for or have other affiliations with chemical, gas, oil, food, drug, and other companies. The web site also provides partial information about nonprofit and professional organizations that receive industry funding. The well-documented database is part of CSPI's Integrity in Science project and is designed for activists, journalists, policy makers, and others who are concerned about potential conflicts of interest.