NEWSBYROBIN BECK

The food processing world is reeling right now one day after a shocking new series of tests released by Consumer Reports revealed that many leading brands of canned foods contain Bisphenol A (BPA)—a toxic chemical linked to health risks including reproductive abnormalities, neurological effects, heightened risk of breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, heart disease and other serious health problems.

BPA is used in the lining of cans and the toxin leaches from the lining into the food. According to Consumer Reports just a couple of servings of canned food can exceed scientific limits on daily exposure for children.

The federal government is currently studying the dangers of BPA and advocates are calling on the FDA to ban the use of BPA in food and beverage packaging by the end of the year. Companies in other industries, including Wal-Mart, Target, Nalgene, and Babies R Us have already made commitments to stop using BPA.

The food industry, however, is fighting hard to stop any government regulation. They say it is too logistically complicated to move away from BPA-lined cans. And it is true that right now there isn’t a good way to produce cans without BPA. But alternative packaging does exist. You may have heard of glass, to take just one example. Or, given how much mind-blowing chemical science goes into the production of most packaged foods, with a shift in research spending the manufacturers could probably devise a technological solution.

Robin Beck is Change.org's Organizing Director and the lead organizer for Blog Action Day 2009.

We at Change.org are thrilled to announce that Blog Action Day 2009 is finally here! For those of you who aren’t familiar, Blog Action Day is an annual event – held on October 15th – in which bloggers from around the world unite to write about the same topic on the same day.

This year Change.org was asked to run Blog Action Day, and I’ve just spent the past two months serving as lead organizer – corresponding with thousands of bloggers in more than 135 countries and working with dozens of leading nonprofits and media partners in preparation for the big day.

In August we asked bloggers from around the world to vote on the topic they wanted to write about, and the overwhelming selection was climate change.  I have to admit, I was pleased. I don’t think there is another global issue today as important or urgent as climate change, nor one that impacts more aspects of all of our lives.

I’ve been a lifelong environmental and social justice advocate and it’s been exciting to see the overwhelming response in support of writing about a topic that, not so long ago, was obscure and unsexy.

As soon as we announced the winning topic, top blogs like Mashable, The Official Google Blog, Autoblog, Neatorama and Gadling immediately signed on in support. Even more important has been the enthusiastic response of thousands of niche bloggers covering topics ranging from politics to travel, food, knitting and more around the globe.

We’ve also been fortunate to have many of the world’s leading nonprofit organizations involved, including the TckTckTck campaign, the United Nations Foundation, NRDC, 350.org, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Care, World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, 1Sky, the National Wildlife Federation, and just this week – Al Gore’s organization: the Alliance for Climate Protection.

We were also pleasantly surprised by the active participation of two national governments, showing that leaders throughout the word are not only taking this issue seriously, but are also serious about engaging grassroots citizen participation on the web.

In Spain the ruling PSOE party has helped translate our awesome Blog Action Day video into Spanish and has become an active supporter. In the UK, the foreign ministry, and now the Prime Minister himself, have become not just supporters but active participants.  In fact, Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote his country’s first blog post at 12:01am on October 15th.

In the context of all this activity, many people have been asking me lately what I see as the impact of Blog Action Day and what I consider success.

My most honest answer is that I think the biggest impact, and the biggest measure of success, is that today new conversations are happening about climate change in places they never have before. Bloggers who usually write about their daily lives, about business, about design, technology, travel, or family are having a new discussion. And that discussion is bringing one of the most urgent issues of our time to a wider audience than ever before.

You can watch as the day unfolds with our live stream of all of your posts and tweets at: www.blogactionday.org.  Thanks for engaging with us in Blog Action Day 09!

More than 3,600 people have taken action on our recent campaign asking leading doctors, universities and health organizations to rescind their support for the new "Smart Choices" food labeling program. The industry-backed program has generated a big controversy because it allows products like Froot Loops to get a green "Smart Choices" check mark on their packaging. Froot Loops is more than 40% sugar and no reputable scientist would call that a healthy breakfast.

Initially the Smart Choices program featured four doctors "representing non-industry" on their board of directors and listed their affiliations with Tufts University, Baylor College of Medicine, the American Dietetic Association, and the American Diabetes Association. These doctors (Eileen Kennedy, Dennis Bier, Mary Hager, and Richard Kahn respectively) were obviously recruited to legitimize the new labeling scheme.

Thanks to change.org activists and a lot of attention in the media and across the blogosphere, both the American Dietetic Association and the American Diabetes Association have had their names removed from the Smart Choices web site.

You might notice that Smart Choices hasn't done much to publicize the fact that neither group endorses the new marketing ploy (let's call it what it is shall we?). Both of the ADAs, it seems, understand that they can't in good conscience be affiliated with any sort of labeling that calls Froot Loops healthy.

Good for them and good for all the change.org readers who helped them understand the need to distance themselves from the industry-backed system.

Now we need to turn our attention to the two universities that are still allowing their names to be used in the Smart Choices marketing materials: Tufts and Baylor.

These are both reputable schools that should know better than to allow an industry marketing effort co-opt their good names in order to sell more sugary cereals to children. Our petition is still up and these schools, not to mention all four doctors who are risking their individuals reputations on supporting the "Smart Choices" label, need to know that the public is paying attention. Once we get all of the institutional names wiped off the Smart Choices site it is going to be a lot harder for the ridiculous "Smart Choices" program to continue to maintain any real credibility.

Add your name, send a message, and stand up to unhealthy industry marketing gimmicks. For added motivation, read Mike's post that explains Ten Reasons Why the Smart Choices Food Labeling Scheme is Outrageous.

[Photo credit: dark magshin]