Nothing says summer better than sparkling wines. One of our favorite categories is Cava, the Spanish bubbles.
Cava - The Spanish Champagne
A toast, in Spain, is practically always drunk with cava, the Spanish sparkling wine made by the champagne method. This is especially true when the New Year is brought in with the twelve grapes swallowed in time to the chimes of the clock in the town square or in the Puerta del Sol, Madrid.
Cava, made by the Champagne method, is a very acceptable alternative to French champagne and, it should be said, much better value for money. Almost all cava is produced in Catalonia, especially the Penedés region, although eight different provinces are included in the production area.
Our Cava's at Aroma Thyme Bistro:
Dibon Brut Reserve:
We fell in love with from the first sip. We were at a wine tasting in NYC and picked it out of 20 or so sparkling wines.
We have this in stock as of April 17th, 2008. At around $30 it is a great value!
Dibon, Catalunya, Spain
Cava Brut Reserve
45% Macabeo
25% Xarel-lo
30% Parellada
First Green Certified© Restaurant in the Hudson Valley, Ellenville (Ulster County) NY. New American menu with grass-fed steaks, seafood & vegetarian. One of the best stocked bars in the Hudson Valley with 300 craft beers, 300 wines & independent produced spirits. Hudson Valley Magazine “Best Of” winner 10 years in a row. Awards include: Best Beer Menu, Best Chef, Best Bistro, Best Vegetarian, Best of County & Best Wine List. Trip Advisor's Number 1 restaurant.
Ellenville's Number 1 Trip Advisor Restaurant!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Muddy Water Pinot Noir
We just can't keep enough Pinot Noir in stock these days at Aroma Thyme Bistro. Well we just found a wonderful rich concentrated Pinot Noir from New Zealand. It comes in at a nice price on our list at $54. It is definitely a value pic for us in the Pinot Noir section of the wine list.
Just as our name reflects the place, our wines reflect our vineyards. Our vineyards are situated on sunny slopes above the Waipara Valley in North Canterbury, on the South Island of New Zealand. Protected from cool sea breezes by a range of coastal hills, the Waipara area has a climate distinct from the rest of Canterbury.
Reviews:
Michael Cooper, Buyer's Guide to NZ Wines, 2007: The 2004 Vintage was fermented with indigenous yeasts and matured for a year in French oak barriques. It's a ruby-hued, sturdy wine (14.5% alcohol), earthy, with ripe flavours of cherries, plums and spices, some rustic notes and a well-rounded finish.
100 Top New Releases, February 2007: 97Points,*****stars, Muddy Water's flagship pinot is a selection of fruit from the best area of its vineyard. The flavours linger tantalisingly long after this wine of subtle power has been swallowed. lovely red cherry and spice with a classy oak influence.
Corney & Barrow Tasting, October 10 2006, Roger Jones from Wiltshire wrote:
New Zealand - an outstanding Pinot Noir 2004 from Muddy Water a real class act.
Keith Stewart, 12 August 2006, Darkish red in colour. Lovely nose is aromatically fruity at heart, but its freshness is moderated by a warmer, more earthy glow of fresh game. Lovely cool, clear, fruit infused impact is long and elegant, building layer on layer of warm game and cool, pure fruit. Mid palate depth is good, and the freshness of fruit makes a comeback towards the end, before a warm earthiness takes over and leaves a telling mark of conviviality on the finish. A Beauty. Drink from: 2007 to 2011.
Winestate Magazine, July/August 2006, ***1/2 stars, Good colour, some depth to the fruit and feeling past the primary fruit stage although still developing.
Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine, June/July 2006, 87 Points, **** stars, This is a dense, stylish pinot noir with a lovely silken texture. Seductively sweet fruit flavours are beautifully integrated into classy spicy oak. It's an understated style that is currently showing plenty of promise.
Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine, June/July 2006, "Muddy Water" is the English translation of Waipara, but there's nothing muddy about the bright, focused flavours of the pinot noir here. I like the wines as much as the unorthodox labels that sometimes appear under names such as Mojo or Reloaded "because one batch of the wine tasted different."
New Zealand Wine Fair in Sydney, February 28 2006, Black cherries on the nose. Focused and powerful with excellent concentration. Lovely fruit definition with black cherries and red fruits. Needs 2 years to open uo. Well made wine with good balance. Belinda Gould is destined to become a Waipara Legend. 92pts
Winemaker's notes
Harvest: 19 lots, hand harvested between March 29 and April 23rd, 2004. Selected fruit only. Destemmed into small open top fermenters.
Brix: 23-26 TA: 6.7 – 9.9g/l pH: 3.16– 3.47
Yield: 6.1T/ha (2.44T/ac)
Cellar & Bottling: Pre fermentation cold soak for one to six days. Manual cap management. Total time on skins 11 -20 days. Pressed, racked to barrels, 30% new french oak. Full malolactic in barrel. Barrel aged on lees for ten months before racking. Racked back to barrels and aged for a further four months before racking, blending and bottling.
Bottled on August 8th, 2005
RS: <2 g/L TA: 5.7g/L pH: 3.55 Alcohol: 14.5%
The wine: Our vineyard work is aimed at managing the canopies and crop levels to give us the best possible fruit. Our future vineyards are being planted with a range of different clones at closer spacings to increase complexity and concentration. The 2003 - 2004 growing season in North Canterbury was warm and dry in the spring and early summer resulting in an excellent fruit set. There was considerable rain during late January and February which, along with the abundant crop, necessitated more vineyard work than usual as we thinned fruit and removed leaves. The quality of this wine is directly related to the efforts of our vineyard workers.
We rarely move our wine and when possible movements are by gravity or pressure to reduce the effect of pumping. Bottled with screw caps to ensure the wine is in the best condition when you drink it. For more on screw caps and cork taint see www.screwcap.co.nz or www.corkwatch.com
Just as our name reflects the place, our wines reflect our vineyards. Our vineyards are situated on sunny slopes above the Waipara Valley in North Canterbury, on the South Island of New Zealand. Protected from cool sea breezes by a range of coastal hills, the Waipara area has a climate distinct from the rest of Canterbury.
Reviews:
Michael Cooper, Buyer's Guide to NZ Wines, 2007: The 2004 Vintage was fermented with indigenous yeasts and matured for a year in French oak barriques. It's a ruby-hued, sturdy wine (14.5% alcohol), earthy, with ripe flavours of cherries, plums and spices, some rustic notes and a well-rounded finish.
100 Top New Releases, February 2007: 97Points,*****stars, Muddy Water's flagship pinot is a selection of fruit from the best area of its vineyard. The flavours linger tantalisingly long after this wine of subtle power has been swallowed. lovely red cherry and spice with a classy oak influence.
Corney & Barrow Tasting, October 10 2006, Roger Jones from Wiltshire wrote:
New Zealand - an outstanding Pinot Noir 2004 from Muddy Water a real class act.
Keith Stewart, 12 August 2006, Darkish red in colour. Lovely nose is aromatically fruity at heart, but its freshness is moderated by a warmer, more earthy glow of fresh game. Lovely cool, clear, fruit infused impact is long and elegant, building layer on layer of warm game and cool, pure fruit. Mid palate depth is good, and the freshness of fruit makes a comeback towards the end, before a warm earthiness takes over and leaves a telling mark of conviviality on the finish. A Beauty. Drink from: 2007 to 2011.
Winestate Magazine, July/August 2006, ***1/2 stars, Good colour, some depth to the fruit and feeling past the primary fruit stage although still developing.
Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine, June/July 2006, 87 Points, **** stars, This is a dense, stylish pinot noir with a lovely silken texture. Seductively sweet fruit flavours are beautifully integrated into classy spicy oak. It's an understated style that is currently showing plenty of promise.
Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine, June/July 2006, "Muddy Water" is the English translation of Waipara, but there's nothing muddy about the bright, focused flavours of the pinot noir here. I like the wines as much as the unorthodox labels that sometimes appear under names such as Mojo or Reloaded "because one batch of the wine tasted different."
New Zealand Wine Fair in Sydney, February 28 2006, Black cherries on the nose. Focused and powerful with excellent concentration. Lovely fruit definition with black cherries and red fruits. Needs 2 years to open uo. Well made wine with good balance. Belinda Gould is destined to become a Waipara Legend. 92pts
Winemaker's notes
Harvest: 19 lots, hand harvested between March 29 and April 23rd, 2004. Selected fruit only. Destemmed into small open top fermenters.
Brix: 23-26 TA: 6.7 – 9.9g/l pH: 3.16– 3.47
Yield: 6.1T/ha (2.44T/ac)
Cellar & Bottling: Pre fermentation cold soak for one to six days. Manual cap management. Total time on skins 11 -20 days. Pressed, racked to barrels, 30% new french oak. Full malolactic in barrel. Barrel aged on lees for ten months before racking. Racked back to barrels and aged for a further four months before racking, blending and bottling.
Bottled on August 8th, 2005
RS: <2 g/L TA: 5.7g/L pH: 3.55 Alcohol: 14.5%
The wine: Our vineyard work is aimed at managing the canopies and crop levels to give us the best possible fruit. Our future vineyards are being planted with a range of different clones at closer spacings to increase complexity and concentration. The 2003 - 2004 growing season in North Canterbury was warm and dry in the spring and early summer resulting in an excellent fruit set. There was considerable rain during late January and February which, along with the abundant crop, necessitated more vineyard work than usual as we thinned fruit and removed leaves. The quality of this wine is directly related to the efforts of our vineyard workers.
We rarely move our wine and when possible movements are by gravity or pressure to reduce the effect of pumping. Bottled with screw caps to ensure the wine is in the best condition when you drink it. For more on screw caps and cork taint see www.screwcap.co.nz or www.corkwatch.com
The Whole Story
I have been saying this for years about the so-called health food stores. There are alot of health food stores that sells fashion organic. They rely on consumers that just want organic in any version, even if it is a deep fried potato chip with some added "natural flavors". You MUST read labels of the foods you buy. Organic does not mean healthy or better. Being educated about proper nutrition means eating healthy. Of course consuming organic ingredients is part of that, not organic prepared foods.
Marcus Guiliano
Aroma Thyme Bistro
The Whole Story About Whole Foods Market
by Barbara L. Minton (see all articles by this author)
(NaturalNews) Organic food has become the mantra of consumers who are aware of the dangers of pesticides, chemicals and hormones used in the growing and processing practices of the commercial food industry. Many of us have come to trust stores making the implied agreement with us that the food they are selling is largely organic, pure and free from pesticides, chemicals and hormones. We enjoy those stores where we can revel in nature’s bounty, enjoy righteous culinary delights, and take home whatever appeals to us because we’re sure it’s also good for us. Unfortunately, the merger of Whole Foods and Wild Oats may be a signal that it’s time to take off the rose colored glasses.
Behind the Merger
It came as no surprise that this merger was allowed even though it effectively wiped out the major competition in the organic market segment. The surprise involved the bizarre, pseudonymous behavior of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey during the six years between the first offer Whole Foods made to acquire Wild Oats, which was rebuffed, and the second offer made in February, 2007.
During those years Mackey posted almost daily on the Yahoo message board for Wild Oats’ stock under the name of “Rahodeb” (an anagram of his wife’s name). In these posts he belittled Wild Oats whenever its stock price rose, without disclosing who he was. In a post written in March of 2006, Mackey as Rahodeb said, “Whole Foods says they will open 25 stores in OATS territories in the next 2 years. The end game is now underway for OATs... Whole Foods is systematically destroying their viability as a business - market by market, city by city.”
These posts were designed to keep down the price of Wild Oats shares. The lower the Wild Oats stock price, the sweeter would be the merger price for Whole Foods. Mackey’s efforts to hold down the price may have also helped create pressure by OATS shareholders for their board to accept the depressed bid when it finally came. This sort of conventional commitment to the bottom line belies the feel-good healthy vibes pumped out by the Whole Foods publicity department, and it smacks of the behavior of more traditional corporate scoundrels.
Whole Foods: Image vs. Reality
Mackey has had great success at marketing Whole Foods to the typical affluent, well-educated, liberal organic supermarket customer. This is a lifestyle customer with a need to feel that he or she is contributing to the betterment of himself, mankind and the earth.
But it is harder than ever to make the case that shopping at Whole Foods is socially commendable. Whole Foods has faced well-deserved criticism for the effects it has on the environment, and its employees. In Michael Pollan’s bestseller, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he describes Whole Foods as an “industrial organic” company that has done away with the counter-cuisine and local distribution that were the center of the 1960’s back-to-nature movement. As Pollan points out, there is nothing environmentally friendly or health conscious about Whole Food’s practice of flying asparagus from Argentina in January.
Whole Foods has responded to criticism by initiating programs to fund low-interest loans to local farmers, and put farmer’s market space in their parking lots. Follow-through on this initiative has been minimal although the store windows have been plastered with posters extolling the benefits of eating locally grown foods and spotlighting individual farmers.
But again, as one tours the produce section there is the perception that image and reality are quite different. In displays of largesse, fruits and vegetables are heaped into towering displays. Most of them have tags declaring their points of origin, and these points are California and Mexico for the most part, no matter where the store is located, no matter what the season.
Labor unions are also upset with Mackey. Although the image of the stores is abundance, bounty and the good life, Whole Foods is the second largest union-free food retailer, behind Wal-Mart. In its twenty-seven year history, only its store in Madison, Wisconsin successfully unionized, and that fell apart with no contract to show for the efforts of workers. Whole Foods has taken the position that unions are not valid, and has a pamphlet to give workers titled “Beyond Unions”. The chain has also fended off unionizing attempts in Berkeley, California; St. Paul Minnesota; and Falls Church, Virginia.
Quality Standards at Whole Foods
According to the Quality Standards page of the store’s website, Whole Foods features products that are “natural”, meaning “free of artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, and hydrogenated oils”. It does not claim that all their products are free of such ingredients, just the featured products. They claim commitment to foods that are fresh, wholesome and safe to eat. This is the extent of the quality pledge the store makes to its customers. It does not claim that all the foods it sells are organic or free of everything troublesome.
There is an extensive Unacceptable Food Ingredients list posted on the website, and the impression is that these ingredients are not to be found in any foods sold at Whole Foods. Notably missing from this list is any mention of recombinant bovine growth hormone.
The quality standard for meat and poultry is “best tasting, freshest and most wholesome, naturally raised meat available”. There is no promise that its meat and poultry is free range, vegetarian fed, rBGH free, pastured or organic, although it does carry some organic meats. The word ‘naturally’ is not defined, nor does it have an industry standard definition. As applied to meat and poultry it can apparently mean anything from ‘free of all chemical additives’ to ‘not born with two heads’.
For produce the quality standard is “colorful and lovingly stacked”. Clearly Whole Foods shines in its variety of fresh organic fruits and vegetables, most of which has come a long distance from large corporate farms. There is little locally grown produce. Along side the organics are colorful and lovingly stacked conventional fruits and vegetables, priced as though they were organic.
Whole Foods conventional produce is grown under the same conditions as produce at the ‘regular’ supermarkets. This means it may be grown in depleted soil and fertilized with chemical fertilizers. Unless conventional produce is tagged as being pesticide free, it probably isn’t. And remember that other countries do not generally have the level of laws restricting the use of extremely toxic chemicals on produce that are in force in the US. Growers will tend to use the most cost effective pesticides rather than the least harmful.
Grocery items including cleaning products, pet foods, dairy and bulk are held to the standard of being “natural". Many grocery items contain organic ingredients. Some of them are formulated identically with items sold at ‘regular’ stores, but sell at much higher prices.
Many of the canned or boxed items such as, soups, chili, stews, gravies, and prepared frozen or boxed entrees and meals contain MSG although it is on Whole Foods list of unacceptable food ingredients. Because MSG is so ubiquitous in formulations, you can suspect its presence in large numbers of bagged, bottled, frozen or canned foods at all stores including Whole Foods, but it is often hidden under another name. When you see any of these ingredients, you know the product contains MSG:
* Vegetable Protein Extract
* Gelatin
* Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein
* Autolyzed Vegetable Protein
* Textured Vegetable Protein
* Yeast Extract
* Autolyzed Yeast Extract
* Sodium Caseinate
* Calcium Caseinate
* Soup Base
* Textured Whey Protein
Foods containing these ingredients often contain MSG:
* Malted Barley
* Maltodextrin
* Broth
* Bouillon
* Carrageenan
* Protein Isolate
* Pectin
* Enzymes
* Seasonings
* Spices
* Soy Protein or Soy Protein Isolates
* Cornstarch
* Rice or Oat Protein
* and anything fermented or modified with enzymes
None of these appear on the unacceptable food ingredients’ page. Apparently if it’s called something else, MSG is acceptable at Whole Foods.
Dairy products may or may not contain rBGH. The ones that don’t are displayed next to the ones that do. Some are organic, some are not.
Bakery items contain no bleached or bromated flour. Many do contain processed white sugar.
Personal care products contain many of the ingredients listed on the unacceptable food ingredients’ list. Apparently if it enters your body through the skin instead of the mouth it is okay with them.
The crown jewel of Whole Foods is probably its hot and cold prepared foods. Again, the quality standard for these foods is the nebulous word ‘natural’. There are no artificial sweeteners, colors, flavors, or synthetic preservatives in their prepared foods.
The salad bar contains a few organic items, denoted by red tongs. Most items on the salad bar are conventional, the kind that are found in salad bars everywhere.
The deli dishes as well as those on the hot bar are also made to the ‘natural’ standard. They contain almost no organic ingredients. Some contain MSG in the form of vegetable/beef/chicken stock, or hydrolyzed vegetable proteins. Many are liberally laced with canola oil.
What it All Means
Whole Foods is a Fortune 500 Company, a huge and highly profitable corporation that owes its allegiance to its shareholders. As every good corporation yearns to do, Whole Foods is exploiting a niche market in which it is the only big player. Since it has cleared the field of major competitors, it is free to raise prices and reduce quality. But if prices go too high or quality too low, another competitor will come along. This is the way of big business. That the schism between image and reality may be less at Whole Foods than at many corporations is of some comfort.
About the author
Barbara is a school psychologist, a published author in the area of personal finance, a breast cancer survivor using "alternative" treatments, a born existentialist, and a student of nature and all things natural.
Marcus Guiliano
Aroma Thyme Bistro
The Whole Story About Whole Foods Market
by Barbara L. Minton (see all articles by this author)
(NaturalNews) Organic food has become the mantra of consumers who are aware of the dangers of pesticides, chemicals and hormones used in the growing and processing practices of the commercial food industry. Many of us have come to trust stores making the implied agreement with us that the food they are selling is largely organic, pure and free from pesticides, chemicals and hormones. We enjoy those stores where we can revel in nature’s bounty, enjoy righteous culinary delights, and take home whatever appeals to us because we’re sure it’s also good for us. Unfortunately, the merger of Whole Foods and Wild Oats may be a signal that it’s time to take off the rose colored glasses.
Behind the Merger
It came as no surprise that this merger was allowed even though it effectively wiped out the major competition in the organic market segment. The surprise involved the bizarre, pseudonymous behavior of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey during the six years between the first offer Whole Foods made to acquire Wild Oats, which was rebuffed, and the second offer made in February, 2007.
During those years Mackey posted almost daily on the Yahoo message board for Wild Oats’ stock under the name of “Rahodeb” (an anagram of his wife’s name). In these posts he belittled Wild Oats whenever its stock price rose, without disclosing who he was. In a post written in March of 2006, Mackey as Rahodeb said, “Whole Foods says they will open 25 stores in OATS territories in the next 2 years. The end game is now underway for OATs... Whole Foods is systematically destroying their viability as a business - market by market, city by city.”
These posts were designed to keep down the price of Wild Oats shares. The lower the Wild Oats stock price, the sweeter would be the merger price for Whole Foods. Mackey’s efforts to hold down the price may have also helped create pressure by OATS shareholders for their board to accept the depressed bid when it finally came. This sort of conventional commitment to the bottom line belies the feel-good healthy vibes pumped out by the Whole Foods publicity department, and it smacks of the behavior of more traditional corporate scoundrels.
Whole Foods: Image vs. Reality
Mackey has had great success at marketing Whole Foods to the typical affluent, well-educated, liberal organic supermarket customer. This is a lifestyle customer with a need to feel that he or she is contributing to the betterment of himself, mankind and the earth.
But it is harder than ever to make the case that shopping at Whole Foods is socially commendable. Whole Foods has faced well-deserved criticism for the effects it has on the environment, and its employees. In Michael Pollan’s bestseller, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he describes Whole Foods as an “industrial organic” company that has done away with the counter-cuisine and local distribution that were the center of the 1960’s back-to-nature movement. As Pollan points out, there is nothing environmentally friendly or health conscious about Whole Food’s practice of flying asparagus from Argentina in January.
Whole Foods has responded to criticism by initiating programs to fund low-interest loans to local farmers, and put farmer’s market space in their parking lots. Follow-through on this initiative has been minimal although the store windows have been plastered with posters extolling the benefits of eating locally grown foods and spotlighting individual farmers.
But again, as one tours the produce section there is the perception that image and reality are quite different. In displays of largesse, fruits and vegetables are heaped into towering displays. Most of them have tags declaring their points of origin, and these points are California and Mexico for the most part, no matter where the store is located, no matter what the season.
Labor unions are also upset with Mackey. Although the image of the stores is abundance, bounty and the good life, Whole Foods is the second largest union-free food retailer, behind Wal-Mart. In its twenty-seven year history, only its store in Madison, Wisconsin successfully unionized, and that fell apart with no contract to show for the efforts of workers. Whole Foods has taken the position that unions are not valid, and has a pamphlet to give workers titled “Beyond Unions”. The chain has also fended off unionizing attempts in Berkeley, California; St. Paul Minnesota; and Falls Church, Virginia.
Quality Standards at Whole Foods
According to the Quality Standards page of the store’s website, Whole Foods features products that are “natural”, meaning “free of artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, and hydrogenated oils”. It does not claim that all their products are free of such ingredients, just the featured products. They claim commitment to foods that are fresh, wholesome and safe to eat. This is the extent of the quality pledge the store makes to its customers. It does not claim that all the foods it sells are organic or free of everything troublesome.
There is an extensive Unacceptable Food Ingredients list posted on the website, and the impression is that these ingredients are not to be found in any foods sold at Whole Foods. Notably missing from this list is any mention of recombinant bovine growth hormone.
The quality standard for meat and poultry is “best tasting, freshest and most wholesome, naturally raised meat available”. There is no promise that its meat and poultry is free range, vegetarian fed, rBGH free, pastured or organic, although it does carry some organic meats. The word ‘naturally’ is not defined, nor does it have an industry standard definition. As applied to meat and poultry it can apparently mean anything from ‘free of all chemical additives’ to ‘not born with two heads’.
For produce the quality standard is “colorful and lovingly stacked”. Clearly Whole Foods shines in its variety of fresh organic fruits and vegetables, most of which has come a long distance from large corporate farms. There is little locally grown produce. Along side the organics are colorful and lovingly stacked conventional fruits and vegetables, priced as though they were organic.
Whole Foods conventional produce is grown under the same conditions as produce at the ‘regular’ supermarkets. This means it may be grown in depleted soil and fertilized with chemical fertilizers. Unless conventional produce is tagged as being pesticide free, it probably isn’t. And remember that other countries do not generally have the level of laws restricting the use of extremely toxic chemicals on produce that are in force in the US. Growers will tend to use the most cost effective pesticides rather than the least harmful.
Grocery items including cleaning products, pet foods, dairy and bulk are held to the standard of being “natural". Many grocery items contain organic ingredients. Some of them are formulated identically with items sold at ‘regular’ stores, but sell at much higher prices.
Many of the canned or boxed items such as, soups, chili, stews, gravies, and prepared frozen or boxed entrees and meals contain MSG although it is on Whole Foods list of unacceptable food ingredients. Because MSG is so ubiquitous in formulations, you can suspect its presence in large numbers of bagged, bottled, frozen or canned foods at all stores including Whole Foods, but it is often hidden under another name. When you see any of these ingredients, you know the product contains MSG:
* Vegetable Protein Extract
* Gelatin
* Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein
* Autolyzed Vegetable Protein
* Textured Vegetable Protein
* Yeast Extract
* Autolyzed Yeast Extract
* Sodium Caseinate
* Calcium Caseinate
* Soup Base
* Textured Whey Protein
Foods containing these ingredients often contain MSG:
* Malted Barley
* Maltodextrin
* Broth
* Bouillon
* Carrageenan
* Protein Isolate
* Pectin
* Enzymes
* Seasonings
* Spices
* Soy Protein or Soy Protein Isolates
* Cornstarch
* Rice or Oat Protein
* and anything fermented or modified with enzymes
None of these appear on the unacceptable food ingredients’ page. Apparently if it’s called something else, MSG is acceptable at Whole Foods.
Dairy products may or may not contain rBGH. The ones that don’t are displayed next to the ones that do. Some are organic, some are not.
Bakery items contain no bleached or bromated flour. Many do contain processed white sugar.
Personal care products contain many of the ingredients listed on the unacceptable food ingredients’ list. Apparently if it enters your body through the skin instead of the mouth it is okay with them.
The crown jewel of Whole Foods is probably its hot and cold prepared foods. Again, the quality standard for these foods is the nebulous word ‘natural’. There are no artificial sweeteners, colors, flavors, or synthetic preservatives in their prepared foods.
The salad bar contains a few organic items, denoted by red tongs. Most items on the salad bar are conventional, the kind that are found in salad bars everywhere.
The deli dishes as well as those on the hot bar are also made to the ‘natural’ standard. They contain almost no organic ingredients. Some contain MSG in the form of vegetable/beef/chicken stock, or hydrolyzed vegetable proteins. Many are liberally laced with canola oil.
What it All Means
Whole Foods is a Fortune 500 Company, a huge and highly profitable corporation that owes its allegiance to its shareholders. As every good corporation yearns to do, Whole Foods is exploiting a niche market in which it is the only big player. Since it has cleared the field of major competitors, it is free to raise prices and reduce quality. But if prices go too high or quality too low, another competitor will come along. This is the way of big business. That the schism between image and reality may be less at Whole Foods than at many corporations is of some comfort.
About the author
Barbara is a school psychologist, a published author in the area of personal finance, a breast cancer survivor using "alternative" treatments, a born existentialist, and a student of nature and all things natural.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
It's Back, MENETOU SALON Domaine de Chatenoy
It's back after two years. This is a great summer wine from the Loire Valley.
Domaine de Chatenoy > Loire > France
MENETOU SALON
FOOD & WINE MAGAZINE: “Chatenoy is without peer”
An undiscovered source for excellent Sauvignon Blanc can be found in the appellation of Menetou-Salon whose sloping vineyards touch on those of Sancerre. Touring the vineyards with Pierre Clement, the young owner of the Domaine de Chatenoy, one learns that Menetou is 100% Kimmeridgian marl, unlike the varied soil types of Sancerre. The appellation has a strange, irregular elongated shape which follows this vein of soil type. The soil is clay, marne, layered with limestone. This ancient, ocean-bottom vineyard is full of crustacean fossils.
Members of the Clement family are recorded as winegrowers in 1560 but it wasn't until 1709 that they purchased the Domaine de Chatenoy. As president of the appellation, Pierre Clement is very proud of the success of Menetou Salon and of Domaine de Chatenoy. Menetou Salon is quite the rage in Paris restaurants now and he can’t supply enough, though his domaine has expanded from 12 hectares to 55 hectares in just 15 years. He produces 50,000 cases of wine a year, 2/3 of it white. He is responsible for 40% of the total production of Menetou Salon. His goal is for the wines of Menetou Salon to be recognized in their own right, not as a poor sibling of Sancerre. For that reason he has placed many restrictions on the planting of vineyards by outsiders.
With the quality of Clement’s wines, his goals may be achievable. Perhaps he can do for Menetou what Lucien Peyraud did for Bandol. Clement’s winemaking facility is impressive. It is completely state-of-the-art, which is necessary to make this quantity of high-quality wine. Winemaking here follows the philosophy of minimal handling and indigenous yeasts to produce very natural, expressive wines. After a cool fermentation, the wines are left on their fine lees, sometimes into the spring of the year following harvest. It is an approach which brings out the intensity of fruit and terroir which is at the heart of the potential of this fine vineyard.
And at the same time, he is always experimenting and pushing for changes in the AOC rules to improve the already high quality. When asked why he continues to push the margins, since his wines are already so good, he responds, “but if they can be just a little bit better, isn’t it worth it?”
Domaine de Chatenoy Website
Menetou Salon Blanc
Pierre Clement has raised the quality of his Menetou-Salon wines to new heights. He has equipped his winery with the most up to date equipment to ensure gentle handling of the fruit and the full extraction of aromas and flavors. Clement vinifies his Sauvignon Blanc grapes using one-third maceration peliculaire (maceration with the skins). The temperature of the juice is lowered as the fermentation begins slowly using only native yeasts. The young wine is left on its fine lees in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks through the winter and is bottled after a light filtration in March. The Domaine de Chatenoy Menetou-Salon Blanc is an amazingly vivid wine, bursting with aromas of citrus, white peach and flowers. On the palate, it has good concentration with flavors of red grapefruit, apricot, and minerals. In her "A Wine and Food Guide to the Loire", Jacqueline Friedrich rates Domaine de Chatenoy an “Excellent” producer, calling his Menetou-Salon white “super.” This is a must-discover wine, both for its value and vivid flavors that match perfectly with lobster and scallops, as well as river fish, white meats, and vegetable pastas and risotto.
Domaine de Chatenoy > Loire > France
MENETOU SALON
FOOD & WINE MAGAZINE: “Chatenoy is without peer”
An undiscovered source for excellent Sauvignon Blanc can be found in the appellation of Menetou-Salon whose sloping vineyards touch on those of Sancerre. Touring the vineyards with Pierre Clement, the young owner of the Domaine de Chatenoy, one learns that Menetou is 100% Kimmeridgian marl, unlike the varied soil types of Sancerre. The appellation has a strange, irregular elongated shape which follows this vein of soil type. The soil is clay, marne, layered with limestone. This ancient, ocean-bottom vineyard is full of crustacean fossils.
Members of the Clement family are recorded as winegrowers in 1560 but it wasn't until 1709 that they purchased the Domaine de Chatenoy. As president of the appellation, Pierre Clement is very proud of the success of Menetou Salon and of Domaine de Chatenoy. Menetou Salon is quite the rage in Paris restaurants now and he can’t supply enough, though his domaine has expanded from 12 hectares to 55 hectares in just 15 years. He produces 50,000 cases of wine a year, 2/3 of it white. He is responsible for 40% of the total production of Menetou Salon. His goal is for the wines of Menetou Salon to be recognized in their own right, not as a poor sibling of Sancerre. For that reason he has placed many restrictions on the planting of vineyards by outsiders.
With the quality of Clement’s wines, his goals may be achievable. Perhaps he can do for Menetou what Lucien Peyraud did for Bandol. Clement’s winemaking facility is impressive. It is completely state-of-the-art, which is necessary to make this quantity of high-quality wine. Winemaking here follows the philosophy of minimal handling and indigenous yeasts to produce very natural, expressive wines. After a cool fermentation, the wines are left on their fine lees, sometimes into the spring of the year following harvest. It is an approach which brings out the intensity of fruit and terroir which is at the heart of the potential of this fine vineyard.
And at the same time, he is always experimenting and pushing for changes in the AOC rules to improve the already high quality. When asked why he continues to push the margins, since his wines are already so good, he responds, “but if they can be just a little bit better, isn’t it worth it?”
Domaine de Chatenoy Website
Menetou Salon Blanc
Pierre Clement has raised the quality of his Menetou-Salon wines to new heights. He has equipped his winery with the most up to date equipment to ensure gentle handling of the fruit and the full extraction of aromas and flavors. Clement vinifies his Sauvignon Blanc grapes using one-third maceration peliculaire (maceration with the skins). The temperature of the juice is lowered as the fermentation begins slowly using only native yeasts. The young wine is left on its fine lees in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks through the winter and is bottled after a light filtration in March. The Domaine de Chatenoy Menetou-Salon Blanc is an amazingly vivid wine, bursting with aromas of citrus, white peach and flowers. On the palate, it has good concentration with flavors of red grapefruit, apricot, and minerals. In her "A Wine and Food Guide to the Loire", Jacqueline Friedrich rates Domaine de Chatenoy an “Excellent” producer, calling his Menetou-Salon white “super.” This is a must-discover wine, both for its value and vivid flavors that match perfectly with lobster and scallops, as well as river fish, white meats, and vegetable pastas and risotto.
Torbreck Vintners Runrig now at Aroma Thyme Bistro
We have brought this beauty in after several customers have asked for it. It is listed for $295.
Aroma Thyme Bistro
Torbreck
... cuttings from one of the old RunRig vineyards. The Shiraz is crushed on ... lightly pressed for blending with the RunRig. The blend of fruit is then ... that had been previously used for RunRig. The color is completely black/purple ... this wine is directly descended from RunRig' DAVID POWELL, Chief Winemaker , Wine, Syrah ... POWELL, Chief Winemaker, Wine, Grenache, Mourvedre. RunRig, This wine represents the finest qualities ... blend just prior to bottling. 'The RunRig is a structured, muscular effort with ... PARKER 'The Highland clans used a “runrig” system to distribute land amongst ...
Vineyard History:
Torbreck Vintners was founded by David Powell in 1994. The roots go back to 1992 when Dave, who was then working at Rockford, began to discover and clean up a few sections of dry-grown old vines. Near lifeless, he nurtured them back to health and was rewarded with small parcels of fruit that he made into wine. Dave was able to secure a contract for the supply of grapes from a run-down but ancient Shiraz vineyard. He managed to raise enough money to share-farm the vineyard, a practice which involves paying the owner a percentage of the market rate for his grapes in return for totally managing the vineyard. This share-farming principle has enabled Torbreck to use fruit from the very best vineyards in the Barossa Valley, which is home to some of the most precious old vines in the world.
In 1995 Dave crushed three tonnes of grapes and fermented them into wine in a shed on his 12-hectare Marananga property. He named his wine 'Torbreck' after a forest in Scotland where he worked as a lumberjack.
The Torbreck endeavour is based around the classic Barossa Valley varietals of Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro, and a love for the wines of France's Rhone Valley. Dave loves the intense, rich, Rhone-like flavours that come from old-vines and the fact that Shiraz and Grenache are the mainstay red grapes of the Northern and Southern Rhone often draws comparison. Torbreck doesn't only make red wines though, we have Viognier, Marsanne and Roussanne planted on our winery block which we have blended to make a white wine for the last 2 years.
In July 2002 the historic Hillside property was acquired by Torbreck. Situated in Lyndoch, it is one of the original Barossa properties. Vast and picturesque it contains some magnificent old and ancient vineyards that will further our source of premium quality fruit. The Hillside property contains a wonderful native ecosystem that supports a myriad of flora and fauna. Dave hopes to turn it into a nature reserve in the future that will be open to visits.
In June 2003 at the finish of vintage, we opened our cellar-door for sales. An original settlers hut, it has been lovingly restored and provides a personal touch and some Barossa warmth whilst you taste our wines. It is open daily and we welcome any visits.
Barossa Valley: The third wave
Robert Walters, The Australian Review of Wines
The Barossa Valley has always been fertile ground, not only for vines but also for innovative, driven winemakers who felt compelled to mark the Australian landscape in their passing. If there was an Australian Wine Industry Hall of Fame names like Max Schubert, Peter Lehmann, Wolf Blass, Grant Burge and, more recently, Robert O'Callaghan and Charlie Melton - among many other Barossans - would stand tall within it.
In terms of wine quality, there have been three main waves of inspired Evolution in the Barossa over the last 60 years. First, there were those winemakers who grasped the fact that the Barossa could make wine to match the quality of any region in the world. This story begins most famously with Max Schubert and The development of Penfolds Grange in 1951. It includes Colin Gramp, who introduced German pressure tank methods to Orlando, and John Vickery, a pioneer of skin cooling techniques at Leo Buring, whose work revolutionized sparkling and white wine making.
The second wave was formed by those men who, during the very difficult 70's and 80's, stood tall against the fashions of today (white wine, cooler climates and no fortified wine, thank you very much) as well as against the homogenizing, economic rationalism of this era (which saw many of the Barossa's major wine companies sold to multi-nationals). Peter Lehmann , then O'Callaghan, Melton, Burge, Bob McLean and Stuart Blackwell of St Hallet, were the heroes here. These men not only loved the Barossa for its rich culture and history, but also recognized the remarkable resource represented by the Barossa's old vine Shiraz and Grenache vineyards, some over 100 years of age.
It is always sobering to recall that it was only in the early 1980's that the South Australian government initiated the now famous 'vine-pull' scheme that encouraged growers to pull out ancient Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro vineyards because - at the time - they were uneconomical. Many great vineyards were lost in this process. (Maggie Beer, of course, is the culinary equivalent to these winemakers, with her ongoing work to save and enrich the Barossa's wonderful food culture) Against the trend of the day the second wave believed in the Barossa as a great wine region and loudly proclaimed their faith at dinner tables across the country - both in person and through their intensely flavoured wines. These wines were made from old vine fruit and were marked by an almost syrupy richness in the mouth, with high levels of extract and alcohol, and the sweet vanillin and chocolate nuances from contact with American oak barrels. Wines like St Hallets's Old Block, Rockford's Basket Press and Melton's Nine Popes became cult wines and, with them and others like them, the Barossa became a household name in Australia.
And so to the third wave. Today, the old guard are still there, doing what they do best, but we have a new gang of innovative wine makers - in my mind, as equally inspired as those that came before them - who are changing the face of the Barossa with their wines. The last five or so years have seen the rise and rise of a handful of tiny producers/growers making often minute quantities of deeply coloured and flavoured red wines that are marked both by their depth of flavour and class - and, it has to be said, in some cases, mind-blowingly high alcohol. These winemakers include David Powell (TORBRECK) Rolf Binder (VERITAS, MAGPIE ESTATE) Chris Ringland (THREE RIVERS) Michael Waugh (GREENOCK CREEK) and Rick Burge, cousin of Grant and the man behind Burge Family Winemakers.
While some of these winemakers have been around since the 1970's, their international prominence is a more recent phenomenon. They share a focus on quality at all costs, as well as a penchant for old, low-yielding vineyards, complexity and - typically speaking - a preference for spicy French oak rather than the sweet, relatively simple choc/vanilla/caramel of American oak. When they do use American oak, they seem to make its influence as subtle as possible. This is diametrically opposed to the (sometimes cynical) Barossan tradition of using oak to make the wines seem sweeter and hence more attractive to a mass audience. These wines are savoury, more complex, and more international.
The use of quality French oak has clearly taken the Barossa to another level of quality and introduced many international palates and critics to a standard of wine they did not know was achievable in Australia (with the exception of great vintages of Grange)... But it would be simplistic to sum up the third wave simply in terms of their oak choice. Choosing premium French oak is part of pulling out all stops in the search for quality, but it is also about trying to make wines that are interesting and refined, rather than focusing solely on richness and power. Part of this shift may have to do with may have to do with the number of young Barossans who have been influenced by time spent travelling and working away from the Barossa and the recent influx of people from outside the region.
The plain fact is there has never been a better time to be a super-premium, quality winemaker than today. The premium end of the market is booming, and demand is far outstripping supply and sending prices soaring. Third wave Barossans are very much in the right place at the right time.
Of course, just as winemakers such as Lehmann, Blass, and O'Callaghan etc came out from Schubert's overcoat, so to speak, so the third wave is a product of what came before. It would be neglectful on my part not to mention the considerable debt owed to Robert O'Callaghan by Dave Powell, Chris Ringland and Michael Waugh, all of whom learnt their skills at Rockford (indeed, Ringland is still a winemaker there). It would also be careless not to acknowledge the hard work done by second wavers like O'Callaghan, Burge, McLean, Melton and their ilk to build the reputation of the Barossa as a premium red wine region and the role this has played in clearing a path for the third wave.
This progressive reality has led to some animosity between some of the older winemakers and the third wave... It is true that much of the Barossa's strength has come from the remarkable ability of local winemakers to learn from each other and work together for the good of the region as a whole. The region was one of the first in Australia to come up with a cohesive marketing strategy and stick with it. It has worked. Some of those who joined that 'region first' push now feel somewhat bitter about the number of new 'upstart' producers who, I their eyes' are cashing in on the good name they created without giving anything back by helping to contribute to regional promotional activities.
While this resentment is understandable, I think it may also be short-sighted. The most successful marketing strategy has always been to put great wine in a bottle and, as long as these new players have the production of the finest wine possible as their primary objective, then they can only do the Barossa good.
sourced from Torbreck's website.
Aroma Thyme Bistro
Torbreck
... cuttings from one of the old RunRig vineyards. The Shiraz is crushed on ... lightly pressed for blending with the RunRig. The blend of fruit is then ... that had been previously used for RunRig. The color is completely black/purple ... this wine is directly descended from RunRig' DAVID POWELL, Chief Winemaker , Wine, Syrah ... POWELL, Chief Winemaker, Wine, Grenache, Mourvedre. RunRig, This wine represents the finest qualities ... blend just prior to bottling. 'The RunRig is a structured, muscular effort with ... PARKER 'The Highland clans used a “runrig” system to distribute land amongst ...
Vineyard History:
Torbreck Vintners was founded by David Powell in 1994. The roots go back to 1992 when Dave, who was then working at Rockford, began to discover and clean up a few sections of dry-grown old vines. Near lifeless, he nurtured them back to health and was rewarded with small parcels of fruit that he made into wine. Dave was able to secure a contract for the supply of grapes from a run-down but ancient Shiraz vineyard. He managed to raise enough money to share-farm the vineyard, a practice which involves paying the owner a percentage of the market rate for his grapes in return for totally managing the vineyard. This share-farming principle has enabled Torbreck to use fruit from the very best vineyards in the Barossa Valley, which is home to some of the most precious old vines in the world.
In 1995 Dave crushed three tonnes of grapes and fermented them into wine in a shed on his 12-hectare Marananga property. He named his wine 'Torbreck' after a forest in Scotland where he worked as a lumberjack.
The Torbreck endeavour is based around the classic Barossa Valley varietals of Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro, and a love for the wines of France's Rhone Valley. Dave loves the intense, rich, Rhone-like flavours that come from old-vines and the fact that Shiraz and Grenache are the mainstay red grapes of the Northern and Southern Rhone often draws comparison. Torbreck doesn't only make red wines though, we have Viognier, Marsanne and Roussanne planted on our winery block which we have blended to make a white wine for the last 2 years.
In July 2002 the historic Hillside property was acquired by Torbreck. Situated in Lyndoch, it is one of the original Barossa properties. Vast and picturesque it contains some magnificent old and ancient vineyards that will further our source of premium quality fruit. The Hillside property contains a wonderful native ecosystem that supports a myriad of flora and fauna. Dave hopes to turn it into a nature reserve in the future that will be open to visits.
In June 2003 at the finish of vintage, we opened our cellar-door for sales. An original settlers hut, it has been lovingly restored and provides a personal touch and some Barossa warmth whilst you taste our wines. It is open daily and we welcome any visits.
Barossa Valley: The third wave
Robert Walters, The Australian Review of Wines
The Barossa Valley has always been fertile ground, not only for vines but also for innovative, driven winemakers who felt compelled to mark the Australian landscape in their passing. If there was an Australian Wine Industry Hall of Fame names like Max Schubert, Peter Lehmann, Wolf Blass, Grant Burge and, more recently, Robert O'Callaghan and Charlie Melton - among many other Barossans - would stand tall within it.
In terms of wine quality, there have been three main waves of inspired Evolution in the Barossa over the last 60 years. First, there were those winemakers who grasped the fact that the Barossa could make wine to match the quality of any region in the world. This story begins most famously with Max Schubert and The development of Penfolds Grange in 1951. It includes Colin Gramp, who introduced German pressure tank methods to Orlando, and John Vickery, a pioneer of skin cooling techniques at Leo Buring, whose work revolutionized sparkling and white wine making.
The second wave was formed by those men who, during the very difficult 70's and 80's, stood tall against the fashions of today (white wine, cooler climates and no fortified wine, thank you very much) as well as against the homogenizing, economic rationalism of this era (which saw many of the Barossa's major wine companies sold to multi-nationals). Peter Lehmann , then O'Callaghan, Melton, Burge, Bob McLean and Stuart Blackwell of St Hallet, were the heroes here. These men not only loved the Barossa for its rich culture and history, but also recognized the remarkable resource represented by the Barossa's old vine Shiraz and Grenache vineyards, some over 100 years of age.
It is always sobering to recall that it was only in the early 1980's that the South Australian government initiated the now famous 'vine-pull' scheme that encouraged growers to pull out ancient Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro vineyards because - at the time - they were uneconomical. Many great vineyards were lost in this process. (Maggie Beer, of course, is the culinary equivalent to these winemakers, with her ongoing work to save and enrich the Barossa's wonderful food culture) Against the trend of the day the second wave believed in the Barossa as a great wine region and loudly proclaimed their faith at dinner tables across the country - both in person and through their intensely flavoured wines. These wines were made from old vine fruit and were marked by an almost syrupy richness in the mouth, with high levels of extract and alcohol, and the sweet vanillin and chocolate nuances from contact with American oak barrels. Wines like St Hallets's Old Block, Rockford's Basket Press and Melton's Nine Popes became cult wines and, with them and others like them, the Barossa became a household name in Australia.
And so to the third wave. Today, the old guard are still there, doing what they do best, but we have a new gang of innovative wine makers - in my mind, as equally inspired as those that came before them - who are changing the face of the Barossa with their wines. The last five or so years have seen the rise and rise of a handful of tiny producers/growers making often minute quantities of deeply coloured and flavoured red wines that are marked both by their depth of flavour and class - and, it has to be said, in some cases, mind-blowingly high alcohol. These winemakers include David Powell (TORBRECK) Rolf Binder (VERITAS, MAGPIE ESTATE) Chris Ringland (THREE RIVERS) Michael Waugh (GREENOCK CREEK) and Rick Burge, cousin of Grant and the man behind Burge Family Winemakers.
While some of these winemakers have been around since the 1970's, their international prominence is a more recent phenomenon. They share a focus on quality at all costs, as well as a penchant for old, low-yielding vineyards, complexity and - typically speaking - a preference for spicy French oak rather than the sweet, relatively simple choc/vanilla/caramel of American oak. When they do use American oak, they seem to make its influence as subtle as possible. This is diametrically opposed to the (sometimes cynical) Barossan tradition of using oak to make the wines seem sweeter and hence more attractive to a mass audience. These wines are savoury, more complex, and more international.
The use of quality French oak has clearly taken the Barossa to another level of quality and introduced many international palates and critics to a standard of wine they did not know was achievable in Australia (with the exception of great vintages of Grange)... But it would be simplistic to sum up the third wave simply in terms of their oak choice. Choosing premium French oak is part of pulling out all stops in the search for quality, but it is also about trying to make wines that are interesting and refined, rather than focusing solely on richness and power. Part of this shift may have to do with may have to do with the number of young Barossans who have been influenced by time spent travelling and working away from the Barossa and the recent influx of people from outside the region.
The plain fact is there has never been a better time to be a super-premium, quality winemaker than today. The premium end of the market is booming, and demand is far outstripping supply and sending prices soaring. Third wave Barossans are very much in the right place at the right time.
Of course, just as winemakers such as Lehmann, Blass, and O'Callaghan etc came out from Schubert's overcoat, so to speak, so the third wave is a product of what came before. It would be neglectful on my part not to mention the considerable debt owed to Robert O'Callaghan by Dave Powell, Chris Ringland and Michael Waugh, all of whom learnt their skills at Rockford (indeed, Ringland is still a winemaker there). It would also be careless not to acknowledge the hard work done by second wavers like O'Callaghan, Burge, McLean, Melton and their ilk to build the reputation of the Barossa as a premium red wine region and the role this has played in clearing a path for the third wave.
This progressive reality has led to some animosity between some of the older winemakers and the third wave... It is true that much of the Barossa's strength has come from the remarkable ability of local winemakers to learn from each other and work together for the good of the region as a whole. The region was one of the first in Australia to come up with a cohesive marketing strategy and stick with it. It has worked. Some of those who joined that 'region first' push now feel somewhat bitter about the number of new 'upstart' producers who, I their eyes' are cashing in on the good name they created without giving anything back by helping to contribute to regional promotional activities.
While this resentment is understandable, I think it may also be short-sighted. The most successful marketing strategy has always been to put great wine in a bottle and, as long as these new players have the production of the finest wine possible as their primary objective, then they can only do the Barossa good.
sourced from Torbreck's website.
Roger Pouillon New Champagne at Aroma Thyme
Roger Pouillon > Champagne > France
This is must try especially if are a Vueve Yellow Label Drinker.
Domaine Roger Pouillon is a small family -owned affair situated just north of Epernay and south of the Montagne de Reims, in the village of Mareuil sur Aÿ, which also boasts the presence of Billecart-Salmon. The Pouillon family is proud that their entire production is sold under their own label; neither grapes, wine, nor bottles are sold to négociants.
Fabrice Pouillon is a third generation champagne producer whose approach is inspired by his grandfather. His quest for self–perfection has led him to train at Sauternes and at Chassagne-Montrachet, where he learned to master vinifying in oak barrels.
He and his father practice what is called “culture raisonnée", an approach close to organic farming that eschews the use of chemical fertilizers, defoliants, and fungicides. Grass is allowed to grow between grape rows and the earth is turned periodically in order to encourage bacterial proliferation and diversity, which is eventually reflected in the expression of “terroir” in their champagne. Since 2003 Fabrice has begun to experiment with biodynamic methods on a few selected parcels of vines.
Champagne Brut - Cuvee de Reserve
This classic blend is made from 80% Pinot Noir , 15% Chardonnay and 5% Pinot Meunier.
A floral nose leading to fruits and nuts on the palate is balanced by fine bubbles and refreshing acidity. Gold medal winner at Macon.
Wine Spectator: “Rich & toasty, dense flavors of fig & honey...hints of citrus”
This is must try especially if are a Vueve Yellow Label Drinker.
Domaine Roger Pouillon is a small family -owned affair situated just north of Epernay and south of the Montagne de Reims, in the village of Mareuil sur Aÿ, which also boasts the presence of Billecart-Salmon. The Pouillon family is proud that their entire production is sold under their own label; neither grapes, wine, nor bottles are sold to négociants.
Fabrice Pouillon is a third generation champagne producer whose approach is inspired by his grandfather. His quest for self–perfection has led him to train at Sauternes and at Chassagne-Montrachet, where he learned to master vinifying in oak barrels.
He and his father practice what is called “culture raisonnée", an approach close to organic farming that eschews the use of chemical fertilizers, defoliants, and fungicides. Grass is allowed to grow between grape rows and the earth is turned periodically in order to encourage bacterial proliferation and diversity, which is eventually reflected in the expression of “terroir” in their champagne. Since 2003 Fabrice has begun to experiment with biodynamic methods on a few selected parcels of vines.
Champagne Brut - Cuvee de Reserve
This classic blend is made from 80% Pinot Noir , 15% Chardonnay and 5% Pinot Meunier.
A floral nose leading to fruits and nuts on the palate is balanced by fine bubbles and refreshing acidity. Gold medal winner at Macon.
Wine Spectator: “Rich & toasty, dense flavors of fig & honey...hints of citrus”
Saturday, April 12, 2008
We Will NEVER Support Chocolate Made From Slave Labor!
This is a response to the comment from Susan Smith on my original blog about slave labor chocolate.
We feel that is unacceptable have chocolate on the market that forces people to work against their will. I am posting some other expert views on this horrific chocolate nightmare that most people support. See everytime we buy chocolate we cast a vote for how and who produced our chocolate. Your dollar is your vote. It is time to let the big chocolate companies that times MUST change. Anthony Robins always says are you trying to do it or are you doing it. It is time to put corporate greed after human rights!
The first post here comes from John Robins website Food Revolution.
Is There Slavery In Your Chocolate?
John Robbins
Chocolate. The very word conjures feelings of pleasure, sensuality, and the richness of life. The scientific name of the tree from whose beans we make chocolate, likewise bespeaks the depth of feeling human beings have always had for chocolate. It is Theobroma cacao L. The name of the genus, Theobroma, comes from two Greek words: theos, meaning gods, and broma, meaning foods. Thus, literally, "food of the Gods."
Chocolate has a remarkable history. When Cortez and his conquistadors first encountered the Aztecs and met the last Aztec emperor, Montezuma, they were amazed to find a thriving metropolis with more than one million residents, making it several times larger than the biggest city in Europe at the time. Cortez and his band were confronting a culture and an ecosystem that was wildly strange to them. Yet what they found most astonishing, according to their reports, was the fact that Montezuma's royal coffers were overflowing, not with gold, but with cocoa beans. Here, gold was used primarily for architectural and artistic beauty and had only secondary monetary value. The coin of the realm in pre-conquest Mexico was not gold, it was cocoa beans. When Cortez arrived in the Aztec capital, Montezuma's coffers held more than 9,000 tons of cocoa beans.
Since these beans were money, they were roasted and eaten only by the wealthiest of citizens, only by those who, literally, had "money to burn." According to the reports of the conquistador's, Montezuma himself drank only cocoa potions, and this from golden goblets which were given to the poor after a single use. This may have been one of the most extreme examples of conspicuous consumption in history - the eating of money itself.
Today we know that cacao, cocoa and chocolate are the richest known sources of a little-known substance called theobromine, a close chemical relative of caffeine. Theobromine, like caffeine, and also like the asthma drug theophylline, belong to the chemical group known as xanthine alkaloids. Chocolate products contain some caffeine, but not nearly enough to explain the attractions, fascinations, addictions, and effects of chocolate. Chocolate addiction may really be theobromine addiction.
Slavery Lurking Behind The Sweetness
Most of us, though, aren't all that concerned with the history or chemistry of chocolate. When it comes down to it, frankly, we are content so long as the market shelves remain well stocked with affordable tins of cocoa and bars of chocolate candy.
Or at least that's how it was in the United States until the summer of 2001. For then the Knight Ridder Newspapers across the country ran a series of investigative articles that revealed a very dark side to our chocolate consumption. In riveting detail, the series profiled young boys who were tricked into slavery, or sold as slaves, to Ivory Coast cocoa farmers. Ivory Coast, located on the southern coast of West Africa, is by far the world's largest supplier of cocoa beans, providing 43% of the world's supply. There are 600,000 cocoa farms in Ivory Coast which together account for one-third of the nation's entire economy.
An investigative report by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in 2000 indicated the size of the problem. According to the BBC, hundreds of thousands of children are being purchased from their parents for a pittance, or in some cases outright stolen, and then shipped to the Ivory Coast, where they are sold as slaves to cocoa farms. These children typically come from countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Togo. Destitute parents in these poverty-stricken lands sell their children to traffickers believing that they will find honest work once they arrive in Ivory Coast and then send some of their earnings home. But that's not what happens. These children, usually 12-to-14-years-old but sometimes younger, are forced to do hard manual labor 80 to 100 hours a week. They are paid nothing, are barely fed, are beaten regularly, and are often viciously beaten if they try to escape. Most will never see their families again.
"The beatings were a part of my life," Aly Diabate, a freed slave, told reporters. "Anytime they loaded you with bags (of cocoa beans) and you fell while carrying them, nobody helped you. Instead they beat you and beat you until you picked it up again."
Brian Woods and Kate Blewett are ground-breaking film-makers who made history when they went undercover in China eight years ago to make a documentary which shook the world - "The Dying Rooms" - about the hideous conditions in Chinese state orphanages. Recently, they made a film about the use of child slaves in African cocoa fields. "It isn't the slavery we are all familiar with and which most of us imagine was abolished decades ago," says Brian Woods. "Back then, a slave owner could produce documents to prove ownership. Now, it's a secretive trade which leaves behind little evidence. Modern slaves are cheap and disposable. They have three things in common with their ancestors. They aren't paid, they are kept working by violence or the threat of it, and they are not free to leave."
Blewett and Woods tell of meeting Drissa, a young man from Mali who had been tricked into working on an Ivory coast cocoa farm. "When Drissa took his shirt off, I had never seen anything like it. I had seen some pretty nasty things in my time but this was appalling. There wasn't an inch of his body which wasn't scarred."
Slavery Past And Present
The ownership of one human being by another is illegal in Ivory Coast, as it is in every other country in the world today. But that doesn't mean slavery has ceased to exist. Rather, it has simply changed its form.
In times past, we had slaveowners. Now we have slaveholders. In both cases, the slave is forced to work by violence or the threat of violence, paid nothing, given only that which keeps him or her able to continue to work, is not free to leave, and can be killed without significant legal consequence. In many cases, nonownership turns out to be in the financial interest of slaveholders, who now reap all the benefits of ownership without the obligations and legal responsibilities.
Kevin Bales is author of Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, and director of Free The Slaves, an American branch of Anti-Slavery International. He points out that one of the economic drawbacks of the old slavery was the cost of maintaining slaves who were too young or too old to work. Children rarely brought in more than they cost until the age of ten or twelve, though they were put to work as early as possible. Slavery was profitable, but the profitability was diminished by the cost of keeping infants, small children, and unproductive old people. The new slavery avoids this extra cost and so increases its profits.
In the United States, the old slavery consisted primarily of bringing people against their will from Africa. This represented a significant financial investment. Bales says that before the Civil War, the cost to purchase the average slave amounted to the equivalent of $50,000 (in today's dollars). Currently, though, enslaved people are bought and sold in the world's most destitute nations for only $50 or $100. The result is that they tend to be treated as disposable. Slaves today are so cheap that they're not even seen as a capital investment anymore. Unlike slaveowners, slaveholders don't have to take care of their slaves. They can just use them up, in the cocoa fields for example, and then throw them away.
Pressure For Change
As publicity about the use of child slaves in the chocolate industry mounted in the summer and fall of 2001, so did pressure on the chocolate manufacturers. Chocolate is a symbol of sweetness and innocence, but Western chocolate consumers know there is nothing sweet and nothing innocent about slavery.
On June 28, 2001, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 291-115 to look into setting up a labeling system so consumers could be assured no slave labor was used in the production of their chocolate. Unhappy with this turn of events, the U.S. chocolate industry and its allies mounted an intense lobbying effort to fight off legislation that would require "slave free" labels for their products. The Chocolate Manufacturer's Association, a trade group that represents U.S. chocolate producers, hired two former Senate majority leaders - Bob Dole, a Republican, and George Mitchell, a Democrat - to lobby lawmakers on its behalf.
"A 'slave free' label would hurt the people it is intended to help" because it would lead to a boycott of all Ivory Coast cocoa, said Susan Smith, a spokeswoman for the Chocolate Manufacturer's Association. She pointed out that no producer using Ivory Coast cocoa could possibly state that none of its chocolate was produced by child slavery. Slave-picked beans are mixed together with others harvested by free field hands.
For a long time, many major chocolate makers have insisted that they bear no responsibility for the problem, since they don't own the cocoa farms. But pressure on the industry was mounting. The legislation to address child slavery in West Africa that had passed in the House (sponsored by Representative Eliot Engel) was by now almost certain to pass in the Senate (where it was sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin). On October 1, 2001, the chocolate industry announced a four-year plan to eventually eliminate child slavery in cocoa-producing nations, and particularly West Africa, where most of the world's chocolate is grown. If all went according to the plan, called the "Harkin-Engel Protocol," the "worst forms of child labor" - including slavery - would no longer be used to produce chocolate and cocoa by 2005.
Larry Graham, president of the Chocolate Manufacturer's Association, said "the industry has changed, permanently and forever." The agreement was signed by the manufacturer's association and the World Cocoa Foundation; as well as chocolate producers Hershey's, M&M Mars, Nestle and World's Finest Chocolate; and the cocoa processors Blommer Chocolate, Guittard Chocolate, Barry Callebaut and Archer Daniels Midland. It was endorsed by a wide variety of groups including the government of Ivory Coast, the International Labor Organization's child labor office, the anti-slavery group Free the Slaves, the Child Labor Coalition, the International Cocoa Organization (which represents cocoa growing countries), and the National Consumer League.
The six-point protocol commits the chocolate industry to work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the International Labor Organization in monitoring and remedying abusive forms of child labor used in growing and processing cocoa beans. A series of deadlines is part of the plan. For example, an independent monitoring and public reporting system is to be in place by May, 2002. Industry-wide voluntary standards of public certification are to be in place by July 1, 2005.
In addition, the chocolate companies agreed to fund a joint international foundation, run by a board comprised of industry and NGO representatives, to oversee and sustain efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in the industry. Plus, the agreement provides for a formal advisory group to investigate child labor practices in West Africa, and a commitment by the chocolate companies to "identify positive development alternatives for the children" who might be affected.
It is clear that the recent public and political awareness of slavery in cocoa production has moved both the government and chocolate industry to action. We still have a long way to go, but progress is being made for the first time in years.
Whose Chocolate Is Made With Slavery, And Whose Is Made Without?
Even with the progress represented by the chocolate industry's plan, however, it will nevertheless take years for chocolate products to be "slave-free." Is there any way for chocolate consumers to know today that they are not consuming products made with child slavery?
A 2001 inquiry into the cocoa sources used by 200 major chocolate manufacturers found significant differences between companies.
The $13 billion U.S. chocolate industry is heavily dominated by just two firms - Hershey's and M&M Mars - who control two-thirds of the market. Unfortunately, both of these companies fall into the category of those companies who use large amounts of Ivory Coast cocoa, and whose products are almost certainly produced in part by slavery.
Hershey Foods Corp., the nation's largest chocolate-maker, says it is "shocked" and "deeply concerned" that its products, such as Hershey's Kisses, Nuggets, Hershey chocolate bars and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, may be made with cocoa produced by child slaves. The company, which has a long history of involvement with children, says it is deeply embarrassed by revelations of indirect involvement with child slavery. (Hershey Foods, which has a market capitalization on Wall Street of $8.4 billion, is affiliated with a school for orphaned and disadvantaged children, established in 1909 by company founder Milton S. Hershey and his wife Catherine.)
M&M Mars and Hershey Foods Corp. are not alone. Other companies whose chocolate is almost certainly tainted with child slavery include: ADM Cocoa, Ben & Jerry's, Cadbury Ltd., Chocolates by Bernard Callebaut, Fowler's Chocolate, Godiva, Guittard Chocolate Company, Kraft, Nestle, See's Candies, The Chocolate Vault, and Toblerone. While most of these companies have issued condemnations of slavery, and expressed a great deal of moral outrage that it exists in the industry, they each have acknowledged that they use Ivory Coast cocoa and so have no grounds to ensure consumers that their products are slavery-free.
Companies like Mars, Hershey, and Nestle often say that there is no way they can control the labor practices of their suppliers. But there are other chocolate companies who manage to do so, and it would seem that if the bigger companies really wanted to reform problems in the supply chain, they have the power and ability to do so.
There are in fact many chocolate companies who only use cocoa that has definitively not been produced with slave labor. These companies include Clif Bar, Cloud Nine, Dagoba Organic Chocolate, Denman Island Chocolate, Gardners Candies, Green and Black's, Kailua Candy Company, Koppers Chocolate, L.A. Burdick Chocolates, Montezuma's Chocolates, Newman's Own Organics, Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company, Rapunzel Pure Organics, and The Endangered Species Chocolate Company.
At present, no organic cocoa beans are coming from Ivory Coast, so organic chocolate is unlikely to be tainted by slavery. Newman's Own Organics is one of the largest of the slavery-free companies. The company's chocolate is purchased through the Organic Commodity Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It comes from Costa Rica where the farms are closely monitored.
Some companies go further and buy only Fair Trade chocolate. In the early 1990s, Rapunzel initiated a "Hand in Hand" program called Eco-Trade - Fair Trade and Ecology. Strict guidelines and commitments must be maintained by all Rapunzel's partners in buying, selling, trading, growing and processing commodities in developing countries. Guaranteed fair pricing, long term trade relationships, living wages, and no child labor are just a few of the criteria. The company's cocoa comes from cooperatives in Bolivia and the Dominican Republic. Rapunzel's program is one of the most effective means of positive change for the lives of farmers and their families worldwide. The company's donations have built a school in the Dominican Republic, an orphanage in Brazil, and provided major support for organic farmers in Bolivia.
Similarly, Cloud Nine has organized 150 grower families into a certified organic cooperative, and has committed to purchasing cocoa from them year-round at over-market organic prices.
Likewise, The Endangered Species Chocolate company only purchases cocoa through the Fair Trade Initiative. In supporting smaller farm co-operatives, the company says "we encourage the indigenous people to harvest what is naturally grown in the area rather than clear-cutting the rainforest to make way for more destructive uses of land."
According to Frederick Schilling of the Dagoba Organic Chocolate company, "By being paid a premium price, these farming communities can and are developing their communities by their own means and terms; often times building schools for their children."
Coffee
Although it is chocolate that has gotten the most publicity of late, chocolate isn't the only American staple produced by slaves. Some coffee beans are also tainted by slavery. In addition to producing nearly half of the world's cocoa, Ivory Coast is the world's fourth-largest grower of Robusta coffee. Robusta beans are used for espresso and instant coffees. They are also blended with milder Arabica beans to make ground coffees.
Often, coffee and cocoa are grown together on the same farm. The tall cacao trees shade the shorter coffee bushes. On some Ivory Coast farms, child slaves harvest coffee beans as well as the cacao pods that yield cocoa beans. More than 7,000 tons of Ivory Coast coffee arrives in the U.S. each year.
As with chocolate, coffee beans picked by slaves are mixed together with those picked by paid workers. Some coffee industry executives acknowledge the use of slaves, but say the labor issue isn't their concern. "This industry isn't responsible for what happens in a foreign country," said Gary Goldstein of the National Coffee Association, which represents the companies that make Folgers, Maxwell House, Nescafe and other brands.
Neither Folgers nor Maxwell House responded to inquiries about the origins of their coffee. Shipping records, though, showed that on Sunday, March 18, 2001, 337 tons of Ivory Coast coffee beans were sent to Folgers through Houston, Texas.
The U.S. is the world's largest consumer of both chocolate and coffee. In fact, coffee is the second largest legal U.S. import - after oil. Fortunately, there is considerable momentum developing in this country and elsewhere behind the emergence of Fair Trade coffee.
According to the San Francisco-based Global Exchange, "The best way to prevent child labor in the fields is to pay workers a living wage… Most people in this country would rather buy a cup of coffee picked under fair trade conditions than sweatshop labor conditions… Fair Trade Certified coffee is the first product being introduced in the United States with an independently monitored system to ensure that it was produced under fair labor conditions… To become Fair Trade certified, an importer must meet stringent international criteria [including] paying a minimum price per pound of $1.26."
Paying a minimum price of $1.26 to growers is a major step, because coffee prices on the world market currently run between 60 - 95 cents a pound, trapping many coffee farmers in an inescapable cycle of poverty, debt, and hunger. Ten years ago, the world coffee economy was worth $30 billion - and producers received $12 billion, or 40 percent. But today, the world market has grown to be worth $50 billion - and producers receive just $8 billion, or 16 percent. Though they have not lowered consumer prices, coffee companies are paying far less for the beans they use. This creates, at best, sweatshops in the field, and at worst, the conditions that breed human slavery.
Fair Trade, whether it's coffee or chocolate, means an equitable partnership between consumers in North America and producers in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. It means that farmers' cooperatives around the world can count on a stable and reliable living wage. When consumers purchase Fair Trade coffee or chocolate, they know that their money is going to local farmers where it is then invested in health care, education, environmental stewardship, community development, and economic independence. They know it's not going to enrich CEOs making tens of millions of dollars annually. This is important because destitute farmers are struggling to survive and even resorting to child slavery, while…
Chicago-based Sara Lee Corp. supplies more than 200 million pounds of coffee annually to more than 100,000 restaurants in the United States. In 2000, the most recent year for which public records exist, Sara Lee CEO John H. Bryan took home $45,512,113 in compensation.
In 2000, Starbucks CEO Orin C. Smith, received $13,873,575 in compensation from the coffee company, plus $12,847,925 in stock option exercises. He still holds more than $33,000,000 in unexercised stock options.
Neither of these gentlemen, however, matched the pay received by the CEO of the company that owns Northfield, Illinois-based Maxwell House. In 2000, the CEO of Philip Morris, Geoffrey C. Bible, received $45,794,705 in compensation for his services, not including the more than $71,000,000 he holds in unexercised stock options.
Others in the coffee industry also did well. Folgers is owned by Procter and Gamble, whose CEO, Durk I. Jager, received $32,828,276 in compensation in 2000, not including the more than $10,000,000 he holds in unexercised stock options.
On the chocolate side, things are a little less posh, but top management seems to be able to get by. In 2000, Kenneth L. Wolfe, CEO of Hershey Foods, took home $7,877,554 in compensation from Hershey Foods, plus $2,615,838 in stock option exercises from prior grants. He still holds more than $4,000,000 in unexercised stock options.
In 2000, G. Allen Andreas, CEO of Archer Daniels Midland, owner of ADM Cocoa, received $8,381,371 in compensation for his services to the company.
It is not easy for most consumers to stomach the contrast between exorbitant salaries such as these, and the gruesome reality of slave labor. Nor is easy to swallow the reality of such excess when millions of coffee and cocoa farmers around the world who depend on their harvests to provide for their families are facing debt and starvation. There seems to be something particularly hideous about making this kind of money on the backs of the world's poorest people.
Fair Trade On The Rise
Fair trade is a growing trend. On October 4, 2000, Starbucks introduced whole bean Fair Trade coffee to 2,300 stores. A year later, the company announced it would brew Fair Trade coffee once a month. Across the country, there are now over 80 companies that have licensing agreements to offer Fair Trade certified coffee. These companies include Starbucks, Tully's, Peet's, Equal Exchange, Diedrich, and Green Mountain.
Kevin Bales, director of Free The Slaves, says that consumers "can make a significant impact on world slavery just by stopping for a moment and asking themselves how that particular item got to be so cheap. The low cost of many items defies belief. Part of the reason things are so cheap is that the big chain stores buy huge quantities at huge discounts, and have designed their distribution systems to reduce overhead all along the product chain. But I suspect that these efficiencies and economies of scale don't account for all of the cheapness. You see a lot of cheap items made in China, for example, and there are serious questions about what happens in Chinese factories. The bottom line is: oftentimes things are cheap because slaves helped produce them."
Most Western consumers, if they can identify slave-produced goods, would avoid them despite their lower price. But consumers do look for bargains, and don't usually stop to ask why a product is so cheap. It is certainly sobering to realize that by always looking for the best deal, we may be choosing slave-made products without knowing what we are buying.
We have reason for hope, though, based on how well most consumers respond to the challenge of slavery - when they know about it. Once people understand that slavery still exists, they are nearly unanimous in their desire to see it stopped. Fortunately, there are people who have taken on the task of informing people about the grim reality, and providing them with empowering alternatives.
One such activist is Deborah James, the Fair Trade Director of Global Exchange. She is currently coordinating a campaign against child slavery, and for Fair Trade, in the cocoa industry in West Africa. For the last two years, Deborah has spearheaded efforts to promote Fair Trade Certified coffee among campuses, community groups, and city councils around the nation. She led the successful campaign to pressure Starbucks to carry Fair Trade coffee in their stores, and is now campaigning to get industry giant Folgers to buy Fair Trade. (To learn about the Folgers campaign, see globalexchange.org/economy/coffee/folgers.html).
Other heroic activists have focussed on the carpet industry. Not that many years ago, many Oriental carpets were hand-woven by children who were forced to work in the most miserable of conditions for little or no pay. Many were made by child slaves. If you have an Oriental rug on your floor right now, there is a good chance that it was woven by slave children.
But then, a few years ago, a handful of European activists working from a tiny office with minimal funds started the Rugmark Campaign. In order to earn the "rugmark," carpet producers had to agree to cooperate with independent monitors, not to exploit children, and to turn over one percent of their carpet wholesale price to child-welfare organizations. A sophisticated monitoring team was built up that can detect fake labels, knows carpet making inside and out, and can't be corrupted. Today, the German, U.S., and Canadian governments recognize the Rugmark label, as does the largest mail-order company in the world, the Otto Versand Group. Major retailers in the United States, Germany and Holland now import only rugmarked carpets. In Europe, the market share possessed by rugmarked carpets stands at 30 percent, and is growing. The one percent from the producers has now built and staffed two Rugmark schools in the part of India where uneducated children were formerly fodder for the slave trade. The campaign has drawn the attention of other organizations, with the result that the German government and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) now fund other schools in the areas that used to be recruiting grounds for the carpet belt.
It is clear that, once aware, most people do not want to buy chocolate, coffee, rugs, or any other product made with slave labor. On the contrary, the success of Rugmark carpets, like the dramatic rise of Fair Trade chocolate and coffee, is a heartening example that given a chance most consumers want to be in an equitable relationship with the people who make the products they consume.
Seven Things You Can Do
1) Educate yourself further. Good sources of information include:
Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org)
The Child Labor Coalition (www.stopchildlabor.org)
Anti-Slavery (www.antislavery.org)
Unfair Trade (www.unfairtrade.co.uk)
Fair Trade (www.fairtrade.org/html/english.html)
Abolish: The Anti-Slavery Portal (www.iabolish.com)
For information on specific chocolate companies, see www.radicalthought.org
Kevin Bales' book Disposable People (University of California Press, 2000) is a thoroughly researched expose of modern day slavery.
2) Write a letter to the editor or an article in your local newspaper.
3) Buy Fair Trade chocolate and/or coffee for gifts that show you care about fairness for everyone. Or sell Fair Trade chocolate and/or coffee as a fundraiser for your church, school, or community group.
Fair Trade chocolate is available at http://store.globalexchange.org/chocolate.html
Fair Trade coffee is available at http://store.globalexchange.org/peace.html
4) Get stores in your community to carry Fair Trade chocolate and coffee. For support, email fairtrade@globalexchange.org
5) Contact the big chocolate companies, and ask them to buy Fair Trade cocoa. Hershey Foods Corp. can be reached at 100 Crystal A Drive, Hershey, PA 17033; (717) 534-6799. Mars, Inc. can be reached at 6885 Elm Street, McLean, VA 22101; (703) 821-4900. Tell them that you expect something to be done immediately to ensure that cocoa imported into the U.S. is not harvested by enslaved children.
6) Support the Fair Trade campaign by joining organizations such as Global Exchange. They can be reached at 2017 Mission Street, #303, San Francisco, California 94110; (415) 255-7296; info@globalexchange.org
7) Support the anti-slavery movement by joining organizations such as Anti-Slavery International. They can be reached in the U.S. at Suite 312-CIP, 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036-2102. The main office is Anti-Slavery International, Thomas Clarkson House, The Stableyard, Broomgrove Road, London SW9 9TL, England
(John Robbins is the author of many best-sellers, including Diet For A New America, and his recently released The Food Revolution. He is the founder of EarthSave International, and can be contacted through the website foodrevolution.org)
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This next post I found at JS Online, the website for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Slaves feed world's taste for chocolate
Captives common in cocoa farms of Africa
By SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN and SUMANA CHATTERJEE
Knight Ridder News Service
Last Updated: June 24, 2001
A Taste of Slavery
Evelyn Hockstein/
Knight Ridder
Zei Mathias, 15, spends his nights on a bench in Daloa, Ivory Coast.
The Series
SUNDAY: Americans spend $13 billion a year on chocolate, but few know that the main ingredient in their candy, cakes and ice cream may be harvested by children held in bondage. The world's cocoa processors - including ADM Cocoa in Milwaukee - know about the slave camps in the Ivory Coast, and some say they are trying to stop the trade. But fed by poverty, poor law enforcement, porous borders and corruption, slavery is a growing problem.
MONDAY: Slave traders troll the streets of Sikassa, Mali, looking for children to sell to cocoa bean farmers. For these opportunistic middlemen, it is a lucrative business.
TUESDAY: Brahima Male and Siaka Traure met two years ago in the little bus station in Sikassa, Mali, where they were eagerly awaiting new "jobs" in the Ivory Coast. Instead of work and money for their families, the two teenagers were sold into slavery on a cocoa farm.
Todd Buchanan/Knight-Ridder
A costumed figure hands out M&Ms at a candy trade show in Chicago earlier this month. Mars Inc., maker of M&Ms, is among companies that use cocoa from Ivory Coast, where some beans are harvested using child slave labor.
Low Prices Make Slave Labor Tempting
Quotable
Thank heavens, the proportion of this type of criminal farmers remains very low still.
- Alfonse Douaty ,
Ivory Coast Agriculture Minister
How Slave-Grown Cocoa Gets Into Chocolate
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Slave Villages
Daloa, Ivory Coast - There may be a hidden ingredient in the chocolate cake you baked, the candy bars your children sold for their school fund-raiser or that fudge ripple ice cream cone you enjoyed on Saturday afternoon.
Slave labor.
Forty-three percent of the world's cocoa beans, the raw material in chocolate, come from small, scattered farms in this poor West African country. And on some of the farms, the hot, hard work of clearing the fields and harvesting the fruit is done by boys who were sold or tricked into slavery. Most of them are between the ages of 12 and 16. Some are as young as 9.
The lucky slaves live on corn paste and bananas. The unlucky ones are whipped, beaten and broken like horses to harvest the almond-sized beans that are made into chocolate treats for more fortunate children in Europe and the United States.
Aly Diabate was almost 12 when a slave trader promised him a bicycle and $150 a year to help support his poor parents in Mali. He worked for a year and a half for a cocoa farmer who is known as "Le Gros" ("the Big Man"), but he said his only rewards were the rare days when Le Gros' overseers or older slaves didn't flog him with a bicycle chain or branches from a cacao tree.
Intense labor
Cocoa beans come from pods on the cacao tree. To get the 400 or so beans it takes to make a pound of chocolate, the boys who work on Ivory Coast's cocoa farms cut 10 pods from the trees, slice them open, scoop out the beans, spread them in baskets or on mats and cover them to ferment. Then they uncover the beans, put them in the sun to dry, bag them and load them onto trucks to begin the long journey to America or Europe.
Aly said he doesn't know what the beans from the cacao tree taste like after they've been processed and blended with sugar, milk and other ingredients. That happens far away from the farm where he worked, in places such as Hershey, Pa., Milwaukee and San Francisco.
"I don't know what chocolate is," said Aly.
Americans spend $13 billion a year on chocolate, but most of them are as ignorant of where it comes from as the boys who harvest cocoa beans are about where their beans go.
More cocoa beans come from Ivory Coast than from anyplace else in the world. The country's beans are prized for their quality and abundance, and in the first three months of this year, more than 47,300 tons of them were shipped to the United States through Philadelphia and New York City, according to the Port Import Export Reporting Service. At other times of the year, Ivory Coast cocoa beans are delivered to Camden, N.J., Norfolk, Va., and San Francisco.
From the ports, the beans are shipped to cocoa processors. America's biggest are ADM Cocoa in Milwaukee, a subsidiary of Decatur, Ill.-based Archer Daniels Midland Co.; Barry Callebaut AG, which has its headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland; Minneapolis-based Cargill Inc.; and Nestle USA of Glendale, Calif., a subsidiary of the Swiss food giant.
But by the time the beans reach the processors, those picked by slaves and those harvested by free field hands have been jumbled together in warehouses, ships, trucks and rail cars. By the time they reach consumers in America or Europe, free beans and slave beans are so thoroughly blended that there is no way to know which chocolate products taste of slavery and which do not.
However, even the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, a trade group for American chocolate makers, acknowledges that slaves are harvesting cocoa on some Ivory Coast farms.
A 1998 report from UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, concluded that some Ivory Coast farmers use enslaved children, many of them from the poorer neighboring countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Togo. A report by the Geneva, Switzerland-based International Labor Organization, released June 15, found that trafficking in children is widespread in West Africa.
The State Department's year 2000 human rights report concluded that some 15,000 children between the ages of 9 and 12 have been sold into forced labor on cotton, coffee and cocoa plantations in northern Ivory Coast in recent years.
12-hour days
Aly Diabate and 18 other boys labored on a 494-acre farm, very large by Ivory Coast standards, in the southwestern part of the country. Their days began when the sun rose, which at this time of year in Ivory Coast is a few minutes after 6 a.m. They finished work about 6:30 in the evening, just before nightfall, when fireflies were beginning to illuminate the velvety night like Christmas lights. They trudged home to a dinner of burned bananas. If they were lucky, they were treated to yams seasoned with saltwater "gravy."
After dinner, the boys were ordered into a 24-by-20-foot room, where they slept on wooden planks without mattresses.
"Once we entered the room, nobody was allowed to go out," said Mamadou Traore, a thin, frail youth with serious brown eyes who is 19 now.
"We didn't cry, we didn't scream," said Aly (pronounced AL-ee). "We thought we had been sold, but we weren't sure."
The boys became sure one day when Le Gros walked up to Mamadou and ordered him to work harder. "I bought each of you for 25,000 francs (about $35)," the farmer said, according to Mamadou (MAH-mah-doo). "So you have to work harder to reimburse me."
Aly was barely 4 feet tall when he was sold into slavery, and he had a hard time carrying the heavy bags of cocoa beans.
"Some of the bags were taller than me," he said. "It took two people to put the bag on my head. And when you didn't hurry, you were beaten."
He was beaten more than the other boys were. You can still see the faint scars on his back, right shoulder and left arm.
"The beatings were a part of my life," Aly said.
At night, Aly had nightmares about working forever in the fields, about dying and nobody noticing. To drown them out, he replayed his memories of growing up in Mali, over and over again.
"I was always thinking about my parents and how I could get back to my country," he said.
But he didn't think about trying to escape.
"I was afraid," he said.
Allegations are denied
Le Gros (Leh GROW), whose name is Lenikpo Yeo, denied that he paid for the boys who worked for him, although Ivory Coast farmers often pay a finder's fee to someone who delivers workers to them. He also denied that the boys were underfed, locked up at night or forced to work more than 12 hours a day without breaks. He said they were treated well, and that he paid for their medical treatment.
"When I go hunting, when I get a kill, I divide it in half - one for my family and the other for them. Even if I kill a gazelle, the workers come and share it."
He denied beating any of the boys.
"I've never, ever laid hands on any one of my workers," Le Gros said. "Maybe I called them bad words if I was angry. That's the worst I did."
Le Gros said a Malian overseer beat one boy who had run away, but he said he himself did not order any beatings.
One day early last year, a boy named Oumar Kone was caught trying to escape. One of Le Gros' overseers beat him, said the other boys and local authorities.
A few days later, Oumar ran away again, and this time he escaped. He told elders in the local Malian immigrant community what was happening on Le Gros' farm. They called Abdoulaye Macko, who was then the Malian consul general in Bouake, a town north of Daloa, in the heart of Ivory Coast's cocoa- and coffee-growing region.
Macko (MOCK-o) went to the farm with several police officers, and he found the 19 boys and young men there. Aly, the youngest, was 13. The oldest was 21. They had spent anywhere from six months to 41/2 years on Le Gros' farm.
"They were tired, slim, they were not smiling," Macko said. "Except one child was not there. This one, his face showed what was happening. He was sick, he had (excrement) in his pants. He was lying on the ground, covered with cacao leaves because they were sure he was dying. He was almost dead. . . . He had been severely beaten."
According to medical records, other boys had healed scars as well as open, infected wounds all over their bodies.
Police freed the boys, and a few days later the Malian consulate in Bouake sent them all home to their villages in Mali. The sick boy was treated at a local hospital, then was sent home, too.
Le Gros was charged with assault against children and suppressing the liberty of people. The latter crime carries a five- to 10-year prison sentence and a hefty fine, said Daleba Rouba, attorney general for the region.
"In Ivorian law, an adult who orders a minor to hit and hurt somebody is automatically responsible as if he has committed the act," said Rouba. "Whether or not Le Gros did the beatings himself or ordered somebody, he is liable."
Le Gros spent 24 days in jail, and today he is a free man pending a court hearing that is scheduled for this week. Rouba said the case against Le Gros is weak because the witnesses against him have all been sent back to Mali.
"If the Malian authorities are willing to cooperate, if they can bring two or three of the children back as witnesses, my case will be stronger," Rouba said.
Mamadou Diarra, the Malian consul general in Bouake, said he would look into the matter.
Enforcement lacking
Child trafficking experts say inadequate legislation, ignorance of the law, poor law enforcement, porous borders, police corruption and a shortage of resources help perpetuate the problem of child slavery in Ivory Coast. Only 12 convicted slave traders are serving time in Ivorian prisons. An additional eight, convicted in absentia, are on the lam.
The middlemen who buy Ivory Coast cocoa beans from farmers and sell them to processors seldom visit the country's cocoa farms, and when they do, it's to examine the beans, not the workers. Young boys are a common sight on the farms of West Africa, and it's impossible to know without asking which are a farmer's own children, which are field hands who will be paid $150 to $180 after a year's work and which are slaves.
"We've never seen child slavery," said G.H. Haidar, a cocoa buyer in Daloa. "We're only concerned with our work."
The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, based in Vienna, Va., at first said the industry was not aware of slavery, either. After Knight Ridder began inquiring about the use of slaves on Ivory Coast cocoa farms, however, the manufacturers association in late April acknowledged that a problem might exist and said it strongly condemned "these practices wherever they may occur."
In May, the association decided to expand an Ivory Coast farming program to include education on "the importance of children." And this month, the association agreed to fund a survey of child labor practices on Ivory Coast cocoa farms.
Ivorian officials have found scores of enslaved children from Mali and Burkina Faso and sent them home, and they have asked the International Labor Organization, a global workers' rights agency, to help them conduct a child labor survey that's expected to be completed this year.
But they continue to blame the problem on immigrant farmers from Mali and on world cocoa prices that have fallen sharply since 1996, from 67 cents a pound to 51 cents, forcing impoverished farmers to use the cheapest labor they can find.
Ivory Coast Agriculture Minister Alfonse Douaty calls child slavery a marginal "clandestine phenomenon" that exists on only a handful of the country's more than 600,000 cocoa and coffee farms.
"Those who do this are hidden, well hidden," said Douaty (Doo-AH-tee). He said his government is clamping down on child traffickers by beefing up border patrols and law enforcement, and running education campaigns to boost awareness of anti-slavery laws and efforts.
Douaty said child labor in Ivory Coast should not be called slavery, because the word conjures up images of chains and whips. He prefers the term "indentured labor."
Ivory Coast authorities ordered Le Gros to pay Aly and the other boys a total of 4.3 million African Financial Community francs (about $6,150) for their time as indentured laborers. Aly got 125,000 francs (about $180) for the 18 months he worked on the cocoa farm.
Aly bought himself the very thing the trader who enslaved him had promised: a bicycle. It has a light, a yellow horn and colorful bottle caps in the spokes. He rides it everywhere.
Aly helps his parents by selling vegetables in a nearby market, but he still doesn't understand why he was a slave.
When he was told that some American children spend nearly as much every year on chocolate as he was paid for six months' work harvesting cocoa beans, he replied without bitterness:
"I bless them because they are eating it."
Raghavan reported from Ivory Coast and Mali, Chatterjee from London, Chicago and Philadelphia. Researcher Tish Wells contributed to this report.
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Also look at these links for more about TRAGIC CHOCOLATE!
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/cocoa/chocolatereport05.pdf
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/02/06/PM200602068.html
We feel that is unacceptable have chocolate on the market that forces people to work against their will. I am posting some other expert views on this horrific chocolate nightmare that most people support. See everytime we buy chocolate we cast a vote for how and who produced our chocolate. Your dollar is your vote. It is time to let the big chocolate companies that times MUST change. Anthony Robins always says are you trying to do it or are you doing it. It is time to put corporate greed after human rights!
The first post here comes from John Robins website Food Revolution.
Is There Slavery In Your Chocolate?
John Robbins
Chocolate. The very word conjures feelings of pleasure, sensuality, and the richness of life. The scientific name of the tree from whose beans we make chocolate, likewise bespeaks the depth of feeling human beings have always had for chocolate. It is Theobroma cacao L. The name of the genus, Theobroma, comes from two Greek words: theos, meaning gods, and broma, meaning foods. Thus, literally, "food of the Gods."
Chocolate has a remarkable history. When Cortez and his conquistadors first encountered the Aztecs and met the last Aztec emperor, Montezuma, they were amazed to find a thriving metropolis with more than one million residents, making it several times larger than the biggest city in Europe at the time. Cortez and his band were confronting a culture and an ecosystem that was wildly strange to them. Yet what they found most astonishing, according to their reports, was the fact that Montezuma's royal coffers were overflowing, not with gold, but with cocoa beans. Here, gold was used primarily for architectural and artistic beauty and had only secondary monetary value. The coin of the realm in pre-conquest Mexico was not gold, it was cocoa beans. When Cortez arrived in the Aztec capital, Montezuma's coffers held more than 9,000 tons of cocoa beans.
Since these beans were money, they were roasted and eaten only by the wealthiest of citizens, only by those who, literally, had "money to burn." According to the reports of the conquistador's, Montezuma himself drank only cocoa potions, and this from golden goblets which were given to the poor after a single use. This may have been one of the most extreme examples of conspicuous consumption in history - the eating of money itself.
Today we know that cacao, cocoa and chocolate are the richest known sources of a little-known substance called theobromine, a close chemical relative of caffeine. Theobromine, like caffeine, and also like the asthma drug theophylline, belong to the chemical group known as xanthine alkaloids. Chocolate products contain some caffeine, but not nearly enough to explain the attractions, fascinations, addictions, and effects of chocolate. Chocolate addiction may really be theobromine addiction.
Slavery Lurking Behind The Sweetness
Most of us, though, aren't all that concerned with the history or chemistry of chocolate. When it comes down to it, frankly, we are content so long as the market shelves remain well stocked with affordable tins of cocoa and bars of chocolate candy.
Or at least that's how it was in the United States until the summer of 2001. For then the Knight Ridder Newspapers across the country ran a series of investigative articles that revealed a very dark side to our chocolate consumption. In riveting detail, the series profiled young boys who were tricked into slavery, or sold as slaves, to Ivory Coast cocoa farmers. Ivory Coast, located on the southern coast of West Africa, is by far the world's largest supplier of cocoa beans, providing 43% of the world's supply. There are 600,000 cocoa farms in Ivory Coast which together account for one-third of the nation's entire economy.
An investigative report by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in 2000 indicated the size of the problem. According to the BBC, hundreds of thousands of children are being purchased from their parents for a pittance, or in some cases outright stolen, and then shipped to the Ivory Coast, where they are sold as slaves to cocoa farms. These children typically come from countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Togo. Destitute parents in these poverty-stricken lands sell their children to traffickers believing that they will find honest work once they arrive in Ivory Coast and then send some of their earnings home. But that's not what happens. These children, usually 12-to-14-years-old but sometimes younger, are forced to do hard manual labor 80 to 100 hours a week. They are paid nothing, are barely fed, are beaten regularly, and are often viciously beaten if they try to escape. Most will never see their families again.
"The beatings were a part of my life," Aly Diabate, a freed slave, told reporters. "Anytime they loaded you with bags (of cocoa beans) and you fell while carrying them, nobody helped you. Instead they beat you and beat you until you picked it up again."
Brian Woods and Kate Blewett are ground-breaking film-makers who made history when they went undercover in China eight years ago to make a documentary which shook the world - "The Dying Rooms" - about the hideous conditions in Chinese state orphanages. Recently, they made a film about the use of child slaves in African cocoa fields. "It isn't the slavery we are all familiar with and which most of us imagine was abolished decades ago," says Brian Woods. "Back then, a slave owner could produce documents to prove ownership. Now, it's a secretive trade which leaves behind little evidence. Modern slaves are cheap and disposable. They have three things in common with their ancestors. They aren't paid, they are kept working by violence or the threat of it, and they are not free to leave."
Blewett and Woods tell of meeting Drissa, a young man from Mali who had been tricked into working on an Ivory coast cocoa farm. "When Drissa took his shirt off, I had never seen anything like it. I had seen some pretty nasty things in my time but this was appalling. There wasn't an inch of his body which wasn't scarred."
Slavery Past And Present
The ownership of one human being by another is illegal in Ivory Coast, as it is in every other country in the world today. But that doesn't mean slavery has ceased to exist. Rather, it has simply changed its form.
In times past, we had slaveowners. Now we have slaveholders. In both cases, the slave is forced to work by violence or the threat of violence, paid nothing, given only that which keeps him or her able to continue to work, is not free to leave, and can be killed without significant legal consequence. In many cases, nonownership turns out to be in the financial interest of slaveholders, who now reap all the benefits of ownership without the obligations and legal responsibilities.
Kevin Bales is author of Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, and director of Free The Slaves, an American branch of Anti-Slavery International. He points out that one of the economic drawbacks of the old slavery was the cost of maintaining slaves who were too young or too old to work. Children rarely brought in more than they cost until the age of ten or twelve, though they were put to work as early as possible. Slavery was profitable, but the profitability was diminished by the cost of keeping infants, small children, and unproductive old people. The new slavery avoids this extra cost and so increases its profits.
In the United States, the old slavery consisted primarily of bringing people against their will from Africa. This represented a significant financial investment. Bales says that before the Civil War, the cost to purchase the average slave amounted to the equivalent of $50,000 (in today's dollars). Currently, though, enslaved people are bought and sold in the world's most destitute nations for only $50 or $100. The result is that they tend to be treated as disposable. Slaves today are so cheap that they're not even seen as a capital investment anymore. Unlike slaveowners, slaveholders don't have to take care of their slaves. They can just use them up, in the cocoa fields for example, and then throw them away.
Pressure For Change
As publicity about the use of child slaves in the chocolate industry mounted in the summer and fall of 2001, so did pressure on the chocolate manufacturers. Chocolate is a symbol of sweetness and innocence, but Western chocolate consumers know there is nothing sweet and nothing innocent about slavery.
On June 28, 2001, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 291-115 to look into setting up a labeling system so consumers could be assured no slave labor was used in the production of their chocolate. Unhappy with this turn of events, the U.S. chocolate industry and its allies mounted an intense lobbying effort to fight off legislation that would require "slave free" labels for their products. The Chocolate Manufacturer's Association, a trade group that represents U.S. chocolate producers, hired two former Senate majority leaders - Bob Dole, a Republican, and George Mitchell, a Democrat - to lobby lawmakers on its behalf.
"A 'slave free' label would hurt the people it is intended to help" because it would lead to a boycott of all Ivory Coast cocoa, said Susan Smith, a spokeswoman for the Chocolate Manufacturer's Association. She pointed out that no producer using Ivory Coast cocoa could possibly state that none of its chocolate was produced by child slavery. Slave-picked beans are mixed together with others harvested by free field hands.
For a long time, many major chocolate makers have insisted that they bear no responsibility for the problem, since they don't own the cocoa farms. But pressure on the industry was mounting. The legislation to address child slavery in West Africa that had passed in the House (sponsored by Representative Eliot Engel) was by now almost certain to pass in the Senate (where it was sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin). On October 1, 2001, the chocolate industry announced a four-year plan to eventually eliminate child slavery in cocoa-producing nations, and particularly West Africa, where most of the world's chocolate is grown. If all went according to the plan, called the "Harkin-Engel Protocol," the "worst forms of child labor" - including slavery - would no longer be used to produce chocolate and cocoa by 2005.
Larry Graham, president of the Chocolate Manufacturer's Association, said "the industry has changed, permanently and forever." The agreement was signed by the manufacturer's association and the World Cocoa Foundation; as well as chocolate producers Hershey's, M&M Mars, Nestle and World's Finest Chocolate; and the cocoa processors Blommer Chocolate, Guittard Chocolate, Barry Callebaut and Archer Daniels Midland. It was endorsed by a wide variety of groups including the government of Ivory Coast, the International Labor Organization's child labor office, the anti-slavery group Free the Slaves, the Child Labor Coalition, the International Cocoa Organization (which represents cocoa growing countries), and the National Consumer League.
The six-point protocol commits the chocolate industry to work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the International Labor Organization in monitoring and remedying abusive forms of child labor used in growing and processing cocoa beans. A series of deadlines is part of the plan. For example, an independent monitoring and public reporting system is to be in place by May, 2002. Industry-wide voluntary standards of public certification are to be in place by July 1, 2005.
In addition, the chocolate companies agreed to fund a joint international foundation, run by a board comprised of industry and NGO representatives, to oversee and sustain efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in the industry. Plus, the agreement provides for a formal advisory group to investigate child labor practices in West Africa, and a commitment by the chocolate companies to "identify positive development alternatives for the children" who might be affected.
It is clear that the recent public and political awareness of slavery in cocoa production has moved both the government and chocolate industry to action. We still have a long way to go, but progress is being made for the first time in years.
Whose Chocolate Is Made With Slavery, And Whose Is Made Without?
Even with the progress represented by the chocolate industry's plan, however, it will nevertheless take years for chocolate products to be "slave-free." Is there any way for chocolate consumers to know today that they are not consuming products made with child slavery?
A 2001 inquiry into the cocoa sources used by 200 major chocolate manufacturers found significant differences between companies.
The $13 billion U.S. chocolate industry is heavily dominated by just two firms - Hershey's and M&M Mars - who control two-thirds of the market. Unfortunately, both of these companies fall into the category of those companies who use large amounts of Ivory Coast cocoa, and whose products are almost certainly produced in part by slavery.
Hershey Foods Corp., the nation's largest chocolate-maker, says it is "shocked" and "deeply concerned" that its products, such as Hershey's Kisses, Nuggets, Hershey chocolate bars and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, may be made with cocoa produced by child slaves. The company, which has a long history of involvement with children, says it is deeply embarrassed by revelations of indirect involvement with child slavery. (Hershey Foods, which has a market capitalization on Wall Street of $8.4 billion, is affiliated with a school for orphaned and disadvantaged children, established in 1909 by company founder Milton S. Hershey and his wife Catherine.)
M&M Mars and Hershey Foods Corp. are not alone. Other companies whose chocolate is almost certainly tainted with child slavery include: ADM Cocoa, Ben & Jerry's, Cadbury Ltd., Chocolates by Bernard Callebaut, Fowler's Chocolate, Godiva, Guittard Chocolate Company, Kraft, Nestle, See's Candies, The Chocolate Vault, and Toblerone. While most of these companies have issued condemnations of slavery, and expressed a great deal of moral outrage that it exists in the industry, they each have acknowledged that they use Ivory Coast cocoa and so have no grounds to ensure consumers that their products are slavery-free.
Companies like Mars, Hershey, and Nestle often say that there is no way they can control the labor practices of their suppliers. But there are other chocolate companies who manage to do so, and it would seem that if the bigger companies really wanted to reform problems in the supply chain, they have the power and ability to do so.
There are in fact many chocolate companies who only use cocoa that has definitively not been produced with slave labor. These companies include Clif Bar, Cloud Nine, Dagoba Organic Chocolate, Denman Island Chocolate, Gardners Candies, Green and Black's, Kailua Candy Company, Koppers Chocolate, L.A. Burdick Chocolates, Montezuma's Chocolates, Newman's Own Organics, Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company, Rapunzel Pure Organics, and The Endangered Species Chocolate Company.
At present, no organic cocoa beans are coming from Ivory Coast, so organic chocolate is unlikely to be tainted by slavery. Newman's Own Organics is one of the largest of the slavery-free companies. The company's chocolate is purchased through the Organic Commodity Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It comes from Costa Rica where the farms are closely monitored.
Some companies go further and buy only Fair Trade chocolate. In the early 1990s, Rapunzel initiated a "Hand in Hand" program called Eco-Trade - Fair Trade and Ecology. Strict guidelines and commitments must be maintained by all Rapunzel's partners in buying, selling, trading, growing and processing commodities in developing countries. Guaranteed fair pricing, long term trade relationships, living wages, and no child labor are just a few of the criteria. The company's cocoa comes from cooperatives in Bolivia and the Dominican Republic. Rapunzel's program is one of the most effective means of positive change for the lives of farmers and their families worldwide. The company's donations have built a school in the Dominican Republic, an orphanage in Brazil, and provided major support for organic farmers in Bolivia.
Similarly, Cloud Nine has organized 150 grower families into a certified organic cooperative, and has committed to purchasing cocoa from them year-round at over-market organic prices.
Likewise, The Endangered Species Chocolate company only purchases cocoa through the Fair Trade Initiative. In supporting smaller farm co-operatives, the company says "we encourage the indigenous people to harvest what is naturally grown in the area rather than clear-cutting the rainforest to make way for more destructive uses of land."
According to Frederick Schilling of the Dagoba Organic Chocolate company, "By being paid a premium price, these farming communities can and are developing their communities by their own means and terms; often times building schools for their children."
Coffee
Although it is chocolate that has gotten the most publicity of late, chocolate isn't the only American staple produced by slaves. Some coffee beans are also tainted by slavery. In addition to producing nearly half of the world's cocoa, Ivory Coast is the world's fourth-largest grower of Robusta coffee. Robusta beans are used for espresso and instant coffees. They are also blended with milder Arabica beans to make ground coffees.
Often, coffee and cocoa are grown together on the same farm. The tall cacao trees shade the shorter coffee bushes. On some Ivory Coast farms, child slaves harvest coffee beans as well as the cacao pods that yield cocoa beans. More than 7,000 tons of Ivory Coast coffee arrives in the U.S. each year.
As with chocolate, coffee beans picked by slaves are mixed together with those picked by paid workers. Some coffee industry executives acknowledge the use of slaves, but say the labor issue isn't their concern. "This industry isn't responsible for what happens in a foreign country," said Gary Goldstein of the National Coffee Association, which represents the companies that make Folgers, Maxwell House, Nescafe and other brands.
Neither Folgers nor Maxwell House responded to inquiries about the origins of their coffee. Shipping records, though, showed that on Sunday, March 18, 2001, 337 tons of Ivory Coast coffee beans were sent to Folgers through Houston, Texas.
The U.S. is the world's largest consumer of both chocolate and coffee. In fact, coffee is the second largest legal U.S. import - after oil. Fortunately, there is considerable momentum developing in this country and elsewhere behind the emergence of Fair Trade coffee.
According to the San Francisco-based Global Exchange, "The best way to prevent child labor in the fields is to pay workers a living wage… Most people in this country would rather buy a cup of coffee picked under fair trade conditions than sweatshop labor conditions… Fair Trade Certified coffee is the first product being introduced in the United States with an independently monitored system to ensure that it was produced under fair labor conditions… To become Fair Trade certified, an importer must meet stringent international criteria [including] paying a minimum price per pound of $1.26."
Paying a minimum price of $1.26 to growers is a major step, because coffee prices on the world market currently run between 60 - 95 cents a pound, trapping many coffee farmers in an inescapable cycle of poverty, debt, and hunger. Ten years ago, the world coffee economy was worth $30 billion - and producers received $12 billion, or 40 percent. But today, the world market has grown to be worth $50 billion - and producers receive just $8 billion, or 16 percent. Though they have not lowered consumer prices, coffee companies are paying far less for the beans they use. This creates, at best, sweatshops in the field, and at worst, the conditions that breed human slavery.
Fair Trade, whether it's coffee or chocolate, means an equitable partnership between consumers in North America and producers in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. It means that farmers' cooperatives around the world can count on a stable and reliable living wage. When consumers purchase Fair Trade coffee or chocolate, they know that their money is going to local farmers where it is then invested in health care, education, environmental stewardship, community development, and economic independence. They know it's not going to enrich CEOs making tens of millions of dollars annually. This is important because destitute farmers are struggling to survive and even resorting to child slavery, while…
Chicago-based Sara Lee Corp. supplies more than 200 million pounds of coffee annually to more than 100,000 restaurants in the United States. In 2000, the most recent year for which public records exist, Sara Lee CEO John H. Bryan took home $45,512,113 in compensation.
In 2000, Starbucks CEO Orin C. Smith, received $13,873,575 in compensation from the coffee company, plus $12,847,925 in stock option exercises. He still holds more than $33,000,000 in unexercised stock options.
Neither of these gentlemen, however, matched the pay received by the CEO of the company that owns Northfield, Illinois-based Maxwell House. In 2000, the CEO of Philip Morris, Geoffrey C. Bible, received $45,794,705 in compensation for his services, not including the more than $71,000,000 he holds in unexercised stock options.
Others in the coffee industry also did well. Folgers is owned by Procter and Gamble, whose CEO, Durk I. Jager, received $32,828,276 in compensation in 2000, not including the more than $10,000,000 he holds in unexercised stock options.
On the chocolate side, things are a little less posh, but top management seems to be able to get by. In 2000, Kenneth L. Wolfe, CEO of Hershey Foods, took home $7,877,554 in compensation from Hershey Foods, plus $2,615,838 in stock option exercises from prior grants. He still holds more than $4,000,000 in unexercised stock options.
In 2000, G. Allen Andreas, CEO of Archer Daniels Midland, owner of ADM Cocoa, received $8,381,371 in compensation for his services to the company.
It is not easy for most consumers to stomach the contrast between exorbitant salaries such as these, and the gruesome reality of slave labor. Nor is easy to swallow the reality of such excess when millions of coffee and cocoa farmers around the world who depend on their harvests to provide for their families are facing debt and starvation. There seems to be something particularly hideous about making this kind of money on the backs of the world's poorest people.
Fair Trade On The Rise
Fair trade is a growing trend. On October 4, 2000, Starbucks introduced whole bean Fair Trade coffee to 2,300 stores. A year later, the company announced it would brew Fair Trade coffee once a month. Across the country, there are now over 80 companies that have licensing agreements to offer Fair Trade certified coffee. These companies include Starbucks, Tully's, Peet's, Equal Exchange, Diedrich, and Green Mountain.
Kevin Bales, director of Free The Slaves, says that consumers "can make a significant impact on world slavery just by stopping for a moment and asking themselves how that particular item got to be so cheap. The low cost of many items defies belief. Part of the reason things are so cheap is that the big chain stores buy huge quantities at huge discounts, and have designed their distribution systems to reduce overhead all along the product chain. But I suspect that these efficiencies and economies of scale don't account for all of the cheapness. You see a lot of cheap items made in China, for example, and there are serious questions about what happens in Chinese factories. The bottom line is: oftentimes things are cheap because slaves helped produce them."
Most Western consumers, if they can identify slave-produced goods, would avoid them despite their lower price. But consumers do look for bargains, and don't usually stop to ask why a product is so cheap. It is certainly sobering to realize that by always looking for the best deal, we may be choosing slave-made products without knowing what we are buying.
We have reason for hope, though, based on how well most consumers respond to the challenge of slavery - when they know about it. Once people understand that slavery still exists, they are nearly unanimous in their desire to see it stopped. Fortunately, there are people who have taken on the task of informing people about the grim reality, and providing them with empowering alternatives.
One such activist is Deborah James, the Fair Trade Director of Global Exchange. She is currently coordinating a campaign against child slavery, and for Fair Trade, in the cocoa industry in West Africa. For the last two years, Deborah has spearheaded efforts to promote Fair Trade Certified coffee among campuses, community groups, and city councils around the nation. She led the successful campaign to pressure Starbucks to carry Fair Trade coffee in their stores, and is now campaigning to get industry giant Folgers to buy Fair Trade. (To learn about the Folgers campaign, see globalexchange.org/economy/coffee/folgers.html).
Other heroic activists have focussed on the carpet industry. Not that many years ago, many Oriental carpets were hand-woven by children who were forced to work in the most miserable of conditions for little or no pay. Many were made by child slaves. If you have an Oriental rug on your floor right now, there is a good chance that it was woven by slave children.
But then, a few years ago, a handful of European activists working from a tiny office with minimal funds started the Rugmark Campaign. In order to earn the "rugmark," carpet producers had to agree to cooperate with independent monitors, not to exploit children, and to turn over one percent of their carpet wholesale price to child-welfare organizations. A sophisticated monitoring team was built up that can detect fake labels, knows carpet making inside and out, and can't be corrupted. Today, the German, U.S., and Canadian governments recognize the Rugmark label, as does the largest mail-order company in the world, the Otto Versand Group. Major retailers in the United States, Germany and Holland now import only rugmarked carpets. In Europe, the market share possessed by rugmarked carpets stands at 30 percent, and is growing. The one percent from the producers has now built and staffed two Rugmark schools in the part of India where uneducated children were formerly fodder for the slave trade. The campaign has drawn the attention of other organizations, with the result that the German government and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) now fund other schools in the areas that used to be recruiting grounds for the carpet belt.
It is clear that, once aware, most people do not want to buy chocolate, coffee, rugs, or any other product made with slave labor. On the contrary, the success of Rugmark carpets, like the dramatic rise of Fair Trade chocolate and coffee, is a heartening example that given a chance most consumers want to be in an equitable relationship with the people who make the products they consume.
Seven Things You Can Do
1) Educate yourself further. Good sources of information include:
Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org)
The Child Labor Coalition (www.stopchildlabor.org)
Anti-Slavery (www.antislavery.org)
Unfair Trade (www.unfairtrade.co.uk)
Fair Trade (www.fairtrade.org/html/english.html)
Abolish: The Anti-Slavery Portal (www.iabolish.com)
For information on specific chocolate companies, see www.radicalthought.org
Kevin Bales' book Disposable People (University of California Press, 2000) is a thoroughly researched expose of modern day slavery.
2) Write a letter to the editor or an article in your local newspaper.
3) Buy Fair Trade chocolate and/or coffee for gifts that show you care about fairness for everyone. Or sell Fair Trade chocolate and/or coffee as a fundraiser for your church, school, or community group.
Fair Trade chocolate is available at http://store.globalexchange.org/chocolate.html
Fair Trade coffee is available at http://store.globalexchange.org/peace.html
4) Get stores in your community to carry Fair Trade chocolate and coffee. For support, email fairtrade@globalexchange.org
5) Contact the big chocolate companies, and ask them to buy Fair Trade cocoa. Hershey Foods Corp. can be reached at 100 Crystal A Drive, Hershey, PA 17033; (717) 534-6799. Mars, Inc. can be reached at 6885 Elm Street, McLean, VA 22101; (703) 821-4900. Tell them that you expect something to be done immediately to ensure that cocoa imported into the U.S. is not harvested by enslaved children.
6) Support the Fair Trade campaign by joining organizations such as Global Exchange. They can be reached at 2017 Mission Street, #303, San Francisco, California 94110; (415) 255-7296; info@globalexchange.org
7) Support the anti-slavery movement by joining organizations such as Anti-Slavery International. They can be reached in the U.S. at Suite 312-CIP, 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036-2102. The main office is Anti-Slavery International, Thomas Clarkson House, The Stableyard, Broomgrove Road, London SW9 9TL, England
(John Robbins is the author of many best-sellers, including Diet For A New America, and his recently released The Food Revolution. He is the founder of EarthSave International, and can be contacted through the website foodrevolution.org)
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This next post I found at JS Online, the website for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Slaves feed world's taste for chocolate
Captives common in cocoa farms of Africa
By SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN and SUMANA CHATTERJEE
Knight Ridder News Service
Last Updated: June 24, 2001
A Taste of Slavery
Evelyn Hockstein/
Knight Ridder
Zei Mathias, 15, spends his nights on a bench in Daloa, Ivory Coast.
The Series
SUNDAY: Americans spend $13 billion a year on chocolate, but few know that the main ingredient in their candy, cakes and ice cream may be harvested by children held in bondage. The world's cocoa processors - including ADM Cocoa in Milwaukee - know about the slave camps in the Ivory Coast, and some say they are trying to stop the trade. But fed by poverty, poor law enforcement, porous borders and corruption, slavery is a growing problem.
MONDAY: Slave traders troll the streets of Sikassa, Mali, looking for children to sell to cocoa bean farmers. For these opportunistic middlemen, it is a lucrative business.
TUESDAY: Brahima Male and Siaka Traure met two years ago in the little bus station in Sikassa, Mali, where they were eagerly awaiting new "jobs" in the Ivory Coast. Instead of work and money for their families, the two teenagers were sold into slavery on a cocoa farm.
Todd Buchanan/Knight-Ridder
A costumed figure hands out M&Ms at a candy trade show in Chicago earlier this month. Mars Inc., maker of M&Ms, is among companies that use cocoa from Ivory Coast, where some beans are harvested using child slave labor.
Low Prices Make Slave Labor Tempting
Quotable
Thank heavens, the proportion of this type of criminal farmers remains very low still.
- Alfonse Douaty ,
Ivory Coast Agriculture Minister
How Slave-Grown Cocoa Gets Into Chocolate
Related Coverage
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Slave Villages
Daloa, Ivory Coast - There may be a hidden ingredient in the chocolate cake you baked, the candy bars your children sold for their school fund-raiser or that fudge ripple ice cream cone you enjoyed on Saturday afternoon.
Slave labor.
Forty-three percent of the world's cocoa beans, the raw material in chocolate, come from small, scattered farms in this poor West African country. And on some of the farms, the hot, hard work of clearing the fields and harvesting the fruit is done by boys who were sold or tricked into slavery. Most of them are between the ages of 12 and 16. Some are as young as 9.
The lucky slaves live on corn paste and bananas. The unlucky ones are whipped, beaten and broken like horses to harvest the almond-sized beans that are made into chocolate treats for more fortunate children in Europe and the United States.
Aly Diabate was almost 12 when a slave trader promised him a bicycle and $150 a year to help support his poor parents in Mali. He worked for a year and a half for a cocoa farmer who is known as "Le Gros" ("the Big Man"), but he said his only rewards were the rare days when Le Gros' overseers or older slaves didn't flog him with a bicycle chain or branches from a cacao tree.
Intense labor
Cocoa beans come from pods on the cacao tree. To get the 400 or so beans it takes to make a pound of chocolate, the boys who work on Ivory Coast's cocoa farms cut 10 pods from the trees, slice them open, scoop out the beans, spread them in baskets or on mats and cover them to ferment. Then they uncover the beans, put them in the sun to dry, bag them and load them onto trucks to begin the long journey to America or Europe.
Aly said he doesn't know what the beans from the cacao tree taste like after they've been processed and blended with sugar, milk and other ingredients. That happens far away from the farm where he worked, in places such as Hershey, Pa., Milwaukee and San Francisco.
"I don't know what chocolate is," said Aly.
Americans spend $13 billion a year on chocolate, but most of them are as ignorant of where it comes from as the boys who harvest cocoa beans are about where their beans go.
More cocoa beans come from Ivory Coast than from anyplace else in the world. The country's beans are prized for their quality and abundance, and in the first three months of this year, more than 47,300 tons of them were shipped to the United States through Philadelphia and New York City, according to the Port Import Export Reporting Service. At other times of the year, Ivory Coast cocoa beans are delivered to Camden, N.J., Norfolk, Va., and San Francisco.
From the ports, the beans are shipped to cocoa processors. America's biggest are ADM Cocoa in Milwaukee, a subsidiary of Decatur, Ill.-based Archer Daniels Midland Co.; Barry Callebaut AG, which has its headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland; Minneapolis-based Cargill Inc.; and Nestle USA of Glendale, Calif., a subsidiary of the Swiss food giant.
But by the time the beans reach the processors, those picked by slaves and those harvested by free field hands have been jumbled together in warehouses, ships, trucks and rail cars. By the time they reach consumers in America or Europe, free beans and slave beans are so thoroughly blended that there is no way to know which chocolate products taste of slavery and which do not.
However, even the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, a trade group for American chocolate makers, acknowledges that slaves are harvesting cocoa on some Ivory Coast farms.
A 1998 report from UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, concluded that some Ivory Coast farmers use enslaved children, many of them from the poorer neighboring countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Togo. A report by the Geneva, Switzerland-based International Labor Organization, released June 15, found that trafficking in children is widespread in West Africa.
The State Department's year 2000 human rights report concluded that some 15,000 children between the ages of 9 and 12 have been sold into forced labor on cotton, coffee and cocoa plantations in northern Ivory Coast in recent years.
12-hour days
Aly Diabate and 18 other boys labored on a 494-acre farm, very large by Ivory Coast standards, in the southwestern part of the country. Their days began when the sun rose, which at this time of year in Ivory Coast is a few minutes after 6 a.m. They finished work about 6:30 in the evening, just before nightfall, when fireflies were beginning to illuminate the velvety night like Christmas lights. They trudged home to a dinner of burned bananas. If they were lucky, they were treated to yams seasoned with saltwater "gravy."
After dinner, the boys were ordered into a 24-by-20-foot room, where they slept on wooden planks without mattresses.
"Once we entered the room, nobody was allowed to go out," said Mamadou Traore, a thin, frail youth with serious brown eyes who is 19 now.
"We didn't cry, we didn't scream," said Aly (pronounced AL-ee). "We thought we had been sold, but we weren't sure."
The boys became sure one day when Le Gros walked up to Mamadou and ordered him to work harder. "I bought each of you for 25,000 francs (about $35)," the farmer said, according to Mamadou (MAH-mah-doo). "So you have to work harder to reimburse me."
Aly was barely 4 feet tall when he was sold into slavery, and he had a hard time carrying the heavy bags of cocoa beans.
"Some of the bags were taller than me," he said. "It took two people to put the bag on my head. And when you didn't hurry, you were beaten."
He was beaten more than the other boys were. You can still see the faint scars on his back, right shoulder and left arm.
"The beatings were a part of my life," Aly said.
At night, Aly had nightmares about working forever in the fields, about dying and nobody noticing. To drown them out, he replayed his memories of growing up in Mali, over and over again.
"I was always thinking about my parents and how I could get back to my country," he said.
But he didn't think about trying to escape.
"I was afraid," he said.
Allegations are denied
Le Gros (Leh GROW), whose name is Lenikpo Yeo, denied that he paid for the boys who worked for him, although Ivory Coast farmers often pay a finder's fee to someone who delivers workers to them. He also denied that the boys were underfed, locked up at night or forced to work more than 12 hours a day without breaks. He said they were treated well, and that he paid for their medical treatment.
"When I go hunting, when I get a kill, I divide it in half - one for my family and the other for them. Even if I kill a gazelle, the workers come and share it."
He denied beating any of the boys.
"I've never, ever laid hands on any one of my workers," Le Gros said. "Maybe I called them bad words if I was angry. That's the worst I did."
Le Gros said a Malian overseer beat one boy who had run away, but he said he himself did not order any beatings.
One day early last year, a boy named Oumar Kone was caught trying to escape. One of Le Gros' overseers beat him, said the other boys and local authorities.
A few days later, Oumar ran away again, and this time he escaped. He told elders in the local Malian immigrant community what was happening on Le Gros' farm. They called Abdoulaye Macko, who was then the Malian consul general in Bouake, a town north of Daloa, in the heart of Ivory Coast's cocoa- and coffee-growing region.
Macko (MOCK-o) went to the farm with several police officers, and he found the 19 boys and young men there. Aly, the youngest, was 13. The oldest was 21. They had spent anywhere from six months to 41/2 years on Le Gros' farm.
"They were tired, slim, they were not smiling," Macko said. "Except one child was not there. This one, his face showed what was happening. He was sick, he had (excrement) in his pants. He was lying on the ground, covered with cacao leaves because they were sure he was dying. He was almost dead. . . . He had been severely beaten."
According to medical records, other boys had healed scars as well as open, infected wounds all over their bodies.
Police freed the boys, and a few days later the Malian consulate in Bouake sent them all home to their villages in Mali. The sick boy was treated at a local hospital, then was sent home, too.
Le Gros was charged with assault against children and suppressing the liberty of people. The latter crime carries a five- to 10-year prison sentence and a hefty fine, said Daleba Rouba, attorney general for the region.
"In Ivorian law, an adult who orders a minor to hit and hurt somebody is automatically responsible as if he has committed the act," said Rouba. "Whether or not Le Gros did the beatings himself or ordered somebody, he is liable."
Le Gros spent 24 days in jail, and today he is a free man pending a court hearing that is scheduled for this week. Rouba said the case against Le Gros is weak because the witnesses against him have all been sent back to Mali.
"If the Malian authorities are willing to cooperate, if they can bring two or three of the children back as witnesses, my case will be stronger," Rouba said.
Mamadou Diarra, the Malian consul general in Bouake, said he would look into the matter.
Enforcement lacking
Child trafficking experts say inadequate legislation, ignorance of the law, poor law enforcement, porous borders, police corruption and a shortage of resources help perpetuate the problem of child slavery in Ivory Coast. Only 12 convicted slave traders are serving time in Ivorian prisons. An additional eight, convicted in absentia, are on the lam.
The middlemen who buy Ivory Coast cocoa beans from farmers and sell them to processors seldom visit the country's cocoa farms, and when they do, it's to examine the beans, not the workers. Young boys are a common sight on the farms of West Africa, and it's impossible to know without asking which are a farmer's own children, which are field hands who will be paid $150 to $180 after a year's work and which are slaves.
"We've never seen child slavery," said G.H. Haidar, a cocoa buyer in Daloa. "We're only concerned with our work."
The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, based in Vienna, Va., at first said the industry was not aware of slavery, either. After Knight Ridder began inquiring about the use of slaves on Ivory Coast cocoa farms, however, the manufacturers association in late April acknowledged that a problem might exist and said it strongly condemned "these practices wherever they may occur."
In May, the association decided to expand an Ivory Coast farming program to include education on "the importance of children." And this month, the association agreed to fund a survey of child labor practices on Ivory Coast cocoa farms.
Ivorian officials have found scores of enslaved children from Mali and Burkina Faso and sent them home, and they have asked the International Labor Organization, a global workers' rights agency, to help them conduct a child labor survey that's expected to be completed this year.
But they continue to blame the problem on immigrant farmers from Mali and on world cocoa prices that have fallen sharply since 1996, from 67 cents a pound to 51 cents, forcing impoverished farmers to use the cheapest labor they can find.
Ivory Coast Agriculture Minister Alfonse Douaty calls child slavery a marginal "clandestine phenomenon" that exists on only a handful of the country's more than 600,000 cocoa and coffee farms.
"Those who do this are hidden, well hidden," said Douaty (Doo-AH-tee). He said his government is clamping down on child traffickers by beefing up border patrols and law enforcement, and running education campaigns to boost awareness of anti-slavery laws and efforts.
Douaty said child labor in Ivory Coast should not be called slavery, because the word conjures up images of chains and whips. He prefers the term "indentured labor."
Ivory Coast authorities ordered Le Gros to pay Aly and the other boys a total of 4.3 million African Financial Community francs (about $6,150) for their time as indentured laborers. Aly got 125,000 francs (about $180) for the 18 months he worked on the cocoa farm.
Aly bought himself the very thing the trader who enslaved him had promised: a bicycle. It has a light, a yellow horn and colorful bottle caps in the spokes. He rides it everywhere.
Aly helps his parents by selling vegetables in a nearby market, but he still doesn't understand why he was a slave.
When he was told that some American children spend nearly as much every year on chocolate as he was paid for six months' work harvesting cocoa beans, he replied without bitterness:
"I bless them because they are eating it."
Raghavan reported from Ivory Coast and Mali, Chatterjee from London, Chicago and Philadelphia. Researcher Tish Wells contributed to this report.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Also look at these links for more about TRAGIC CHOCOLATE!
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/cocoa/chocolatereport05.pdf
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/02/06/PM200602068.html
Friday, April 4, 2008
More King Crab! But Don't get fooled.
HARVEST UPDATE
2008 Alaska Snow Crab Season Update
A successful 2008 Alaska Snow Crab season is nearing a close. This year's Total Allowable Catch (TAC) was set at 63 million pounds, which is a substantial rise from last year's 36 million pound TAC. Alaska's dedication to sustainability has helped to make this a "resource on the upswing" with other factors such as earlier processing and better arrangements for quota management contributing to this season's success.
Sources: Seafood.com, February 20, 2008; McDowell Group harvest update
When buying King Crab it can very misleading. We all want Alaskan King Crab, but is that what we are actually getting. You have to read the label very closely. See most crab is caught in Russia and packed there or even in China. This deflates the price of King Crab. So when you see King Crab in grocery store or big box warehouse for 7.99 and lb. it is not Alaskan. The realality is that true American/Alaskan King Crab would be $4-5 more a lb. So most people won't spend the extra money on an American product.
At Aroma Thyme we ONLY serve Alaskan King Crab. We feel it is important to support a fishery that well managed. Those other areas do not manage the species as weel or at all. We feel it is important to support sustainable food choices.
Next time you eat King Crab out put the restaurant on the spot and tell them how important it is to support the real American caught and processed crab.
Marcus Guiliano
Aroma Thyme Bistro
165 Canal St
Ellenville NY
2008 Alaska Snow Crab Season Update
A successful 2008 Alaska Snow Crab season is nearing a close. This year's Total Allowable Catch (TAC) was set at 63 million pounds, which is a substantial rise from last year's 36 million pound TAC. Alaska's dedication to sustainability has helped to make this a "resource on the upswing" with other factors such as earlier processing and better arrangements for quota management contributing to this season's success.
Sources: Seafood.com, February 20, 2008; McDowell Group harvest update
When buying King Crab it can very misleading. We all want Alaskan King Crab, but is that what we are actually getting. You have to read the label very closely. See most crab is caught in Russia and packed there or even in China. This deflates the price of King Crab. So when you see King Crab in grocery store or big box warehouse for 7.99 and lb. it is not Alaskan. The realality is that true American/Alaskan King Crab would be $4-5 more a lb. So most people won't spend the extra money on an American product.
At Aroma Thyme we ONLY serve Alaskan King Crab. We feel it is important to support a fishery that well managed. Those other areas do not manage the species as weel or at all. We feel it is important to support sustainable food choices.
Next time you eat King Crab out put the restaurant on the spot and tell them how important it is to support the real American caught and processed crab.
Marcus Guiliano
Aroma Thyme Bistro
165 Canal St
Ellenville NY
Thursday, April 3, 2008
We Don't Serve Contaminated Fish, Period
We serve low-mercury Albacore Tuna from the Pacific-Northwest. This tuna is on the small side, which means it DOES NOT have the harmful levels of mercury. But they are old enough to reproduce. This is the safest tuna.
Don't let other restaurants poison you with their PRIZED Tuna!
Be careful what you Catch!
What are contaminants?
Despite their valuable qualities, fish can pose considerable health risks when contaminated with substances such as metals (e.g., mercury and lead), industrial chemicals (e.g., PCBs) and pesticides (e.g., DDT and dieldrin). Through increased testing, many of our oceans, lakes and rivers are now known to be surprisingly tainted. As a result, some fish are sufficiently contaminated that Environmental Defense recommends limited or no consumption.
Where do contaminants come from?
Contaminants enter the water in a variety of ways. Industrial and municipal discharges, agricultural practices, and storm water runoff can all deposit harmful substances directly into the water. Rain can also wash chemicals from the land or air into streams and rivers. These contaminants are then carried downstream into lakes, reservoirs and estuaries.
Fish take in these substances in several ways, and their contaminant levels depend on factors like species, size, age and location. Mercury, for example, is naturally converted by bacteria into methylmercury. Fish absorb methylmercury mostly from their food, but also from the water as it passes over their gills. Generally, larger and older fish have had more time to bioaccumulate mercury from their food and the water than smaller and younger fish. In addition, large predatory fish (like sharks and swordfish) near the top of marine food chains are more likely to have high levels of mercury than fish lower in marine food chains due to the process of biomagnification.
Fish can also absorb organic chemicals (such as PCBs, dioxins and DDT) from the water, suspended sediments, and their food. In contaminated areas, bottom-dwelling fish are especially likely to have high levels of such toxins because these substances run off the land and settle to the bottom. These organic chemicals then concentrate in the skin, organs and other fatty tissues of fish. Wild striped bass, bluefish, American eel, and seatrout tend to be high in PCBs, since they are bottom-tending fish often found in contaminated rivers and estuaries.
The above was sourced from www.oceansalive.org
We always think of fish as clean and healthy alternative in our diet. I can remember about 5 years ago a well known fish supplier in New York's Fulton market was caught selling stripped bass from the Hudson River. This bass made it into some of Manhattans finest restaurants. As we know the Hudson River has faced years of chemical buildup. Not one person I know would even consider eating bass from the Hudson River. Although Shad is said to be edible from the Hudson River because supposedly it does not eat and absorb toxins during it river journey.
So is the seafood we are eating considered clean and pure? There are lots of fish that just come from the wrong areas of the world or are farmed in such a manner that increases these chemical exposures. Farmed salmon for instance has large amounts of dioxins and other harmful chemicals. These farmed salmon eat fish pellets that are made from other fish and fish parts. If these fish come from contaminated waters then it will carry down in the food supply. So the farmed salmon will bio-concentrate these dioxins, mercury and other impurities. When lots of fish are forced into small farms the risks of disease increases. This is when the use of antibiotics are increased. Because these farms are profit driven the use of growth enhancers such as synthetic hormones are given.
Where should are fish come from?
Certain areas of the world are much better off than other areas. I always like Alaska for good clean seafood. Alaska has very strict population management and is out of reach from large populated areas. I also just discovered a small company based out of Tobago, just off of Trinidad. This small company delivers hand line caught fish to several New York restaurants. Fish of this quality usually never goes to supermarkets. Supermarkets are very sensitive to price. These high quality fish most likely end up in high quality restaurants. Chefs seem to pay more for the fancy ingredients. As a general rule the fish I buy from wholesalers cost more than at the local supermarkets. There are many area around the world that supply bountiful seafood from clean waters.
What to do can we all do?
The questions you should ask are, how was this fish caught and where was it caught. There are great Internet companies that will overnight you extremely fresh fish. Also health food stores usually have a good selection on sustainable seafood in the freezer section.
You have ever right to know where and how the fish was caught you are eating.
Don't let other restaurants poison you with their PRIZED Tuna!
Be careful what you Catch!
What are contaminants?
Despite their valuable qualities, fish can pose considerable health risks when contaminated with substances such as metals (e.g., mercury and lead), industrial chemicals (e.g., PCBs) and pesticides (e.g., DDT and dieldrin). Through increased testing, many of our oceans, lakes and rivers are now known to be surprisingly tainted. As a result, some fish are sufficiently contaminated that Environmental Defense recommends limited or no consumption.
Where do contaminants come from?
Contaminants enter the water in a variety of ways. Industrial and municipal discharges, agricultural practices, and storm water runoff can all deposit harmful substances directly into the water. Rain can also wash chemicals from the land or air into streams and rivers. These contaminants are then carried downstream into lakes, reservoirs and estuaries.
Fish take in these substances in several ways, and their contaminant levels depend on factors like species, size, age and location. Mercury, for example, is naturally converted by bacteria into methylmercury. Fish absorb methylmercury mostly from their food, but also from the water as it passes over their gills. Generally, larger and older fish have had more time to bioaccumulate mercury from their food and the water than smaller and younger fish. In addition, large predatory fish (like sharks and swordfish) near the top of marine food chains are more likely to have high levels of mercury than fish lower in marine food chains due to the process of biomagnification.
Fish can also absorb organic chemicals (such as PCBs, dioxins and DDT) from the water, suspended sediments, and their food. In contaminated areas, bottom-dwelling fish are especially likely to have high levels of such toxins because these substances run off the land and settle to the bottom. These organic chemicals then concentrate in the skin, organs and other fatty tissues of fish. Wild striped bass, bluefish, American eel, and seatrout tend to be high in PCBs, since they are bottom-tending fish often found in contaminated rivers and estuaries.
The above was sourced from www.oceansalive.org
We always think of fish as clean and healthy alternative in our diet. I can remember about 5 years ago a well known fish supplier in New York's Fulton market was caught selling stripped bass from the Hudson River. This bass made it into some of Manhattans finest restaurants. As we know the Hudson River has faced years of chemical buildup. Not one person I know would even consider eating bass from the Hudson River. Although Shad is said to be edible from the Hudson River because supposedly it does not eat and absorb toxins during it river journey.
So is the seafood we are eating considered clean and pure? There are lots of fish that just come from the wrong areas of the world or are farmed in such a manner that increases these chemical exposures. Farmed salmon for instance has large amounts of dioxins and other harmful chemicals. These farmed salmon eat fish pellets that are made from other fish and fish parts. If these fish come from contaminated waters then it will carry down in the food supply. So the farmed salmon will bio-concentrate these dioxins, mercury and other impurities. When lots of fish are forced into small farms the risks of disease increases. This is when the use of antibiotics are increased. Because these farms are profit driven the use of growth enhancers such as synthetic hormones are given.
Where should are fish come from?
Certain areas of the world are much better off than other areas. I always like Alaska for good clean seafood. Alaska has very strict population management and is out of reach from large populated areas. I also just discovered a small company based out of Tobago, just off of Trinidad. This small company delivers hand line caught fish to several New York restaurants. Fish of this quality usually never goes to supermarkets. Supermarkets are very sensitive to price. These high quality fish most likely end up in high quality restaurants. Chefs seem to pay more for the fancy ingredients. As a general rule the fish I buy from wholesalers cost more than at the local supermarkets. There are many area around the world that supply bountiful seafood from clean waters.
What to do can we all do?
The questions you should ask are, how was this fish caught and where was it caught. There are great Internet companies that will overnight you extremely fresh fish. Also health food stores usually have a good selection on sustainable seafood in the freezer section.
You have ever right to know where and how the fish was caught you are eating.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Cancer Update
Some of you may know that I experienced a major health reform in 1999. I shocked my doctor and got off all of my medications, including 28 years of asthma sprays. I did all this in 1 short month. I also lost about 30-40 lbs. I discovered that it was my lack of good food. And you can't rely on the USDA food regime or most doctors for advice. I searched the alternative health world for my answer.
I am always asked how I did it. This post is the best explanation. See my full story on my website.
This is from Dr. Robert O. Young, sent in an e-mail April 2nd 2008.
The following "cancer update" article of mis-
information on cancer has been circulating around
the internet for about a year. The claim is
that the article originated from Johns Hopkins
Hospital as an update for how cancer spreads
and the recommended methods for treatment.
According to Snopes the article did not originate
from Johns Hopkins Hospital and they also deny
the authorship of the following article of March
2007.
http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/cancerupdate.asp
As a matter of scientific interest and to correct
many of the myths surrounding cancer I have decided to
comment after each statement in the erroneous Johns
Hopkins Hospital article.
"CANCER UPDATE"
1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These
cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until
they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell
cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in
their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests
are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have
not reached the detectable size.
Dr. Robert O. Young states,
"There is no such thing as a cancer cell. Cancer is not
a cell but an acidic dietary and/or metabolic acid that
poisons or ferments body cells. Just like a rotten apple
in a bushel of healthy apples, the rotten spoiling apple
is eluding acid that will spoil all the rest of the
healthy apples. We do not say that the apple or apples
have cancer, we say the apples are spoiling or rotting.
Cancer is not a noun it is an adjective. We do not have
cancer cells or cancer in our body we have acids that
spoil healthy cells causing cancerous cells and a
cancerous condition. When this happens we have cancerous
or spoiling cells which describes the reality of what
is happening to the body cell(s) in a cancerous or
fermenting state. Also, one can test the levels of urine
acidity daily which will give an indication of the levels
of tissue acidity. Normal healthy urine pH should read at
least 7.2 or above. You can also see the effects of
tissue acidity that leads to a cancerous state by viewing
how the blood coagulates. If the blood is in a
hypo-coagulated state this indicates latent tissue acidosis
and a marker for a cancerous or degenerative tissue state.
This simple blood test can be done as an early warning
to any cancerous state in any part of the body for the
purposes of screening and prevention."
2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in
a person's lifetime.
Dr. Young states:
"All of us have cancerous or acidic body cells from
conception to death to a lesser or greater degree
depending upon lifestyle and dietary choices. The body
is constantly trying to maintain its alkaline design
while dealing with its many acidic functions. The
body requires energy to run and the consumption of
energy produces dietary and metabolic acidic waste
products. If these dietary and metabolic acidic waste
products are not eliminated through urination,
perspiration, defecation or respiration
they are then eliminated into the body tissues, such
as the connective tissues, muscles and bones. These
dietary and/or metabolic acids that are not properly
eliminated can then spoil body cells leading to an
acidic or cancerous state I call latent tissue acidosis."
3. When a persons immune system is strong the
cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from
multiplying and forming tumors.
Dr. Young states:
"First, the immune system or the white blood cells
do not destroy cancerous cells. They do not even pick
up cancerous cells. White blood cells are the janitors
of blood traveling through the body fluids picking up
smaller insignificant cellular debris from the food we
eat. Second, cancerous cells do not multiply. This is
another scientific misconception based upon the premise
that cancer is a cell. Cancer is not a cell it is an
acidic poisonous liquid flowing through our body fluids.
Dietary and metabolic acids spoil body cells and then as
one cell begins to spoil their acids can spoil other cells.
This phenomenon is a what I call the "domino effect".
Metastasis of cancerous cells is the expression of the
"domino effect" of acids from one spoiling cell spoiling
another cell and so on. This causes the body to go into
the preservation mode by forming fibrin monomers to
encapsulate the spoiling cells together in order to
protect the surrounding healthy tissue. Medical savants
call these formations tumors. Tumors are fibrous
encapsulations of rotten spoiled cells and their
associated acidic waste products."
"A tumor is the body's way of stopping systemic spoiling
and localizing the spoiling to a specific localized area.
Tumors are not the cancer but the encapsulation of
acidic spoiling cancerous cells. The tumor is the
body's solution to systemic spoiling of unhealthy body
cells and tissues due to an inverted way of living,
eating and thinking and NOT the perceived cause of the
cancerous state by current medical savants."
4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person
has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could
be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle
factors.
Dr. Young states:
"People do not have cancer they are in a cancerous
state to a lesser or greater degree depending on
lifestyle and dietary choices. When you live, think
and eat acidic you pollute your internal environmental
fluids causing latent tissue acidosis that can lead
to cancerous or spoiling tissues."
"Genetics only plays out in a cancerous state as an
inherited physiological weakness where acids may
settle. One is only predisposed to a cancerous state
if they are making acidic lifestyle and dietary choices."
5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies,
changing diet and including supplements will strengthen
the immune system.
Dr. Young states:
"To overcome a cancerous state one needs to reestablish
the alkaline design of the body and better manage the
acidic loads from lifestyle, diet and metabolism. I have
suggested for years a healthy body cannot get sick
in an alkaline state. All sickness and disease is
caused by over-acidic lifestyle and dietary choices. You
do not get a cancerous condition you do a cancerous
condition. A cancerous condition is the expression of
poor lifestyle and dietary choices."
6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing
cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy
cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc,
and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart,
lungs etc.
Dr. Young states:
"All chemotherapy treatments are acidic. Acidic treatments
of chemical therapy only contribute to an already acidic
state. The key to health, energy, vitality and fitness of
the body is not with the body cells but with the alkaline
environment in which the body cells reside. Destroying
cancerous cells with drugs does not address the real
foundational problem of what causes a cancerous condition.
The true cause of any cancerous state is the level
of acidic dietary and metabolic poisons in the fluids
of the body. That is why ALL treatments focused on the
cancerous cells and tissues will eventually fail with
the death of the body. You do not fight fire with the
acid of kerosene just as you would not fight a cancerous
condition with acidic drugs and/or treatments."
7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns,
scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.
Dr. Young states:
"Radiation does breakdown cancerous cells which pollutes
the internal alkaline environment causing systemic
pollution and stress on the white blood cells and
elimination and filter organs, including the lungs,
liver, skin, kidney and bowels. The key is not to
destroy tumors with radiation but to saturate the
tissues with alkalinity. When this happens the tumor
will finish its job of encapsulating spoiled or
fermenting cancerous cells, crystallize, harden and
then breakdown to eventually eliminated. This is the
normal healthy life cycle of a tumor in the body."
8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation
will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use
of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more
tumor destruction.
Dr. Young states:
"Chemotherapy and radiation treatment is focused on the
wrong thing - the cells of the body and not the acidic
fluids of the body. The problem is not the tumor or
cancerous cells. The tumor is the solution to the problem
to prevent systemic cellular poisoning or spoiling from
dietary and/or metabolic acid. So what is the real problem?
The real problem is systemic acidosis from personal
lifestyle and dietary choice that localizes at the
weakness parts of the body tissues."
9. When the body has too much toxic burden from
chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is
either compromised or destroyed, hence the person
can succumb to various kinds of infections and
complications.
Dr. Young states:
"True immunity comes from maintaining the alkaline
design of the body fluids at 7.365 to 7.4. The
white blood cells play only a supportive role in
maintaining cleanliness of the body fluids. It is
true that chemotherapy drugs and radiation can
suppress the white blood cells from cleaning up
cellular debris. The build up of cellular debris
will cause an increase of acidity contributing
to an already acidic state. A person in an
acidic state or latent tissue acidosis will
eventually succumb from the outfections of
acids from spoiling cellular debris/matter and
cancerous spoiling body cells."
10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer
cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult
to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells
to spread to other sites.
Dr. Young states:
"I will state again that there is no such thing as
a cancer cell. Body cells do not mutate they spoil.
All body cells transform to bacteria, yeast and then
mold in an acidic environment. Acids spread
systemically spoiling body cells. Cancerous cells
only spoil other cells from their acidic transformations
and wastes! Chemotherapy and radiation are acidic
treatments that spoil healthy and unhealthy body
cells. Surgery removes acidic cancerous cells but
disturbs the healthy surrounding tissue. This can
cause further acidic complications in and around
the surrounding healthy tissue."
11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve
the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods
it needs to multiply.
Dr. Young states:
"Cancer cells do not multiply! Cancerous cells
are body cells that are fermenting, rotting and
spoiling other cells. You cannot starve cancerous
cells. Body cells are made up of intelligent matter
which cannot be destroyed - they can only be changed.
The key to a cancerous condition in the body
is to hyper-alkalize the blood which will then force
alkalinity into the acidic tissues and thus buffering
the tissue acidity that leads to a cancerous state."
CANCER CELLS FEED ON:
Dr. Young states:
"Once again we have cancerous cells not cancer
cells. Cancerous cells are not different from
healthy cells - they both feed on electrical energy -
electrons. Antione BeChamp once said, "everything
is the prey of life, nothing is the prey of death."
Matter cannot be created nor can it be destroyed it
can only change its form and its function."
12. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar
it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer
cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal,
Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is
harmful. A better natural substitute would be
Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small
amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make
it white in color. Better alternative is Bragg's
aminos or sea salt.
Dr. Young states:
"All sugars, including manuka honey and molasses
are acid forming and can cause cancerous body cells.
All sugars are acidic waste products from fermenting
matter. Braggs aminos is also acidic and should not be
ingested when in a cancerous state. Sea salt is
alkalizing and should be included in any
plan to prevent or reverse a cancerous condition.
Sea salt is also foundational in helping the
body create the alkaline buffer of sodium
bicarbonate."
13. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially
in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus.
By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened
soya milk cancer cells are being starved.
Dr. Young states:
"Mucous is formed by the body as a protection to healthy
body cells to buffer dietary and/or metabolic acids. Milk
is highly acidic and contains a cancerous causing acid
called lactose that breaks down to a primary metabolite
called lactic acid. Lactic acid is one of the major
cancerous causing acids next to nitric and uric acid
from animal proteins. Cancerous cells do not feed on
mucus they feed on electrons robbing the
body of energy. Mucus is the end product of the
body buffering dietary and/or metabolic acids with
sodium bicarbonate. Soy milk is also acidic and
should not be used unless it is freshly squeezed."
14. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment.
A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to
eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef
or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics,
growth hormones and parasites, which are all
harmful, especially to people with cancer.
Dr. Young states:
"Cancerous cells are fermenting body cells and
do not thrive in an acidic state but are the result
of an acidic state. Cancerous cells will continue
to breakdown or transform in an acidic environment.
All animal proteins including fish are highly
acidic and should not be ingested when one is
in a highly acidic cancerous state. The body
cannot adequately remove the dietary acids of
uric, nitric, sulphuric and phosphoric acid
from the animal proteins leading to increased
acidity and potentially increased cancerous body
cells. Antibiotics and hormones are both
metabolic acids and can contribute to an
acidic state leading to a cancerous condition."
15. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice,
whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help
put the body into an alkaline environment. About
20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh
vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily
absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within
15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy
cells. To obtain live enzymes for building healthy
cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most
vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some
raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are
destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F
(40 degrees C).
Dr. Young states:
"All enzymes are acids. All acids cause cancerous
conditions. The body runs on alkalinity not acidity.
Another way to say this is the body runs on electrons
not protons or hydrogen ions. When you are dealing with
a serious cancerous condition one needs to reestablish
the alkaline design of the body. You can only do this
with a 100% alkaline lifestyle and diet! I call this
the alkaline plan the COWS program. The COWS program is
the pH Miracle Lifestyle and Dietary Plan of alkaline
foods, drinks and lifestyle choices. This would include
the four food groups of:
1) Chlorophyll
2) Oil
3) Water
4) Salt
It would also include deep breathing, meditation and
daily exercise.
To learn more about the pH Miracle Plan go to:
www.phmiracleliving.com or read The pH Miracle,
or listen to The pH Miracle for Cancer,
by Dr. Robert and Shelley Young."
16. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have
high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative
and has cancer-fighting properties. Water-best to
drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known
toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water
is acidic, avoid it.
Dr. Young states:
"Coffee, black tea, green tea, chocolate are all
acidic and do not support the alkaline design of
the body. Alkaline water at a pH of 9.5 or above
is the best water to drink. Distilled water with
sodium chloride or chlorite will increase the
alkalinity of the body fluids and buffer excess
dietary and metabolic acid."
17. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires
a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining
in the intestines become putrefied and leads to more
toxic buildup.
Dr. Young states:
"All meat is acidic, all digestive enzymes are
acidic and should not be ingested. To support
the alkaline design of the body you need to
increase your consumption of alkaline food,
water and supplements. Daily deep breathing,
mediation and exercise are also necessary for
maintaining the alkaline design of the body."
18. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering.
By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more
enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells
and allows the body's killer cells to destroy the
cancer cells.
Dr. Young states:
"Cancerous cells have a calcified covering from
all the acidity. The body uses calcium ions
to buffer endogenous acidity from without and
within the body cell. Enzymes are acids that
negative effect every cell in the body.
Enzymes do not attack cancerous cells they spoil
body cells leading to more cancerous cells. The
calcification of the body cell is a means of protection
against dietary and/or metabolic acidity."
19. Some supplements build up the immune system
(IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins,
minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body's own
killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other
supplements like vitamin E are known to cause
apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's
normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted,
or unneeded cells.
Dr. Young states:
"One of the most naturally occurring alkalizing
compounds produced by the body is sodium
bicarbonate. I have suggested using increased
amounts of sodium bicarbonate for years to neutralize
the dietary and metabolic acids that make us sick,
depressed and tired. Its inexpensive, safe, effective
and easy to get. I also suggest liberal amounts
of mono and polyunsaturated fats to buffer increased
amounts of dietary and/or metabolic acids in the
prevention of a cancerous state."
20. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit.
A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer
warrior be a survivor. Anger, unforgiveness and
bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic
environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving
spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.
Dr. Young states:
"A cancerous state is caused by acidic lifestyle
and dietary choice. This would include your
thoughts, your words and your deeds."
21. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated
environment. Exercising daily, and deep breathing
help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level.
Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy
cancer cells.
Dr. Young states:
"Cancerous cells may change in an oxygen rich
state of nascent oxygen, atomic oxygen or O1.
I agree with daily exercise, deep breathing
and oxygen supplementation to help maintain
the alkaline design of the body. I also
strongly believe that the cure for any
cancerous condition can be found in its prevention
and not in its treatment!"
Origins of the "Cancer Update":
Just as urban legends and rumors eventually
become attached to the most famous exemplars
of the subjects they discuss (e.g., any fast
food-related legend, no matter where it originates,
will inevitably be told about McDonald's), so
do many of the spurious medical articles
circulated on the Internet eventually become
attributed to the world-renowned Johns Hopkins
University, medical school, and hospitals.
The "Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins Hospital"
quoted above has been forwarded via e-mail as a
preface to another piece (about the supposed
dangers of using microwave ovens to heat food
stored in plastic containers) also falsely said
to have originated with Johns Hopkins. Neither
article was issued by (or has any connection to)
the Johns Hopkins university or hospital, and
Johns Hopkins has disclaimed the contents of both.
Of the "Cancer Update" e-mail (most of the
information contained within which is of the
"quack" variety), Johns Hopkins says:
An email falsely attributed to Johns Hopkins
describing properties of cancer cells and
suggesting prevention strategies has begun
circulating the Internet. Johns Hopkins
did not publish the email, entitled "Cancer Update
from Johns Hopkins," nor do we endorse its contents.
For more information about cancer, please read the
information on our web site or visit the National
Cancer Institutes's web site at www.cancer.gov.
Last updated: 3 April 2007
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/cancerupdate.asp
As someone that looks to improve their health we are pleased to offer you this free audio, an excerpt of a powerful two hour interview with Dr Robert O. Young and Anthony Robbins. (it is free to listen!)
Click here to listen: http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?Clk=1870270
I trust you'll enjoy this...
Not part of our healing alkaline community?
Visit our website at:
www.phmiracleliving.com
To learn more about the science of Dr. Robert and Shelley Young go to:
www.articlesofhealth.blogspot.com
'Miracles happen not in opposition to nature, but in opposition to what we know of nature.' St. Augustine
'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' ....Arthur C. Clarke
'There are only two ways to live your life. One, is as though there are no miracles. The other is as though everything is a miracle.' Albert Einstein
pH Miracle Living Center
16390 Dia Del Sol
Valley Center, California 92082 US
© Copyright 2008 - Dr. Robert O. Young
All rights are reserved. Content may be reproduced, downloaded, disseminated,
or transferred, for single use, or by nonprofit organizations for educational
purposes, if correct attribution is made to Dr. Robert O. Young.
I am always asked how I did it. This post is the best explanation. See my full story on my website.
This is from Dr. Robert O. Young, sent in an e-mail April 2nd 2008.
The following "cancer update" article of mis-
information on cancer has been circulating around
the internet for about a year. The claim is
that the article originated from Johns Hopkins
Hospital as an update for how cancer spreads
and the recommended methods for treatment.
According to Snopes the article did not originate
from Johns Hopkins Hospital and they also deny
the authorship of the following article of March
2007.
http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/cancerupdate.asp
As a matter of scientific interest and to correct
many of the myths surrounding cancer I have decided to
comment after each statement in the erroneous Johns
Hopkins Hospital article.
"CANCER UPDATE"
1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These
cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until
they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell
cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in
their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests
are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have
not reached the detectable size.
Dr. Robert O. Young states,
"There is no such thing as a cancer cell. Cancer is not
a cell but an acidic dietary and/or metabolic acid that
poisons or ferments body cells. Just like a rotten apple
in a bushel of healthy apples, the rotten spoiling apple
is eluding acid that will spoil all the rest of the
healthy apples. We do not say that the apple or apples
have cancer, we say the apples are spoiling or rotting.
Cancer is not a noun it is an adjective. We do not have
cancer cells or cancer in our body we have acids that
spoil healthy cells causing cancerous cells and a
cancerous condition. When this happens we have cancerous
or spoiling cells which describes the reality of what
is happening to the body cell(s) in a cancerous or
fermenting state. Also, one can test the levels of urine
acidity daily which will give an indication of the levels
of tissue acidity. Normal healthy urine pH should read at
least 7.2 or above. You can also see the effects of
tissue acidity that leads to a cancerous state by viewing
how the blood coagulates. If the blood is in a
hypo-coagulated state this indicates latent tissue acidosis
and a marker for a cancerous or degenerative tissue state.
This simple blood test can be done as an early warning
to any cancerous state in any part of the body for the
purposes of screening and prevention."
2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in
a person's lifetime.
Dr. Young states:
"All of us have cancerous or acidic body cells from
conception to death to a lesser or greater degree
depending upon lifestyle and dietary choices. The body
is constantly trying to maintain its alkaline design
while dealing with its many acidic functions. The
body requires energy to run and the consumption of
energy produces dietary and metabolic acidic waste
products. If these dietary and metabolic acidic waste
products are not eliminated through urination,
perspiration, defecation or respiration
they are then eliminated into the body tissues, such
as the connective tissues, muscles and bones. These
dietary and/or metabolic acids that are not properly
eliminated can then spoil body cells leading to an
acidic or cancerous state I call latent tissue acidosis."
3. When a persons immune system is strong the
cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from
multiplying and forming tumors.
Dr. Young states:
"First, the immune system or the white blood cells
do not destroy cancerous cells. They do not even pick
up cancerous cells. White blood cells are the janitors
of blood traveling through the body fluids picking up
smaller insignificant cellular debris from the food we
eat. Second, cancerous cells do not multiply. This is
another scientific misconception based upon the premise
that cancer is a cell. Cancer is not a cell it is an
acidic poisonous liquid flowing through our body fluids.
Dietary and metabolic acids spoil body cells and then as
one cell begins to spoil their acids can spoil other cells.
This phenomenon is a what I call the "domino effect".
Metastasis of cancerous cells is the expression of the
"domino effect" of acids from one spoiling cell spoiling
another cell and so on. This causes the body to go into
the preservation mode by forming fibrin monomers to
encapsulate the spoiling cells together in order to
protect the surrounding healthy tissue. Medical savants
call these formations tumors. Tumors are fibrous
encapsulations of rotten spoiled cells and their
associated acidic waste products."
"A tumor is the body's way of stopping systemic spoiling
and localizing the spoiling to a specific localized area.
Tumors are not the cancer but the encapsulation of
acidic spoiling cancerous cells. The tumor is the
body's solution to systemic spoiling of unhealthy body
cells and tissues due to an inverted way of living,
eating and thinking and NOT the perceived cause of the
cancerous state by current medical savants."
4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person
has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could
be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle
factors.
Dr. Young states:
"People do not have cancer they are in a cancerous
state to a lesser or greater degree depending on
lifestyle and dietary choices. When you live, think
and eat acidic you pollute your internal environmental
fluids causing latent tissue acidosis that can lead
to cancerous or spoiling tissues."
"Genetics only plays out in a cancerous state as an
inherited physiological weakness where acids may
settle. One is only predisposed to a cancerous state
if they are making acidic lifestyle and dietary choices."
5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies,
changing diet and including supplements will strengthen
the immune system.
Dr. Young states:
"To overcome a cancerous state one needs to reestablish
the alkaline design of the body and better manage the
acidic loads from lifestyle, diet and metabolism. I have
suggested for years a healthy body cannot get sick
in an alkaline state. All sickness and disease is
caused by over-acidic lifestyle and dietary choices. You
do not get a cancerous condition you do a cancerous
condition. A cancerous condition is the expression of
poor lifestyle and dietary choices."
6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing
cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy
cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc,
and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart,
lungs etc.
Dr. Young states:
"All chemotherapy treatments are acidic. Acidic treatments
of chemical therapy only contribute to an already acidic
state. The key to health, energy, vitality and fitness of
the body is not with the body cells but with the alkaline
environment in which the body cells reside. Destroying
cancerous cells with drugs does not address the real
foundational problem of what causes a cancerous condition.
The true cause of any cancerous state is the level
of acidic dietary and metabolic poisons in the fluids
of the body. That is why ALL treatments focused on the
cancerous cells and tissues will eventually fail with
the death of the body. You do not fight fire with the
acid of kerosene just as you would not fight a cancerous
condition with acidic drugs and/or treatments."
7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns,
scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.
Dr. Young states:
"Radiation does breakdown cancerous cells which pollutes
the internal alkaline environment causing systemic
pollution and stress on the white blood cells and
elimination and filter organs, including the lungs,
liver, skin, kidney and bowels. The key is not to
destroy tumors with radiation but to saturate the
tissues with alkalinity. When this happens the tumor
will finish its job of encapsulating spoiled or
fermenting cancerous cells, crystallize, harden and
then breakdown to eventually eliminated. This is the
normal healthy life cycle of a tumor in the body."
8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation
will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use
of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more
tumor destruction.
Dr. Young states:
"Chemotherapy and radiation treatment is focused on the
wrong thing - the cells of the body and not the acidic
fluids of the body. The problem is not the tumor or
cancerous cells. The tumor is the solution to the problem
to prevent systemic cellular poisoning or spoiling from
dietary and/or metabolic acid. So what is the real problem?
The real problem is systemic acidosis from personal
lifestyle and dietary choice that localizes at the
weakness parts of the body tissues."
9. When the body has too much toxic burden from
chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is
either compromised or destroyed, hence the person
can succumb to various kinds of infections and
complications.
Dr. Young states:
"True immunity comes from maintaining the alkaline
design of the body fluids at 7.365 to 7.4. The
white blood cells play only a supportive role in
maintaining cleanliness of the body fluids. It is
true that chemotherapy drugs and radiation can
suppress the white blood cells from cleaning up
cellular debris. The build up of cellular debris
will cause an increase of acidity contributing
to an already acidic state. A person in an
acidic state or latent tissue acidosis will
eventually succumb from the outfections of
acids from spoiling cellular debris/matter and
cancerous spoiling body cells."
10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer
cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult
to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells
to spread to other sites.
Dr. Young states:
"I will state again that there is no such thing as
a cancer cell. Body cells do not mutate they spoil.
All body cells transform to bacteria, yeast and then
mold in an acidic environment. Acids spread
systemically spoiling body cells. Cancerous cells
only spoil other cells from their acidic transformations
and wastes! Chemotherapy and radiation are acidic
treatments that spoil healthy and unhealthy body
cells. Surgery removes acidic cancerous cells but
disturbs the healthy surrounding tissue. This can
cause further acidic complications in and around
the surrounding healthy tissue."
11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve
the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods
it needs to multiply.
Dr. Young states:
"Cancer cells do not multiply! Cancerous cells
are body cells that are fermenting, rotting and
spoiling other cells. You cannot starve cancerous
cells. Body cells are made up of intelligent matter
which cannot be destroyed - they can only be changed.
The key to a cancerous condition in the body
is to hyper-alkalize the blood which will then force
alkalinity into the acidic tissues and thus buffering
the tissue acidity that leads to a cancerous state."
CANCER CELLS FEED ON:
Dr. Young states:
"Once again we have cancerous cells not cancer
cells. Cancerous cells are not different from
healthy cells - they both feed on electrical energy -
electrons. Antione BeChamp once said, "everything
is the prey of life, nothing is the prey of death."
Matter cannot be created nor can it be destroyed it
can only change its form and its function."
12. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar
it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer
cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal,
Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is
harmful. A better natural substitute would be
Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small
amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make
it white in color. Better alternative is Bragg's
aminos or sea salt.
Dr. Young states:
"All sugars, including manuka honey and molasses
are acid forming and can cause cancerous body cells.
All sugars are acidic waste products from fermenting
matter. Braggs aminos is also acidic and should not be
ingested when in a cancerous state. Sea salt is
alkalizing and should be included in any
plan to prevent or reverse a cancerous condition.
Sea salt is also foundational in helping the
body create the alkaline buffer of sodium
bicarbonate."
13. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially
in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus.
By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened
soya milk cancer cells are being starved.
Dr. Young states:
"Mucous is formed by the body as a protection to healthy
body cells to buffer dietary and/or metabolic acids. Milk
is highly acidic and contains a cancerous causing acid
called lactose that breaks down to a primary metabolite
called lactic acid. Lactic acid is one of the major
cancerous causing acids next to nitric and uric acid
from animal proteins. Cancerous cells do not feed on
mucus they feed on electrons robbing the
body of energy. Mucus is the end product of the
body buffering dietary and/or metabolic acids with
sodium bicarbonate. Soy milk is also acidic and
should not be used unless it is freshly squeezed."
14. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment.
A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to
eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef
or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics,
growth hormones and parasites, which are all
harmful, especially to people with cancer.
Dr. Young states:
"Cancerous cells are fermenting body cells and
do not thrive in an acidic state but are the result
of an acidic state. Cancerous cells will continue
to breakdown or transform in an acidic environment.
All animal proteins including fish are highly
acidic and should not be ingested when one is
in a highly acidic cancerous state. The body
cannot adequately remove the dietary acids of
uric, nitric, sulphuric and phosphoric acid
from the animal proteins leading to increased
acidity and potentially increased cancerous body
cells. Antibiotics and hormones are both
metabolic acids and can contribute to an
acidic state leading to a cancerous condition."
15. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice,
whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help
put the body into an alkaline environment. About
20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh
vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily
absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within
15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy
cells. To obtain live enzymes for building healthy
cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most
vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some
raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are
destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F
(40 degrees C).
Dr. Young states:
"All enzymes are acids. All acids cause cancerous
conditions. The body runs on alkalinity not acidity.
Another way to say this is the body runs on electrons
not protons or hydrogen ions. When you are dealing with
a serious cancerous condition one needs to reestablish
the alkaline design of the body. You can only do this
with a 100% alkaline lifestyle and diet! I call this
the alkaline plan the COWS program. The COWS program is
the pH Miracle Lifestyle and Dietary Plan of alkaline
foods, drinks and lifestyle choices. This would include
the four food groups of:
1) Chlorophyll
2) Oil
3) Water
4) Salt
It would also include deep breathing, meditation and
daily exercise.
To learn more about the pH Miracle Plan go to:
www.phmiracleliving.com or read The pH Miracle,
or listen to The pH Miracle for Cancer,
by Dr. Robert and Shelley Young."
16. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have
high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative
and has cancer-fighting properties. Water-best to
drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known
toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water
is acidic, avoid it.
Dr. Young states:
"Coffee, black tea, green tea, chocolate are all
acidic and do not support the alkaline design of
the body. Alkaline water at a pH of 9.5 or above
is the best water to drink. Distilled water with
sodium chloride or chlorite will increase the
alkalinity of the body fluids and buffer excess
dietary and metabolic acid."
17. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires
a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining
in the intestines become putrefied and leads to more
toxic buildup.
Dr. Young states:
"All meat is acidic, all digestive enzymes are
acidic and should not be ingested. To support
the alkaline design of the body you need to
increase your consumption of alkaline food,
water and supplements. Daily deep breathing,
mediation and exercise are also necessary for
maintaining the alkaline design of the body."
18. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering.
By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more
enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells
and allows the body's killer cells to destroy the
cancer cells.
Dr. Young states:
"Cancerous cells have a calcified covering from
all the acidity. The body uses calcium ions
to buffer endogenous acidity from without and
within the body cell. Enzymes are acids that
negative effect every cell in the body.
Enzymes do not attack cancerous cells they spoil
body cells leading to more cancerous cells. The
calcification of the body cell is a means of protection
against dietary and/or metabolic acidity."
19. Some supplements build up the immune system
(IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins,
minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body's own
killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other
supplements like vitamin E are known to cause
apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's
normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted,
or unneeded cells.
Dr. Young states:
"One of the most naturally occurring alkalizing
compounds produced by the body is sodium
bicarbonate. I have suggested using increased
amounts of sodium bicarbonate for years to neutralize
the dietary and metabolic acids that make us sick,
depressed and tired. Its inexpensive, safe, effective
and easy to get. I also suggest liberal amounts
of mono and polyunsaturated fats to buffer increased
amounts of dietary and/or metabolic acids in the
prevention of a cancerous state."
20. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit.
A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer
warrior be a survivor. Anger, unforgiveness and
bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic
environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving
spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.
Dr. Young states:
"A cancerous state is caused by acidic lifestyle
and dietary choice. This would include your
thoughts, your words and your deeds."
21. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated
environment. Exercising daily, and deep breathing
help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level.
Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy
cancer cells.
Dr. Young states:
"Cancerous cells may change in an oxygen rich
state of nascent oxygen, atomic oxygen or O1.
I agree with daily exercise, deep breathing
and oxygen supplementation to help maintain
the alkaline design of the body. I also
strongly believe that the cure for any
cancerous condition can be found in its prevention
and not in its treatment!"
Origins of the "Cancer Update":
Just as urban legends and rumors eventually
become attached to the most famous exemplars
of the subjects they discuss (e.g., any fast
food-related legend, no matter where it originates,
will inevitably be told about McDonald's), so
do many of the spurious medical articles
circulated on the Internet eventually become
attributed to the world-renowned Johns Hopkins
University, medical school, and hospitals.
The "Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins Hospital"
quoted above has been forwarded via e-mail as a
preface to another piece (about the supposed
dangers of using microwave ovens to heat food
stored in plastic containers) also falsely said
to have originated with Johns Hopkins. Neither
article was issued by (or has any connection to)
the Johns Hopkins university or hospital, and
Johns Hopkins has disclaimed the contents of both.
Of the "Cancer Update" e-mail (most of the
information contained within which is of the
"quack" variety), Johns Hopkins says:
An email falsely attributed to Johns Hopkins
describing properties of cancer cells and
suggesting prevention strategies has begun
circulating the Internet. Johns Hopkins
did not publish the email, entitled "Cancer Update
from Johns Hopkins," nor do we endorse its contents.
For more information about cancer, please read the
information on our web site or visit the National
Cancer Institutes's web site at www.cancer.gov.
Last updated: 3 April 2007
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/cancerupdate.asp
As someone that looks to improve their health we are pleased to offer you this free audio, an excerpt of a powerful two hour interview with Dr Robert O. Young and Anthony Robbins. (it is free to listen!)
Click here to listen: http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?Clk=1870270
I trust you'll enjoy this...
Not part of our healing alkaline community?
Visit our website at:
www.phmiracleliving.com
To learn more about the science of Dr. Robert and Shelley Young go to:
www.articlesofhealth.blogspot.com
'Miracles happen not in opposition to nature, but in opposition to what we know of nature.' St. Augustine
'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' ....Arthur C. Clarke
'There are only two ways to live your life. One, is as though there are no miracles. The other is as though everything is a miracle.' Albert Einstein
pH Miracle Living Center
16390 Dia Del Sol
Valley Center, California 92082 US
© Copyright 2008 - Dr. Robert O. Young
All rights are reserved. Content may be reproduced, downloaded, disseminated,
or transferred, for single use, or by nonprofit organizations for educational
purposes, if correct attribution is made to Dr. Robert O. Young.
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