Organic Consumers Association along with other Fair Trade, environmental, and food safety activists are gearing up for a worldwide campaign targeting Starbucks.

On Tuesday March 20, 2001, the date of Starbucks annual shareholder meeting in Seattle, we will be organizing leafleting and media events in front of Starbucks in 50-100 cities around the world and will be calling on Starbucks
to:

· To start brewing and promoting Fair Trade coffee in all of their cafes and provide clear evidence that they are in compliance with their previous promise to improve the wages, working conditions, and lives of the people who grow, harvest, and process the coffee they buy in Guatemala and other nations.

· Remove Monsanto's dangerous rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone) from their brand name products and all products sold in their cafes, on a global basis and place rBGH-free Labels on their ice cream and bottled drinks.

· Provide written assurance that they will stop using genetically engineered ingredients in their baked goods, chocolate and the soymilk they are using to make coffee drinks. GE soy lecithin and other soy derivatives, GE corn sweeteners, and GE cooking oils can all be currently found inside the doors of your local Starbucks.

· Pledge that they will never use genetically engineered coffee beans (the biotech industry is currently field-testing decaffeinated and 'uniformly ripening' genetically engineered coffee beans).

We have developed leaflets and posters which can be mailed out and also found along with lots of other background information and letters to send at  http://www.purefood.org/Starbucks/starbucks.html

If you would like to be part of this exciting campaign bringing together Fair Trade, environmental and food safety activists please contact  tom@organicconsumers.org