WASHINGTON - October 22 - British consumers enjoy products made by General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft and McDonald's that are free of synthetic food dyes, but American customers lack such royal treatment, according to the October issue of Nutrition Action Healthletter. Despite evidence linking food dyes to hyperactivity and other behavior problems in children, companies continue to use the controversial dyes in American product lines while substi

SAN FRANCISCO - October 21 - Pesticide Action Network, in coalition with Earthjustice and United Farm Workers, this week delivered more than 25,000 individual signatures to EPA calling for the dangerous and antiquated pesticide endosulfan to be removed from our food supply. Twenty-four organizations joined in supporting the call.

EPA is currently considering action on endosulfan in response to a legal petition and growing pressure from environmental health and farmworker advocacy groups around the country.

WASHINGTON - October 16 - Just two weeks after the Food and Drug Administration set "acceptable" levels for melamine in food instead of issuing a complete ban on Chinese milk-containing products, the Alabama Department of Agriculture announced that Koala's March brand cookies have tested positive for melamine with levels that exceed FDA's safe levels of exposure. FDA has not issued a recall for the product, and despite assurances from the agency that the parent company, Lotte USA, was removing the product from the marketplace, Koala's March cookies are still present on U.S. shelves.

WASHINGTON - October 16 - The Center for Biological Diversity and California Rural Legal Assistance filed suit today challenging the failure of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District to properly consider the global warming and human health impacts of the proposed 6,120 animal Van Der Kooi Dairy under the California Environmental Quality Act.

NEW YORK - October 16 - Today, MADRE joins with its sister organizations to recognize World Food Day and to decry the rising numbers of people suffering from hunger.  As the food crisis continues to rage across the globe, it has only been compounded by the current financial crisis.  By the end of 2008, the number of malnourished people is set to reach one billion.

However, the food crisis is not an issue of shortage but of inequitable distribution.  Even as global crop yields are projected to reach record levels, rising prices place basic necessities out of the reach of millions.

CORNUCOPIA, Wis. - October 13 - Groups representing organic farmers and their customers are calling on consumers to help save the organic industry by exclusively patronizing dairies, and other brands, that uphold the spirit and letter of the federal organic law.  They claim the acquisition of major brands by corporate agribusiness, and their dependence on factory farms, threatens to force families off the land and deprive consumers of the superior nutritional food they think they are paying for.