Palm Oil & Kellogg


Demand that Kellogg’s and the rest of the Snack Food 20 stop using “Conflict Palm Oil”
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Wow, we’re off to a great start!
A lot has happened since Rainforest Action Network launched our ambitious new campaign to save some of the world’s most important rainforests and the last remaining wild orangutans from “Conflict Palm Oil.”
Last Thursday, we publicly named The Snack Food 20 at our launch in Chicago. They are the makers of some of the top name brands in the world, companies like PepsiCo, The Hershey Company, Kraft Foods Group, Mondelēz International and the Kellogg Company, and they are using Conflict Palm Oil in their products—palm oil tied to rainforest destruction, orangutan extinction, and human rights violations.
Since last week, over 12,000 people have written to the Snack Food 20 demanding that they cut conflict palm oil from their products. We are well on the way to reaching our target of having 60,600 people standing with the 60,600 orangutans left in the wild forests of Borneo and Sumatra, but we need you standing with the orangutans too.

Tell Kellogg’s and the rest of the Snack Food 20 to cut Conflict Palm Oil from their products now!
This morning, an orangutan called Strawberry, along with our Palm Oil Action Team and local residents from Battle Creek, Michigan, paid a visit to the home of Tony the Tiger (a.k.a Kellogg’s headquarters) to call on the snack food giant to cut Conflict Palm Oil from its products.
At the Kellogg’s HQ, Strawberry and her friends from the Battle Creek Palm Oil Action Team gave representatives of the Kellogg Company a copy of the report that RAN released last week, titled Conflict Palm Oil: How US Snack Food Brands are Contributing to Orangutan Extinction, Climate Change and Human Rights Violations, as well as a set of demands that the company cut Conflict Palm Oil from its supply chain.
Can you take action now to add your voice to our demands of Kellogg’s and the other 19 companies in the Snack Food 20?
Today’s visit to Kellogg’s is the third company stop on The Power Is In Your Palm Tour. Last Friday, Strawberry and our team visited the headquarters of Mondelēz International and Kraft Foods Group to deliver the report and a similar set of demands.
You and I have been calling on Kellogg’s, Mondelēz and Kraft to adopt a global responsible palm oil procurement policy since last April. In the past month, both Mondelēz and Kellogg’s have strengthened their commitments on palm oil and publicly stated that they will work with their suppliers to source traceable palm oil that is not associated with deforestation, expansion onto carbon-rich peatlands or human and labor rights violations.
This is a good start, but what is urgently needed is for Mondelēz and Kellogg’s to put these commitments to sourcing responsible palm oil into a procurement policy that their suppliers, like Cargill, must comply with.

These companies need to hear from consumers like you so they know that we expect them to cut Conflict Palm Oil from their supply chains as quickly as possible.
Kraft Foods Group is a different story. It has not made any commitments to source responsible palm oil and has yet to adopt a palm oil procurement policy. During our visit to Kraft HQ, we told representatives of the company that they need to prioritize developing a responsible palm oil policy and eliminate conflict palm oil from their products ASAP.

 

Send them a reminder, won’t you?

For the great red ape,

Gemma Tillack             Senior Agribusiness Campaigner @ProbWithPalmOil

6 in 10 Americans — Are You One of Them?


Obamacare for six out of ten americans

6 in 10 Americans — Are You One of Them?

Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services released a report on Obamacare. HHS estimates that, under the Health Insurance Marketplace launching on October 1st, nearly 6 out of 10 uninsured Americans could get low-cost, high-value health insurance for under $100 per person per month.

Find out if you might be one of them on HealthCare.gov.

The StudentDebtCrisis.org Chatroom is Now Open!


Ever feel as if there’s nobody you can talk to about your student debt situation?  Feeling alone with nowhere to turn?  At StudentDebtCrisis.org, we know how difficult it can be for some folks to navigate the world of student loans all on their own.
That’s why we just installed a brand new chatroom on our website.  We envision this chatroom to be a safe, judgement-free space where you can talk honestly and openly about your student loans with similarly-situated people who understand exactly what you’re dealing with.
The chatroom is open 24/7 for everyone to use, however; we also plan to use this space to have moderated chats on specific topics from time to time.
The topic of the first moderated chat is: The Consequences of Defaulting and How to Avoid That Fate, which will be held on Wednesday, September 18th at 6pm EDT (3pm PDT).  Please mark your calendars accordingly.
Thank you, as always, for your continued support.  Now, let’s get to chatting!
Sincerely,
The StudentDebtCrisis.org Team Follow us on Twitter Join us on Facebook
P.S. Don’t forget: there’s still time to submit your own video to the #OutWithStudentDebt Video Project!  Record a 1-2 minute video of yourself talking about how student debt has affected your life, upload it to YouTube using the hashtag #OutWithStudentDebt in the title of the video.  That’s it!  Simple, quick and easy!

Dumb And Dumber


By 

The federal government is hurtling toward two critical deadlines where a failure to act will be extraordinarily damaging to the US economy. But Republicans think it’s okay to play political games even if it means sabotaging our economy.

Deadline 1: To avoid government shutdown, Congress needs to pass a spending bill to fund the federal government by September 30.  Republicans have been engaged in a civil war for weeks over how best to use this deadline to manufacture a crisis. Those on the far right, led by Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, insist they shut down the government unless the budget fully defunds Obamacare, even touring the country to promote a shutdown. And now there are reports that House Republican leadership is following their lead in allowing such a bill to come to a vote.

The consequences of a government shutdown are severe: social security checks might not go out, our troops might not get paid, and the economy would take a huge hit.  Indeed, some fearful Republicans have warned their constituents as much.

A majority of Americans will blame Republicans if the government shuts down. But Republicans are still unable to let go of their obsession with repealing Obamacare, and are now barreling towards shutdown. That’s just dumb.

Deadline 2: The U.S. government will default on its obligations sometime in mid-to-late October unless Congress extends its borrowing limit. This would have catastrophic consequences for not just the United States economy; it could cause a worldwide crash even worse than we faced in 2008.  But House Republican leadership — that’s right, not just some of their crazier members — want to use the debt limit to force Congress to delay Obamacare for one year. Speaker John Boehner, who previously insisted he would not use the debt ceiling for political leverage, has promised “a whale of a fight.”

We’ve been down this road before. Paying our bills on time is non-negotiable.  Congress needs to pay the bills Congress itself racked up. Period.

Even among those that oppose the health care law, more than half want their elected officials to make it work as well as possible. So if Republicans truly think the American people support their threats of default instead of doing the hard work of governing, well…that’s dumber.

BOTTOM LINE: Americans are tired of the fighting and of having their economic security put on the line time and time again. Harming the economy to refight old political battles won’t help middle class families.

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