Radicals Put Pressure on Starbucks

How about telling Starbucks how you feel? Go share this photo on their  Facebook wall!

Starbucks, the popular chain that made fancy coffee drinks commonplace, is facing pressure recently from radical anti-GMO activists. The organization GMOInside is pressuring Starbucks to make changes to the dairy milk they serve.

This is the same group of people that put pressure on General Mills to put a GMO-free label on their Cheerios and tried to make Kellogg’s do the same. (Thankfully, Kellogg’s told them to shove it.)

GMOInside is targeting Starbucks for using milk that comes from conventional cows fed diets with GMO grains. The group is passing around a petition to get the coffee company to only use organic dairy milk in all of their stores across the country.

The chain, which has 20,000 retails stores in over 60 countries, is perhaps more prone to caving to the protesters’ request, because they already refuse to serve milk that has rBGH and also sell all organic soy milk.

On their website the group states:

Cows living in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are fed a grain diet comprised almost entirely of genetically modified corn, soy, alfalfa, and cotton seed. These crops degrade the quality of our land and water, perpetuate corporate-controlled agriculture, and have potentially negative health impacts on livestock. Additionally, the overuse of antibiotics in industrialized farming is contributing to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, putting us all at risk.

Obviously, the organization is light on facts and reality and heavy on dramatics.

There has never been a single scientific study showing detrimental effects to human beings or the environment by biotechnology.

But this is obviously the type of social media pressure that some companies, including Panera, have caved to in the past. Right now, Starbucks website and social media outlets are being pounded with requests from the group’s members to only use the organic dairy milk. The organization even has slips of paper for customers to take and hand to the manager each time they go to Starbucks. They are highly organized and ready to stomp all over our dairy farmers.

Normally, we don’t find out about these campaigns until the damage is already done and the company has turned against our farmers. This time we can at least let them know we’re here.

I encourage you to visit Starbuck’s Facebook page and website and let them know that you stand with US dairy farmers and won’t support them if they only offer organic diary milk options. The message doesn’t have to be long, it just needs to let them know that not everyone agrees with these radical anti-GMO activists.

Don’t know what to say? Why not copy and paste the image above or link to some of my GMO articles?