Saturday Short Subjects: A New App for the Ethical Shopper

Do you use a Smartphone?

Do you care passionately about GMO labeling, or Gay Rights, or the Environment, or …?

If you can answer “yes” to both questions, I have just the app for you!

Buycott is a recently-released, free app developed over a period of 16 months by Ivan Pardo, a 26-year-old, free-lance programmer working in Los Angeles. It is available as a download for both Android and iPhone.

Buycott’s home page states, “A buycott is the opposite of a boycott. Buycott helps you to organize your everyday consumer spending so that it reflects your principles.”

Here is how it works. 

One you have installed the app, enroll in at least one of the user-created campaigns listed in the app by description and number of members. 

Then, scan the barcode of any product you have in your cupboard or are considering purchasing in a store. Buycott will try to determine what the product is and what company owns it. If it is in the system, Buycott will trace the product’s ownership and immediately tell you whether or not this product is in conflict with any of the campaigns you have joined.

I joined the Demand GMO Labeling campaign with 59,100+ members (currently the top campaign). A number of companies have been pumping massive amounts of money to fighting GMO labeling legislation; this campaign starts with a list of all companies that donated more than $150,000 to oppose California’s Prop 37, which, if enacted, would have required labeling of GMO food in that state.

By scanning their barcodes, I learned that two of the three cereal brands in my house – Kashi and Cascadian Farms were in conflict, while the third, Nature’s Path, was not. I was happy to discover that Annie’s Mac & Cheese, my quick-fix guilty pleasure, was also conflict-free. 

“Family Tree” illustrates the corporate lineage of your scanned product all the way up to its parent company. With this tool, I learned that Cascadian Farms is a subsidiary of Small Planet Food, which is in turn owned by General Mills, and that General Mills donated $1,135,300 to the “No on Prop 37 Campaign.” That is why buying my favorite Cascadian Farms granola now poses an ethical dilemma for me.

Buycott is an awesome app. For each of the companies whose barcodes are in the database, crowdsourced contact info (phone number, URL, corporate Facebook page, and Twitter handle), Wikipedia entry, and location map are listed, making it easy for you to let your voice heard. By simply hitting the Share button, you can tell all your friends what you have found out. 

Your timeline stores your campaigns and any barcodes you have scanned.

This is a participatory app. Users are asked to submit the names of products the app does not recognize. Any user who cannot find a campaign to suit her interests is encouraged to start her own.

Developer Pardo was quoted in Forbes, “I don’t want to push any single point of view with the app,” said Pardo. “For me, it was critical to allow users to create campaigns because I don’t think it’s Buycott’s role to tell people what to buy. We simply want to provide a platform that empowers consumers to make well-informed purchasing decisions.”

Buycott is an exciting tool for the socially-responsible consumer who wants to vote with her wallet. And, it's free. 

Why Saturday Short Subjects? Some readers may recall  being dropped at the movie theater for the Saturday matinee — two action-packed feature films with a series of short subjects (cartoons or short movies, sometimes a serial cliffhanger) sandwiched in between. Often the short subjects were the most memorable, and enjoyable, part of the morning. That explains the name. The reason behind these particular posts is that we are all short on time. My Short Subject posts should not take me as long to write or you as long to read (or try).

Meatless Monday: 3.18.13 Food News Roundup

Today I am taking a break from my recent run of recipe posts to give you a brief rundown on some of the recent food stories I have been following. Recipes will be back soon, I promise.

GMO Labeling is a very hot topic.

• Whole Foods recently announced that by 2018 all products in their U.S. and Canadian stores must be labeled to indicate whether they contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs). 
• Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield paid a visit to Hartford, CT’s state capital, on Friday, March 15. According to GMO Free CT, Jerry was one of 200 supporters to offer testimony in support of CT HB 6519, a bill to require the labeling of genetically modified food sold in the state. 
• Ben & Jerry’s recently committed to sourcing non-GMO ingredients for all their products by the end of 2013. Ben & Jerry’s is a strong advocate for the consumers' right to know what is in their food and was one of the early supporters of labeling of rBGH in dairy products. It is interesting to note that Ben & Jerry’s is owned by Unilever, one of the corporate giants who funneled money into the campaign to defeat California Proposition 37. 
• California Proposition 37 was narrowly defeated in November, but other states are continuing the fight for the consumer’s right to know what is in their food. States with proposed GMO labeling legislation in their current sessions include: Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.

Dead Pigs, Contaminated Water in China

• On March 13 the BBC reported that according to a statement issued by the Chinese government, the number of pig carcasses found floating in the Huangpu River totals nearly 6,000. The government also claims that the water quality of the river “meets government-set standards.”  The source of the dead pigs remains a mystery. According to information from the NGO Pacific Environment, “Nearly 1/4 of Chinese [people] lack access to clean drinking water, over 70 percent of lakes and rivers are polluted, and pollution accidents happen on a near daily basis.” In today’s South China Morning Post there is a story reporting that residents of the village of Changshou in Hunan province have long refused to drink tap water they have been told is “safe.” You might want to think twice before purchasing frozen produce from China.

Girl Scout Cookies

• After news service UPI reported in February that more than 13,000 boxes of unsold Girl Scout cookies were thrown away in Riverside, CA, the story went viral. A reporter for a CBS affiliate in Los Angeles shared a video of a tractor smashing the cookies before they headed to the landfill. You can watch it here. Apparently this practice has been going on for years. While one can debate whether or not Girl Scout Cookies are actually food, one cannot dispute that farmers grew the wheat and chickens laid the eggs, etc. This story helped make food waste in the US front page news.

Protected Waters in New England

• The Pew Charitable Trust just released a call for action to oppose the reopening of nearly 5,000 square miles of protected New England waters to commercial fishing. The short video “Cod: The Fish that Made New England” features a number of “old salts” reminiscing about how different fishing was just decades ago. Their compelling tales emphasize the importance of this issue. You can take action here. 

In closing, here is a quick request for your vote from my chapter of Slow Food: 

• Slow Food Shoreline in CT is a finalist in the Health Justice Challenge - a $10K grant to support Slow Cooking Education. Their entry is a proposal to teach busy families how to cook healthy food using a slow cooker. Watch the video here and show your support. Hurry! You are allowed to vote once a day which means you can vote once today, and once tomorrow. Voting ends on March 19 at 11:59 pm EST.

Have a great week.       

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”