Boycott Frankenfoods.

Last November the Clinton Administration caved in to intense pressure from Monsanto and other chemical, agricultural, and biotechnology companies, and approved the commercial use and sale of foods derived from genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH). This means that as of February 1994, Americans will be consuming milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream, beef, and infant formula laced with genetically altered hormones.

Equally disturbing, according to Consumers Union, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the National Farmers Union, the Humane Society of the United States, and the Biotechnology Working Group, is that the Food and Drug Administration will not require that rBGH-tainted foods be labelled. Farmers and dairies opposed to rBGH will be permitted to voluntarily certify and label their products "rBGH-free."

The FDA approval comes on the heels of an eight-year international grass-roots campaign to ban recombinant BGH. spearheaded by Jeremy Rifkin's Foundation on Economic Trends. BGH is banned in Europe - at least until the year 2000.

In response to the FDA approval, the Pure Food Campaign is coordinating a boycott, protests, and symbolic "milk dumpings" across the United States. Among the objections to BGH raised by boycott leaders are health problems they say BGH causes in humans and animals, including infected udders, and the market surplus BGH will produce, driving down milk prices and helping giant dairy rocessors to put small farmers out of business. Consumer advocates also fear that the BGH approval will pave the way for other biotech "Frankenfoods" now waiting for approval.

A student-led effort at high schools and colleges called Appetite for Change seeks not only to ban BGH and other Frankenfoods from school cafeterias, but to transform current food-service policies on campuses, moving away from corporate and animal-factory "pharm foods" to organic, locally produced foods.

For more information on the BGH boycott and Appetite for Change call the Pure Food Campaign Boycott Hotline, [phone].