Boycotting everything from pickles to Pepsi to Petco

March 03, 2003|By Eric Gwinn, Tribune staff reporter.

Amid all the recent calls for consumer boycotts (including the on-again, off-again boycott of Pepsi by the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network), it's hard to keep things straight. Thank goodness there's no boycott of the Web, where we learned of a few current actions:

Cincinnati: The Coalition for a Just Cincinnati ( advocates boycotting the city over the deaths of 15 black male residents at the hands of Cincinnati police since 1995. Prominent speakers ranging from Bill Cosby to Spike Lee have canceled Cincinnati appearances after receiving letters from the coalition.

ExxonMobil: Greenpeace ( alleges ExxonMobil is the world's biggest opponent of worldwide measures to address global warming.

ExxonMobil ( says it is improving its environmental performance.

GlaxoSmithKline: The Minnesota Senior Federation ( is among seniors groups boycotting GlaxoSmithKline products -- including Tums, Contac and Paxil -- after the world's No. 2 drugmaker reduced shipments to Canadian Internet pharmacies, which sells the drugs at bargain prices to U.S. customers.

GlaxoSmithKline ( says its action benefits patient safety.

Pickles: The Farm Labor Organizing Committee ( is boycotting Mt. Olive Pickle Co., the nation's second-largest pickle producer, over treatment of cucumber harvesters.

Mt. Olive Pickle Co. ( counters that FLOC wants Mt. Olive to, in effect, unionize farmers, which Mt. Olive says would be inappropriate for the company to do.

Middle East oil: cites Department of Energy statistics in arguing that U.S. consumers of certain brands of gasoline are funding terrorists and anti-U.S. Middle Eastern countries. The site urges visitors to patronize a list of oil companies that the Web site says does not import oil from the Middle East.

The "Urban Legend Reference Pages" ( argues that such a boycott would fail because it is difficult to track the origin of oil ("A good deal of the crude oil purchased from Russia, for example, is oil from Iraqi fields sold through Russian middlemen.") also says that shifting patronage from "bad-guy" companies to "good-guy" companies en masse would overwhelm "good-guy" companies, which would have to meet demand by buying oil from the "bad-guy" companies: "Simply shifting where we buy gasoline isn't nearly as good a solution as the much tougher choice of sharply curtailing the amount of gasoline we buy."

Petco:, part of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Web site, alleges, "The majority of animals sold at Petco come from breeding mills. At PETA, we have received complaints from horrified employees at some of the bird, reptile, and other small animal breeding mills that ship to Petco. Many animals arrive before they are weaned and become so sick from transport that they die along the way or shortly after they arrive at Petco."

Petco ( says it hires animal lovers and trains them according to the company's animal-care guidelines.

Procter and Gamble: opposes animal testing by Procter and Gamble, owner of 300 brands of household products.

Procter and Gamble ( says it relies much more on historical records and computer models, thereby greatly reducing its use of animal testing: "The majority of the limited testing we carry out today is for drug and healthcare products."

Record companies: defends music file-swapping and disapproves of proposed copyright amendments backed by Sony, BMG, EMI, Universal Music Group and Time Warner -- the Big 5 recording companies that make up the Recording Industry Association of America.

The R.I.A.A. ( says music-sharing is piracy that keeps money from musicians and record labels.

South Carolina: The NAACP ( is behind an economic boycott of South Carolina, where the Confederate flag flies on state capitol grounds.

Opponents of the boycott say the effort hurts black-owned businesses and African-Americans who work in hotels and restaurants and at tourist attractions. The boycott also has made presidential candidates think twice about campaigning in the state, although none has vowed to skip South Carolina.

World Bank: urges workers and investors to pressure their pension fund managers and unions not to buy World Bank bonds, which raise funds for the World Bank to lend to developing nations. wants the World Bank to cancel all debts owed by poor nations, which would allow those nations to spend money on education and health care instead of debt repayment.

The World Bank ( says it has provided debt relief for many of those nations through its Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative and is spending millions to fight poverty and HIV/AIDS in those nations.