Several thousand protestors across the US and Canada demonstrated in front of Starbucks cafes in nearly 100 cities recently, demanding the worldwide coffee company serve safe food and adequately compensate coffee growers.

Organizers stated the actions, now going into phase two, constitute the “largest consumer campaign ever launched in the US around the issues of genetic engineering and Fair Trade.”

The Organic Consumers Association, the Center for Food Safety, Friends of the Earth, Rights Action, Pesticide Action Network, and other groups want Starbucks to:

(1) Assure that the 32 million gallons of milk served annually in stores is free of recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), which forces cows to over-produce milk as if they were machines.

(2) Assure that chocolates, baked goods, bottled coffee beverages, and ingredients such as soy, lecithin, corn sweeteners, and cooking oils are organic or at least free of genetically modified organisms [GMOs].

(3) Start brewing Fair Trade as the flavor of the day in all 3500 cafes worldwide. There is enough Fair Trade and organic coffee in the world waiting for a buyer right now, the OCA maintains. The human rights group Global Exchange has pointed out that one-half of the world’s supply of certified Fair Trade coffee (16 million pounds out of a total production of 32 million) is now sold on the commercial market at a loss—because coffee buyers like Starbucks aren’t buying enough of it. Independently owned coffee shops across America are serving Fair Trade and organic coffee and Starbucks should do the same, the groups say. The OCA says many coffee producers are growing coffee sustainably and organically and they “need and deserve a mass market and a fair price for their labor.”

(4) Starbucks should “raise the wages and improve the working conditions of the impoverished coffee workers who toil on the plantations of their suppliers.” A study referred to by the US Guatemala Labor Education Project (USGLEP) in 1997 found that entire families of coffee workers on the plantations supplying Starbucks and other companies make a total of $1.25 per day, while a Guatemalan family needs at least $10 a day to survive. USGLEP estimated in 1997 that it would cost Starbucks a penny a cup more to pay subsistence- level wages for plantation workers.

(5) Starbucks should guarantee that it will never use genetically engineered coffees or teas.

Starbucks has made some efforts to meet the protestors’ demands. In a letter to the OCA, posted on its website, the company said its coffees and teas contain no GMOs, that soy milk served in its stores is organic, that it will attempt to provide milk without the growth hormone rGBH by the end of summer, and that it will try to use more Fair Trade (shade-grown and organic] coffee, and improve the wages and working conditions of coffee plantation workers.

Now the OCA is going forward with Phase Two of the Starbucks Campaign, which asks activists in the US to use the following tactics:

(1) Keep leafleting, often with actions unannounced. Go inside and see if they are brewing Fair Trade coffee as the “flavor of the day” and listing this fact prominently. Check what kind of milk they’re using. If it’s not rBGH-free, give all the customers in the cafe a copy of our Frankenbuck$ Consumer Warning leaflet. Standing outside and leafleting customers is a good tactic.

(2) Call every Starbucks cafe in your community on a regular basis. Have your friends do the same. Ask the manager or the person in charge if today they are brewing Fair Trade coffee as the Flavor of the Day and advertising this fact to their customers. Ask them if their dairy products are free of rBGH. Ask the same thing about their chocolates and baked goods. If they answer your questions in the negative, tell them you are going to boycott them until they do what consumers are demanding.

(3) Complain to retailers that sell Starbucks products that the company has not implemented the changes which consumers are demanding.

(4) Get your school, college, or city council to pass a resolution that they will serve Fair Trade or organic coffee, avoid foods contaminated with GE ingredients, and avoid doing business with sweatshops, whether they be factory sweatshops or agricultural sweatshops.