Introduction:

In politics and public opinion manipulation (once called propaganda), perceptions, not facts are key to success precisely because they are put forth in a far more acceptable, understandable and therefore seemingly more credible manner. What facts are presented are often glossed over, ignored or poorly understood. Therefore, perceptions become reality to consumers, the press, and public policy makers.

NGOs know that. In fact they become masters at proffering perceptions as reality. They do that through the persuasive language called advocacy. When corporations react, even though they may be cloaked in the truth, their response and language is either too complex for the public to understand or too readily perceived as self-promoting advertising/sales speak. The latter may be effective in moving consumers to purchase one brand over another, but it rings hollow when compared to the compassion of truly compelling advocacy.

The NGO Incentive:

In many ways, the relationship of animal rights and environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the food industry is the exact reverse of how individual species interact in nature. Nature's hierarchy of survival is based on a predator-prey relationship where the predator seeks a smaller, more defenseless prey.

NGOs seek out the largest prey in the form of the most successful corporation. Corporate giants my flourish in the world of business but they tend to be very vulnerable in the world of advocacy. NGOs gain instant and immense credibility the instant a well-known multi-national corporation acknowledges an NGO or even suggests that the NGO is correct in its criticism. The greatest gain for NGOs is when a corporation or industry bows to the NGOs wishes. Corporations gain nothing and lose all credibility with the public. In short, corporate capitulation to NGOs is an admission of guilt and an investing of the NGOs as the law enforcing officials of an industry.

Greenpeace said it best when it said: "FOOD: The Ultimate Commodity." Few enterprises are more important or economically valuable than the global food supply. Every aspect of food production, processing, transportation, and distribution is fair game to predatory NGOs because of its importance to humans and the immense economic wealth attached to it. Within that context, seafood represents a very lucrative sector at $59.4 billion using 2001 statistics.

From farm or fisherman to grocer or restaurant, the larger the prey the better precisely because the amount of potential damage threatened by NGO campaigns represents literally billions of dollars lost. In true predatory fashion, the lesson taught today by trial lawyers is that a negotiated settlement is often far more lucrative than a court victory. The obvious exception is Big Tobacco. NGOs know that the amount of money they can demand to halt their campaigns while only a small percentage of potential losses inflicted on corporations can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars thereby providing an incentive anyone can understand and appreciate.

Co-Opetition:

NGOs are not shallow, unsophisticated, and idealistic star-struck youths flailing about at "authority." Rhetoric belittling them that is filled with innately biased terminology such as "wacko" or "leftist" or other such linguistic bravado is counterproductive when dealing with these groups and individuals.

NGOs are run by some of the most highly educated and innately brilliant individuals in society. Many of the leading NGOs with the most impressive credentials have significant financial resources and often hire impressive individuals with equally impressive resumes from academia, government, the church, as well as from industry. The intellectual and strategic abilities of even the seemingly most childish NGO must not be under estimated. As noted above, they are very highly motivated. They are masters of manipulating public opinion, the press and legislators - often through staff, wives or children.

In any public forum where they are belittled, the NGO spokesperson invariably speaks with calm rational tones, embraces family values and pleads for the welfare of children and voiceless creatures of nature. In very deft strokes, the NGO turns the tables on the corporate defender leaving their critics looking like desperate, irrational individuals trying to hide some crime against nature.

What appears to be a disparate collection of trouble-making NGOs upon closer examination reveals a community of strong-willed individuals and organizations that provide the illusion of independent action as they scramble for the same donation, the same public credit and the same influence over public policies. In fact, that illusion is deliberately contrived. In truth there is a certain amount of competitiveness among NGOs. Each wants the lion's share of the prize. However, the public competitiveness is more often than not a deliberate ruse to cover a great deal of cooperation in achieving mutually desirable objectives. That unseen dynamic of competition and cooperation among NGOs is the origin of "co-opetition."

One tactic favored by NGOs is building the illusion of a far more expansive "army" of organizations than actually exist. They do this by creating other independent NGOs and coalitions of international, national and local NGOs. Each plays a role in setting the stage for achieving the NGO goal of becoming the paid overseers of any and every enterprise that deals with Nature's resources: seafood, agriculture, energy production, mining, timbering, etc. The Ocean and its bounty of vital resources is high on the priority list of the NGO community.

A perfect example of the ability of NGOs to seize momentum on an issue is the creation of the Pew Oceans Commission. On August 7, 2000, President Clinton signed the Oceans Act of 2000 into law. That act established a 16-member commission on Ocean Policy. Chaired by Admiral James D. Watkins, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy was charged with an 18-month fact finding mission to provide the President and Congress with recommendations for the formulation of a comprehensive Oceans policy to include the Great Lakes.

The NGO community quickly assembled its own Oceans Commission, knowing full well that the wheels of government turn ever so slowly. The Pew Oceans' Commission set out to provide a "national agenda for protecting and restoring our oceans from the NGO point of view." If the Pew Ocean Commission achieved its mission first, the NGO report would garner national headlines. If it somehow came to be perceived or mistaken by the public, press and legislators for the government's Oceans Commission, so much the better.

Pew Charitable Trusts did not skimp on manpower. Leon Panetta, former White House Chief of Staff was named chairman. Commission members include John Adams, co-founder and president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC); Mike Hayden, former governor of Kansas and president of the recreational fishing group, the American Sportfishing Association; Dr. Charles Kennel, director of the Scripps Institution for Oceanography; Tony Knowles, former governor of Alaska and mayor of Anchorage; Dr. Jane Lubchenco, past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Julie Packard, founder of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and vice chair of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (the major funding agency for NGOs); George Pataki, governor of New York; David Rockefeller, Jr., trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; Adm. Roger Rufe, president and CEO of Ocean Conservancy; plus others holding impressive offices in government and the non-profit sector.

Well before the government's Oceans Commission completed its work, the Pew Commission was already collecting vast sums of foundation money to promote its findings that would put severe restrictions on commercial fisheries and aquaculture.

Resources:

Corporations, preoccupied with building a stable bottom-line often misperceive NGOs as hat-in-hand solicitors easily fended off with a handout of a small amount of cash. Nothing could be further from the truth. Certainly some local groups playing roles for the national animal rights agenda are constantly seeking enough cash to make ends meet. The national players, however, not only bring in tens of millions of tax-free donations from individuals and charitable foundations to the game, but they also are prepared to withstand years of patience, planning, and incremental progress to achieve the long-term power they seek. That goal is an endlessly flowing system of tithing to the NGO community to be allowed to continue in business. The NGOs expect industry to ante up such "fees" to their NGO overseers when a targeted industry's defenses crumble and its CEOs or Boards of Directors capitulate. Corporate America, in fact global corporations in general, may take some comfort in the fact that they retain some of the most astute legal firms in the country and the world. The high price paid for such legal representation too often is concentrated with those skilled in the ways of corporate law but virtually clueless about effectively fending off legal assaults brought by NGOs.

The NGO community has a variety of "law firms" at their disposal.

The best-known environmental legal firm is Earthjustice.

Earthjustice, formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, describes itself as the nonprofit law firm for the environment. It represents public interest clients free of charge. The 30-year-old organization freely lists the key federal laws it uses in legal actions on behalf of literally hundreds of clients. They include the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the National Forest Management Act of 1976, the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1972, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976.

A select list of Earthjustice's clients includes: the American Oceans Campaign (now Oceana), American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), Animal Welfare Institute, American Salmon Federation, Audubon Society, Caribbean Conservation Corporation, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Center for Marine Conservation (now Ocean Conservancy), David Suzuki Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife, Earth Island Institute, EarthTrust, Environmental Defense, Environmental Working Group, Friend of the Earth, Fund for Animals, Greenpeace, Humane Society International, The Humane Society of the United States, Institute for Trade and Agriculture Policy, International Fund for Animal Welfare, National Audubon Society, National Coalition for Marine Conservation, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Pesticide Action Network, Public Citizen, Rainforest Action Network, Riverkeepers, Turtle Island Restoration Network/Sea Turtle Restoration Project, Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, Trout Unlimited, U.S. Public Interest Research Group/US Pirg, and the Waterkeeper Alliance.

National Environmental Law Center (NELC), with offices in Boston and Seattle, was founded by Ralph Naders state Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) to litigate against "polluters." Its landmark case on marine issues was the application of the Clean Water Act and salmon amendments to the Endangered Species Act against salmon farming interests off the coast of Maine.

The Conservation Law Foundation claims to be the oldest environmental advocacy organization in the United States. Its focus is primarily New England. CLF brought the landmark lawsuit settled in 2002 that crippled the New England groundfish fishery. CLF works with the Chef's Collaborative and the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association to promote hook-caught cod.

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) is another public interest law firm. CIEL worked closely with WWF and IUCN in preparing documents for use at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). CIEL is also a member of the Species Survival Network, an organization of animal rights and environmental groups put together by The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) for the purpose of consolidating strategies by NGOs to achieve desired objectives at international regulatory forums such as CITES. As will be discussed later in this paper, HSUS is not a member of SSN, in large part because of its already established credibility and visibility within the CITES venue. However, it is interesting to note that the law firm used by HSUS is a participant within SSN.

The Center for Biological Diversity, formerly the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, is probably the foremost litigious NGO in the country. CBD boasts of obtaining Endangered Species Act status for 329 species since 1984. Among the nine fish species it lists are the Alabama sturgeon, the Kootenai River white sturgeon, and the Atlantic salmon. Since 1996 CBD has brought over 70 legal actions in someway related to marine issues. Among them are: a 1999 petition to list the white abalone as endangered; a 1999 lawsuit to shut down the California gillnet fishery to protect sea turtles and whales; a suit in 2000 to end California drift net use; two suits in 2000 to protect sea otters by banning gillnets; 2000 closure of the Hawaiian lobster fishery to protect monk seals; 2001 petition to place the Pacific red snapper on the Endangered Species List; 2001 suit against longline fishery to protect seabirds, seals, whales and sea turtles; 2002 suit against experimental swordfish longline fishery; 2002 suit to protect bocaccio; and 2002 suit to protect sea turtles against driftnets.

Perhaps the greatest irony and greatest source of frustration in dealing with the NGOs is the fact that they receive significant infusions of tax exempt cash grants from a very long list charitable trusts and foundations. Many of these foundations were set into motion by the fortunes of Industrial barons who decided to give some of their fortunes back to the public good. In effect, the fleet of lawyers facing a targeted industry is testament to the financial resources available to NGOs from donations and foundation grants.

Follow the Issues:

As mentioned earlier, NGOs seek out the most lucrative target before mustering their forces to follow a detailed time-line and strategy.

In the world of seafood targets of opportunity are plentiful: shrimp, salmon, tuna, and swordfish lead the list. Caviar's intrinsic high dollar value places that commodity well within the NGO battle plan. The next in rank are farm animals and their products: Beef, veal, pork, poultry, eggs, and dairy. Farmed crops including wheat, soy, corn, etc. are key to both human and animal nutrition.

Standing alone against the Hurricane:

A single corporation facing campaigns by environmental activists can be likened to an individual standing alone and unsheltered in the midst of torrential rain and hurricane force winds. The forces aligned against that individual are nothing short of awesome. So it is when the NGOs begin to assemble outside an enterprises doors.

To get an idea of the intricate relationships among NGOs a variety of starting points can be used. One is to start by looking at the issues a single NGO pursues. That issue will lead to other NGOs. Another is to look at non-profit funding sources such as foundations and trusts. Either produces the same end result - a clear picture that poised before any corporation or enterprise targeted by the NGO community is a well-financed, well-organized phalanx of activists working for the same goal: total capitulation by the corporation or industry in question. (Note: following the initial reference to an NGO will be a parenthesized area containing the NGOs initials and annual income as well as food related issues it works.)

Eco-labels:

The creation of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC - $2.5 million 2002 figures/all seafood) as the certifying agency for environmentally friendly seafood began with the typical NGO strategy of employing a precursor group to make life miserable for a key corporate entity. Greenpeace (Greenpeace USA: Greenpeace Inc. $19.3 million/Greenpeace Fund $10.2 million  2001 figures/Greenpeace International $135 million 2002 figures  shrimp farming, over fishing, protected areas, biotech farming) played the role of rabblerouser (much like PETA today) in generating public animosity toward a targeted multi-national corporation - Unilever, then the world's largest food and consumer-goods company.

The strategy concentrated mainly on Greenpeace's mid-1990s campaign against fish oil and fishmeal. Greenpeace attacked the fish oil and fishmeal industry for depleting fish stocks for oil used in a variety of commercial baked goods and fishmeal for aquaculture feed as denying nutrition to seabirds. Unilever was one of the world's largest producers of commercial baked goods, soaps, food oils, etc. and a major purchaser of fish oil. (It was also the first European-based food firm ready to roll out a food product made of genetically modified soy.)

Seven other groups including Friends of the Earth (FoEUS: $4.4 million 2002 figures/FoEUK: $4.7 million - wild salmon, biotech agriculture, anti-corporate/anti-global), and World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF / WWF-US = $118 million income/WWF-international $332 million 2002 figures) joined Greenpeace in calling for a halt to "industrial fishing" for sandeels in the North Sea. The 1996 protest worked and Unilever bowed to the NGO pressure. It agreed to abandon fish oil for its food and consumer products.

With Greenpeace constantly pounding Unilever with negative criticism, the food giant met with WWF to negotiate the creation of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). A year later, in 1997, MSC was introduced to the seafood world.

Greenpeace continued to badger Unilever over its intended use of genetically modified foods. By 1999, Unilever capitulated to Greenpeace's demands and dropped its association with biotech agriculture. That act set off years of controversy between the European Union and the United States over biotech foods. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are the key players in the European fight against genetically modified crops.

One of the innate problems with an NGO-run eco-label is the fact that it is no guarantee of an end to NGO controversy. Without controversy, NGOs could not exist. Press coverage would wither, as would donations from hard-core supporters who demand direct action against the so-called enemies of the earth. Any certifying agency created by an NGO brings with it built in bias and controversy. Only a neutral third part, neither industry nor NGO, can achieve the consumer confidence MSC claims it is capable of delivering.

An example of the very real threat for controversy in an NGO eco-label system appeared as recently as this September 26th when MSC announced it intended to certify the Alaskan Bering Sea Pollock fishery as sustainable and environmentally friendly. A member of the MSC stakeholders council, the National Environmental Trust (NET: $12.3 million 2001 figures/wide range of ocean/seafood issues), broke ranks with MSC over that certification. NET claimed that industry bought the label and that it was a threat to the local eco-system including Stellar sea lions living in the area.

Unilever is no longer associated with MSC. WWF definitely is. The MSC's Board of Directors includes Sir Martin Laing, former chairman of WWF-UK; Will Martin, senior fellow for WWF-US; Scott Burns, Director of WWF's Marine Conservation Program; and Michael Sutton, former WWF-International founder of the WWF Endangered Seas Campaign.

Michael Sutton is an interesting name on the MSC board. Sutton is currently program officer for the Conservation and Science Program for the David and Lucille Packard Foundation. The Packard Foundation is known as the largest private funder of ocean conservation in North America with an endowment at just under $5 billion. Packard pumped some $250 million into ocean related projects last year.

Among the Packard Foundation funded projects Sutton oversees are MSC, the Seafood Choices Alliance (no available financial data/virtually all seafood species declared off-limits by the NGO community), the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch cards (no financial data), SeaWeb ($4.9 million 2002 figures/ swordfish/caviar/Chilean sea bass and more), and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC: $52.7 million - 2001 Figures/all fisheries). Sutton also is credited with co-founding the Marine Fish Conservation Network and the Ocean Wildlife Campaign.

Ocean Wildlife Campaign is described as a coalition of six environmental groups: the Ocean Conservancy, National Audubon Society, National Coalition for Marine Conservation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Wildlife Conservation Society, and World Wildlife Fund (WWF). A key aspect of the group's mission is to "protect" sharks and other large Ocean fish species including tunas and swordfish. That protection includes by-catch reduction, a moratorium on all new fishing gear including longline gear, and catch limits based on the precautionary principle. The moratorium on new longline gear has an ironic ring to it. Two years after the Ocean Wildlife Campaign's call for the gear moratorium, environmentalists were calling for gear modification to discourage sea turtle interactions.

Sutton's other creation, the Marine Fish Conservation Network (MFCN) is even more interesting. The 155-member group lists the National Audubon Society ($82.2 million/assets of $221 million/ refuges, seabirds, seafood lovers guide), the National Coalition for Marine Conservation (no available data), Natural Resources Defense Council, Oceana (no available data), the Ocean Conservancy ($8.8 million - 2002 Figures/ mercury in fish, bycatch, trawling, pollution, commercial species), SeaWeb, and the National Environmental Trust as among the members of its 20-member board of advisors.

NET was incorporated in 1994 as the environmental movement's answer to the National Rifle Association (NRA). That is it was conceived as a grassroots pressure group to create coalitions, use media, polling, direct mail, and lobbying to change public policy. Its original name was Environmental Strategies. Frances Beinecke, now NRDCs executive director, an individual from the Conservation Law Foundation and two individuals from the Rockefeller Family Fund and the Pew Charitable Trusts were the incorporators. Initial funding from a number of foundations gave NET a $2 million nest egg. The initial staffing had very close ties with the Clinton-Gore Democratic political machine. Later in 1994, Environmental Strategies became the Environmental Information Center, which in turn, became National Environmental Trust.

The National Environmental Trust's Vice President of Marine Conservation, Gerry Leape, is co-chair of MFCN's Board of Advisors. Leape is on record as opposing MSC's certifying the Alaskan Bering Sea Pollock fishery. Leape is also Greenpeace's former legislative director for oceans closing the original circle that led to the creation of MSC. However, simply because Leape and NET publicly protested MSCs certification of the Bering Sea Pollock fishery does not mean relationships between the two groups has been halted. Quite the contrary, MSC, NET and other leading NGOs still maintain a cozy and close relationship on any number of projects.

Consumer Advisory Projects:

Eco-labels are one aspect of the NGO strategy to regulate the food industry. Guiding restaurants, grocers, seafood retailers of every stripe as well as consumers advice as to what seafood to sell or purchase is another. The next logical step in shaping corporate and public seafood purchasing habits is to explicitly spell out what seafood species to purchase and which to avoid via consumer advisory schemes.

Consumer advisory groups recommending "sustainable" seafood choices generated a certain degree of popularity. NGOs are no different than any other industry. When something works, a host of clones is certain to follow. The Packard Foundations Monterey Bay Aquarium has its Sea Watch conservation cards. The National Audubon Society has its Audubon Guide to Seafood. Even Environmental Defense (EDF - $48.3 million 2002 Figures/marine reserves, endangered species, genetically modified foods) jumped into the act with its Seafood Selector. The Chef's Collaborative, created by Environmental Defense and funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, has its Seafood Solutions.

The rhetoric used by virtually all of the groups is pretty much the same. It promises to provide consumers, chefs, fish purveyors etc. with sound information to make the most environmentally friendly choices about the seafood they buy.

Monterey Bay Aquarium's advice is primarily aimed at the consumer. The seafood labeled avoid on their Sea Watch cards reads like a who's who of NGO campaigns against commercial fisheries. They caution consumers to avoid caviar from the Caspian Sea (the object of the "Caviar Emptor" campaign orchestrated by SeaWeb, NRDC and The Wildlife Conservation Society with a second front engaged by WWF). They warn against farmed Atlantic salmon (another target of a host of NGOs). Shark, Atlantic swordfish (SeaWeb/NRDCs "Give Swordfish a Break" campaign) and bluefin tuna (National Audubon Society) are on the avoid list. The NGO fury aimed at all shrimp - farmed and wild-caught - is encapsulated in the card. Imported farmed shrimp is the target of WWF's bid to impose an environmental tax on farmed shrimp as a set aside to fund "repairs" on degraded mangrove stands and coastal lands. Wild-caught shrimp is the target of a host of others.

Michael Sutton and the Packard Foundation fund the Seafood Choices Alliance. SeaWeb created the NGO. Seafood Choices Alliance (SCA) steps up its advisory service beyond the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Sea Watch conservation cards. Seafood Choices Alliance is aiming its rhetoric at "professionals" from the seafood and conservation community.

The chefs participating in the program include many whose names such as Rick Moonen and Nora Poullon were lent to SeaWeb's "Give Swordfish a Break" campaign. Peter Hoffman, present chair of Chef's Collaborative ($242,590 - 2002 Figures/promotes NGO approved seafood/food), is also on board.

As is the case with so many NGO "coalition" efforts, Seafood Choices Alliance has an impressive list of "Partners." Among them are the Chef's Collaborative, Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform (CAAR - no financial data available/David Suzuki Foundation instigated pressure group against farmed salmon), Conservation Law Foundation (CLF - no financial data/recipient of numerous foundation grants/variety of fishery issues), Environmental Defense, Greenpeace, Industrial Shrimp Action Network (no financial data/coalition of anti-shrimp groups including Environmental Defense, NRDC, Greenpeace, Sierra Club Canada, WWF, Mangrove Action Project, and Sea Turtle Restoration Project), Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy (IATP - $3.6 million- 2001 Figures/promotes peace coffee & organic foods, anti-biotech agriculture and WTO), Marine Fish Conservation Network, Marine Stewardship Council, Monterey Bay Aquarium, National Environmental Trust, SeaWeb, Wildlife Conservation Society (no financial data available) and WWF.

Consumer seafood guide projects attracted sizeable Foundation grants. In 2002 from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation alone (and there are hundreds of charitable foundations funding the NGO array of organizations and projects) Chefs Collaborative received $75,000 for Seafood Solutions; Consumers Choice Council got $50,000 for its programs; Environmental Defense was given $450,000 for promoting sustainable seafood choices; National Audubon Society received $500,000 for its Seafood Lovers Initiative; National Environmental Trust got $30,000 to plan a seafood markets campaign; and SeaWeb was given $2,100,000 for the Seafood Choices Alliance campaign as well as a campaign to promote marine reserves.

Shrimp:

Shrimp is the most heavily traded seafood product in the world. In 2001, shrimp accounted for 19 percent of global seafood trade with 30 percent of that total from aquaculture. That year too, shrimp became the number one consumed seafood product in the United States, surpassing canned tuna for the first time. Shrimp has held that top position now for two years in a row with Americans eating 3.7 pounds per person per year during 2002.

The dollar value and consumer popularity of shrimp makes it the prime candidate for NGO attention and NGO-instigated controversy. Indeed, the NGO community is engaged in a two-pronged attack on shrimp. One is aimed at farmed shrimp. The other is focused on wild-caught shrimp.

The NGO focus on wild-caught shrimp was in place since the late 1980s. Claims from Earth Island Institute and other NGOs that 50,000 sea turtles are caught in U.S. shrimp trawl nets, 60,000 turtles are captured in shrimp nets throughout Central America and that probably hundreds of thousands more drown annually in Asia, South America, Africa and Mexico began to resonate throughout the media.

In 1989, two years after Earth Island Institute's Sam LaBudde conducted his landmark exposé of dolphins captured in eastern Pacific yellowfin tuna purse seine nets and NGOs coined the phrase "dolphin-safe tuna," Congress passed an amendment to the Endangered Species Act mandated all wild-caught shrimp exported to the United States must be taken by trawl nets equipped with sea turtle escape hatches called Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs). In 1992, Earth Island Institute filed suit to force the federal government to enforce that 1989 amendment.

EII was joined in the suit by the Sierra Club ($73.8 million through tax-exempt arm: Sierra Club Foundation); The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS - $61.7 million 2001 Figures/fisheries/factory farming); and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA - $43 million 2002 Figures/veal/slaughter).

The NGO focus on shrimp began to lay the groundwork for its attack on farmed shrimp in 1996 when NRDC, WWF, Environmental Defense, Earth Island Institutes (EII - $4.5 million 2001 Figures/dolphin-safe tuna/turtle safe-shrimp) Mangrove Action Project (no financial data) and Sea Turtle Restoration Project (Now part of Turtle Island Restoration Network -$443K 2001 Figures) staged the "Shrimp Tribunal" in a rented hall located in New York City's United Nations Complex.

The site planning was a vital component in this operation. It's location created the perception that the event was somehow under UN sanction when in fact it was not. The ploy worked. Unsuspecting representatives from shrimp producing nations of Thailand, Ecuador and the U.S. agreed to participate in a meeting featuring no less than a dozen different NGOs.

Lee Weddig, then head of the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) made the verbal blunder the NGOs knew would come. In a seemingly innocent off-hand remark, Weddig mentioned that the shrimp industry did have problems it needed to solve. It gave the NGOs the legitimacy of industry acknowledging that the shrimp industry needed cleaning up.

A year later, December 1997, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) held a technical consultation on policies for sustainable shrimp farming in Bangkok, Thailand. To WWF and Greenpeace, again united much as they were in the creation of the Marine Stewardship Council, the meetings were to be the occasion where the fate of global shrimp aquaculture would be dictated by the NGO community. The WWF and Greenpeace representatives were so certain of their success that they sat at the dais with the FAO staff, rather than in the NGO observer section. The NGO scenario had Greenpeace establishing the destructive nature of shrimp farming and WWF offering a remedy. That remedy was a polluter pays eco-tax on farmed shrimp that would be used to repair damaged eco-systems. Those repairs, of course, would be overseen by the environmental NGOs.

As the meetings began, WWF's Jason Clay and Greenpeace's Mike Hagler became very uneasy. They recognized a member of Mexico's delegation - David Wills of the PEAT Institute. By the end of the consultancy, the NGO scenario lay in a heap. Mexico, advised by Wills, created a coalition of shrimp growing nations who won the day. Instead of shrimp farming condemned as an environmental pariah, it was lionized as a means of providing needed foreign currency to developing nations and a mechanism for enhancing the environment.

The PEAT Institute-engineered defeat of the NGOs over global shrimp aquaculture bought the shrimp industry six years of respite from the WWF scheme. The WWF/Greenpeace plan for an eco-tax appended to farmed shrimp lay dormant from 1997 until this year when WWF decided it is time to resurrect the proposal.

The loss of the shrimp eco-tax fight did not deter the NGO community's campaign against shrimp.

NRDC issued its criticism of the commercial shrimp industry in August 1996 under the title of Shrimp Cocktail  Recipe for Disaster. Points raised included the claim that 124,000 sea turtles were killed by shrimp nets annually; that by-catch at a rate of 5.2 pounds per one pound of shrimp were decimating fish stocks; that shrimp trawls were destroying the ocean floor; that shrimp farms destroyed 25 percent of the world's mangrove stands; that shrimp farming brought civil rights violations to impoverished cultures; and that pollution from waste and contamination from antibiotic use were befouling the environment.

A year later in 1997, Environmental Defense produced a 198-page condemnation of aquaculture, "Murky Waters: Environmental Effects of Aquaculture in the U.S.," authored by Rebecca Goldburg. The work covered all species farmed including salmon and shrimp. It too forecast future tactics to be used against aquaculture such as the implementation of the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act was successfully invoked against Atlantic Salmon of Maine and Stolt Sea Farm in a suit by Ralph Nader-inspired U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG - $4.8 million via the USPIRG Group Educational Fund).

In October 1997, major NGOs formed the Industrial Shrimp Action Network (ISA Net) to oppose the continued expansion worldwide of destructive industrial shrimp farming. Overseeing the groups operations were representatives from NRDC, Mangrove Action Project, Greenpeace's Mike Hagler, Sierra Club of Canada, Rebecca Goldburg from Environmental Defense, Sea Turtle Restoration Project (STRP), and WWF.

NGO fervor against shrimp farming continued at a heated pace throughout 1998. Greenpeace sent one of its ships to Ecuador, to publicize illegal, mangrove depleting shrimp farms. Again, the PEAT Institute was on-hand to assist Ecuadors shrimp farmers in deflecting the Greenpeace assault.

Taking a lesson from Earth Island Institute's Dolphin Safe Tuna program, EII's off-shoot Turtle Island Restoration Network, now the parent group of STRP, created its Turtle Safe Shrimp eco-logo and continues to hector for restrictions and closures for shrimp trawlers in the Gulf of Mexico.

Salmon & Other Fisheries:

The success of salmon aquaculture can be measured not only in its dollar value but also in its ability to bring salmon to the table of virtually any American. Like chicken, salmon has gone from a luxury food to a commodity. Salmon now ranks behind shrimp and canned tuna as the most popular seafood among U.S. consumers. That standing brings with it the predictable attention by NGOs.

A variety of NGOs are working every possible angle to discredit farmed salmon among consumers.

Canada's farmed salmon have their NGO critics with the David Suzuki Foundation at the focal point. Chile's farmed salmon have their NGO critics with the lead being Terram Foundation. European salmon farms have the WWF.

On Canada's Vancouver Island, Dr. David Suzuki and his David Suzuki Foundation play a pivotal role in the global NGO onslaught against farmed salmon. Suzuki is very much the archetypical NGO leader. He is intellectually brilliant. He also plays the NGO card game with equal brilliance. The Foundation received funding from other foundations that, in turn, are used to fund various components of the anti-farmed salmon agenda. Some bear the Suzuki Foundation name and some are conducted via the traditional NGO ploy of a seemingly local front group or coalition. Suzuki plays a local game and an international game. Both are equally effective.

Upset that farmed salmon tests very low in methyl mercury compared to wild salmon, the NGO community searched about for some toxic substance that could be linked to farmed salmon. Farmed salmon critics seized upon polychlorinated biphenyls (PBCs). In 2002, David Suzuki commissioned Dr. Michael Easton to run a test comparing farmed and wild salmon. Easton used eight fish, four farmed and four wild-caught, ran tests and declared farmed salmon to contain ten times the PBCs as wild salmon. A year later the Environmental Working Group (EWG - $1.5 million - 2000 Figures) produced its own test for toxic substances in farmed salmon. The EWG study took 10 fish from stores in five countries including the U.S., Canada, Iceland, Scotland and Chile. It claimed farmed salmon had 16x the PCB level that was found in wild counterparts.

Farmed salmon is being blamed by NGOs for everything from sea lice to polluting the eco-system where their pens are kept to pushing native salmon towards extinction. The fact that Atlantic salmon are the most popular farmed variety injects the issue of alien or exotic species into the mix where Atlantic salmon are pen-raised in the Pacific's waters.

Suzuki's Western Canadian campaign uses a surrogate NGO, Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform (CAAR). According to CAAR, consumers should "think twice about eating farmed salmon" because the 85 open net cage salmon farms operating in British Columbias coastal waters create waste equivalent in impact to the raw sewage from a city with 500,000 inhabitants. CAAR also claims farmed Atlantic salmon have "10 times more PCBs and dioxins than wild salmon." Farmed salmon has "higher levels of unhealthy saturated fats" than wild.

To the south, the David Suzuki Foundation subsidized and sponsored Chile's Terram Foundation's campaign against Chilean salmon, specifically Terram's anti-salmon farm documentary and lecture tour through the Northwest Pacific. Terram attempted to pit the salmon farm workers against management by claiming the workers were forbidden to join the local union. That claim proved false. Suzuki had better luck soliciting indigenous people to oppose the Western Canadian salmon farms. Terram Foundations former executive officer Claude Marcel left that post and assumed the position of Oceana's Vice President for South America and the Antarctic.

New England groundfish fishermen should be familiar with Oceana. That NGO led the legal action that resulted in the historic court settlement that froze days at sea and limited fishing areas in order to conserve groundfish stocks. The Conservation Law Foundation (CLE) did the legal work on behalf of Oceana, the Audubon Society, Ocean Conservancy, and NRDC.

Oceana also teamed up with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and Turtle Island Restoration Network to sue the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for failing to protect all marine mammals from threats by longlines, gill nets and trawl nets in U.S. waters.

Turtle Island Restoration Network and the Center for Biological Diversity joined with Earthjustice to bring a federal suit against the Hawaiian swordfish longline fishery in 1999. The NGOs won. By April 2001, millions of nautical miles in the Pacific around the Northern Hawaiian Islands were closed to swordfish longlining. The Hawaiian tuna longline fleet suffered severe restrictions all for an allegation that longlining was a mortal threat to leatherback sea turtles. Shut out of Hawaiian waters, the longline fleet moved to Southern California.

A few months earlier, in November 2000, the same group plus Greenpeace Foundation learned it won its court plea to shut down the Hawaiian spiny lobster fishery as well as a portion of the Hawaiian groundfish fishery.

Not satisfied with shutting down the Hawaiian swordfish fleet, Turtle Island, Center for Biological Diversity and Earthjustice filed suit to close down the swordfish fishery that relocated to Southern California.

With the fishermen out of business, Turtle Island and the As You Sow Foundation stepped up their campaign against swordfish by bringing action under Californias Proposition 65. Approved in November 1986, the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (or Prop 65 for short) is the uniquely California statute used to legally extort cash in the form of adjudicated fines from industries whose products expose consumers to one or more substances on the statutes toxic and cancer-causing substances list. Using a lone study of questionable validity linking swordfish, tuna and shark to human health problems, Turtle Island Restoration Network and As You Sow Foundation brought down the full force of Proposition 65 on seafood retailers.

Swordfish were the object of the joint Seaweb/NRDC Give Swordfish a Break Campaign that ran from 1998 to 2000. The two NGOs ignored the conservation programs by federal and regional billfish management agencies that were indeed restoring the numbers of Atlantic swordfish. After declaring victory and taking all the credit for themselves, NRDC and Seaweb got together again to save Caspian Sea Beluga sturgeon via their cleverly named Caviar Emptor campaign. This time they brought in the Bronx-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

The second most popular seafood commodity sought by U.S. consumers " canned tuna " in one sense kicked off the NGO onslaught against commercial fisheries in 1987. When Earth Island Institute created the international uproar over allegations of dolphins being slaughtered by the Eastern Pacific yellowfin tuna purse seine fleet, Congress enacted statutes allowing only dolphin-safe tuna to be imported into the U.S. In 1997, Mexico, Venezuela and Columbia broke the U.S. zero tolerance against importing tuna taken with seine nets encircling dolphins. The truth of the matter was that mature tuna swim beneath dolphins. Immature tuna swim beneath floating debris. Tuna seiners also freed dolphins with a minimum of stress. Still EII protested the relaxing of the dolphin safe standards. EII's protest was jointed by The Humane Society of the United States, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty for Animals (ASPC), Defenders of Wildlife, Animal Welfare Institute/Society for Animal Protective Legislation, and the Greenpeace Foundation.

Where Animal Rights & Environment Groups Meet:

In fact, the crossover between hardcore animal rights and environmental NGOs have plenty of common grounds. The ruckus raised by these groups at various meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a mix of these NGOs fighting, literally against their common perceived enemy - global capitalism.

In a sort of reverse mirror image, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) plays a similar role within the realm of animal rights NGOs to that of World Wildlife Fund/World Wide Fund for Nature or simply WWF. Where they are similar is in their acting as strategic planning centers for a great deal of coordinated NGO projects and campaigns. They differ in that WWF postures as a reasonable and rational NGO grounded in scientific data that maintains an arms distance relationship with the more strident environmental groups. PETA, on the other hand, enjoys the role of shock street theater activist. Beneath the surface, however, there is no more intelligent or strategically savvy leader than PETA's Ingrid Newkirk.

Newkirk was a peer with the late Cleveland Amory, the godfather of the animal rights movement. Cleveland Amory, American Bible Society President Coleman Burke, and Animal Rights Activist Helen Jones created The National Humane Society, now The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in 1954. In 1967, Amory set up the Fund for Animals. Amory provided Paul Watson with the Sea Shepherd Societys first ship. Amory also provided the finances to create PETA.

Together Amory and PETA's Newkirk engineered the corporate takeover of the New England Antivivisection Society and assumed control over that organization's then $8 million assets. Newkirk in turn through her colleagues created the California-based In Defense of Animals and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Over the years, Newkirk has filled the offices of HSUS with PETA trained staff to the point that HSUS is now considered Newkirks presentable suit-and-tie front group at international venues such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

HSUS in turn set up the Species Survival Network (SSN), loosely modeled on IUCN's Species Survival Commission (SSC). Just as SSC provides scientific advice to international regulatory forums such as CITES, SSN was designed to package and promote the NGO point of view at that and similar world venues. SSN is the most blatant example of the cooperation among animal rights and environmental NGOs. Its 64 organization membership includes the Animal Welfare Institute, Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC), Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), Cetacean Society International, Defenders of Wildlife, EarthTrust, Environmental Investigation Agency EIA), Fund for Animals, Greenpeace, HSUS, Humane Society International, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), National Environmental Trust (NET), Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), WildAid, and the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA).

WWF does not need direct involvement in SSN precisely because of the existing influence and credibility it maintains with the CITES Secretariat. TRAFFIC, the international trade monitoring group, is a project of WWF as is IUCN, formerly known as the International Union for the Conservation of Natures Resources, now known as IUCN- World Conservation Union.

Animal rights groups reach into seafood issues via their concern for marine mammals (dolphins, seals, sea lions, manatees, whales), sea turtles, sea birds, as well as the generic catchall of preservation of threatened and endangered species. HSUS and SSN are at the front of the NGO effort to have CITES take regulatory authority over commercial fish species.

The major focus of animal rights NGOs is on the agriculture sector of the world food supply, particularly on food animals. Animal rights and environmental NGOs also find mutual ground in their opposition to genetically modified crops, to large factory or mono-culture farming and in their mutual support for "organic" farming and foods.

Environmental groups use a host of environmental statutes and accusations to pursue their campaigns against farm and ranching enterprises. Food animal operations inevitably have waste disposal problems that can be linked to environmental pollution. Accusations of cruel treatment are favorites of animal rights groups.

Robert Kennedy Jr., switching back and forth between his presidency of WaterKeeper Alliance and his chief litigator role for River Keepers saw billion dollar signs in potential legal fees resulting from litigating major hog producers over environmental issues including waste runoff into water systems. WaterKeeper Alliance, the Animal Welfare Institute and GRACE (Global Resource Action Center for the Environment) stage the annual Hog Summit as the NGO version of a tent revival to spark true believers into action against hog farmers.

Hogs are also in the sights of The Humane Society of the United States, one of the major backers of the successful Amendment 10 ballot initiative banning the use of gestation stalls on hog farms in Florida.

The issue of farm animals - beef, dairy, poultry, veal, lamb, pork - are now very high on the environmental and animal rights NGO list of priorities. PETA, Animal Welfare Institute, Humane Farm Animal Care, ASPCA, GRACE, Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM), Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), and more are working the farm animal issue.

NGOs work the farm issue from a variety of angles. One of the most popular is the issue of pesticides. The Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) claims 1000 affiliate groups. Some are Center for Food Safety, Consumers Choice Council, Earth Island Institute, Environmental Working Group, Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First, Friends of the Earth, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Natural Resources Defense Council, Organic Consumers Association, Organic Trade Association, U.S. PIRG, and World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

HSUS, ASPCA, Humane Farm Animal Care, and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are urging the adoption of their eco-label/certification for food animals: Certified Humane - Raised and Handled.

The NGO campaign against agricultural biotechnology (genetically modified crops) brings a number of familiar and not-so-familiar organizations together. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are the lead critics of GMOs throughout the world. Not so well known groups include the Center for Food Safety, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First, Organic Consumers Association, Organic Trade Association and Consumers Choice Council.

Consumer Choice Council is also a collection of NGOs. Among its member organizations are Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), Defenders of Wildlife, Earth Island Institute, Environmental Defense, Forest Stewardship Council, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, IUCN, Marine Stewardship Council, National Audubon Society, National Environmental Trust, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Oxfam International, Pesticide Action Network (PANNA), Sierra Club, The Humane Society of the United States, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

The generic rhetoric is similar to NGO seafood campaigns: to work to insure sustainable and humane farming. The fact is that the only right type of farm among these groups is organic. All others, if the NGOs succeed, will be subject to certification fees and eco-taxes to repair alleged environmental damages.

NGO Funding:

Earlier in this paper, a reference was made to Michael Sutton, program coordinator for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation as well as to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's program of advising consumers as to what seafood products are approved by NGOs for public consumption. What was not referenced is the fact that the Packard Foundation wholly owns the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. The Packard Foundation's major role in funding NGO operations explains the prominence of the Aquarium in promoting the NGO line regarding seafood.

In reviewing the following list of grants, remember that Sutton, former director for WWF's marine programs has direct say in the Packard Foundation approval and distribution. Remember too that WWF is perceived as a "reasonable" NGO operating apart from the more extreme environmental NGOs. The presence of WWF in coalitions of NGOs engaged in obstructionist activities and the influence of WWF in funding the NGO community via foundations such as Packard suggests a darker side to the organization, one where publicly WWF plays the "good cop" while its many minions play "bad cop."

The preeminent role of the Packard Foundation, created by the co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Company, is in large part due to its staggering endowment. The Packard Foundation as of December 31, 2002 controlled assets of $4,873,783,000.00.

In 2003 the Packard Foundation made grants to:

*$69,123 to American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). That year AAAS was the site for the claim by Duke University biologists that the swordfish/tuna longline fishery was threatening giant leatherback sea turtles with extinction when in fact leatherback turtles do not feed on fish used to bait longline hooks and all available data shows leatherbacks are only incidentally entangled in longline gear and most survive the incident.

*$30,000 to Conservation International Foundation to pursue an analysis for a byout of the Gulf of California shrimp-trawl fleet. Grants for 2002 totaled $611,336.

*$375,000 to the David Suzuki Foundation for its sponsorship of the Turning Point Project, a series of NGO sponsored ads in the New York Times denouncing globalization, genetic engineering research, modern agriculture, etc. and for conservation along the coast of British Columbia i.e. its anti-farmed salmon programs.

*$1,050,843 to Environmental Defense for its efforts to create new no fishing marine reserves, promotion of consumer/purveyor use of sustainable fishery products and to promote responsible aquaculture. ED received $537,500 in 2002. *$225,000 to Living Oceans Society/CAAR for its campaigns against farmed salmon and for marine reserve creation.

*$1,500,000 to the Marine Stewardship Council for its eco-certification programs. Their 2002 grants totaled $520,125.

*$350,000 to the National Environmental Trust for its work on discouraging use of Chilean Sea Bass.

*$20,000 to the National Fisheries Conservation Center for promoting marine reserves as part of fisheries management.

*$4000 to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) for a marine reserve workshop. NRDC received $325,000 from the Foundation in 2002 for promotion of marine protected areas.

*$400,000 to Ocean Conservancy for "activities" to improve and protect California's coastline.

*$550,000 to SeaWeb for a meeting of Seafood Choices Alliance partners and to research the wholesale and retail seafood markets.

*$750,000 to Strategies for the Global Environment to advance and promote the recommendations of the Pew Oceans Commission report.

*$1,475,000 to the Tides Center for a variety of activities from funding Canadian philanthropy to funneling a million dollars to the Rainforest Solutions Project (includes Greenpeace, Sierra Club of Canada) working against timber, globalization etc. and the end to the spot prawn fishery.

*$650,000 to WWF for a means of certifying eco-friendly aquaculture. In 2002, WWF received grants totaling $2,316,000 for programs ranging from aquaculture and fisheries certification to marine reserves.

The Joyce Foundation with assets of nearly $800,000,000 awarded grants to Environmental Defense ($180,000 in 2003, $500,000 in 2002 & $400,000 in 2001), Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy ($60,000 in 2003 & $180,000 in 2001), the Sierra Club Foundation ($50,000 in 2003, $300,000 in 2002 & $160,000 in 2001), NRDC ($250,000 in 2002), and WWF ($150,000 in 2001).

The W. Alton Jones Foundation, now known as the Blue Moon Fund Inc., has an endowment valued at $365,862,472.00. Between 1988 and 2001, NRDC received $7,818,735.00. Friends of the Earth took in $2,973,027.00 from 1993-2001. National Environmental Trust was given $2,700,000.00 from 1998 to 2001. Environmental Working Group got grants totaling $2,620,000.00 from 1989-2001. Environmental Defense received $1,594,000.00 from 1992 to 2001. U.S. PIRG got $1,253,600.00 between 1995 and 2001. David Suzuki Foundation received $665,000.00 from 1999 to 2001.

The Charles Steward Mott Foundation has assets worth $2.5 billion (2001 Figures) and has been very generous to NGOs over the years. Friends of the Earth received $6,718,965.00 from 1993 to 2001. The Tides Foundation and Center took in $5,504,950.00 from 1990 to 2002. From 1993- 2002, Environmental Defense received $3,762, 500.00. NRDC took in $3,022,340.00 from 1989-2002. Sierra Club got $2,536,536.00 between 1993-2001 to mention a few.

Similarly the Surdna Foundation has been very generous to environmental NGOs. Last year Surdna gave: $75,000 to the Marine Fish Conservation Network; $75,000 to the National Environmental Trust; $225,000 to Oceana; $75,000 to the Environmental Working Group; and $100,000 to NRDC.

A veritable forest of lush Foundations filled with cash is available, ready and waiting to provide animal rights and environmental NGOs with generous grants. NGOs know they have ready access to foundations with names like the Pew Charitable Trusts that gave $39.5 million in environmental grants during 2002 or George Gund Foundation with $424.5 million in assets or the W.K. Kellogg Foundation with its $363.7 million endowment, the Turner Foundation with $148.2 million in reserves, or the Barbara Delano Foundation with its $33 million nest egg.

(NOTE: This is but a narrow view at the legion of NGOs working for control of the global food supply.)