ColumnOctober is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and with it comes a slew of advertising opportunities for big companies. It’s called: pinkwashing.

Pinkwashing is a term coined by Breast Cancer Action. According to the group’s definition, a pinkwasher is “a company or organization that claims to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon product, but at the same time produces, manufactures and/or sells products that are linked to the disease.”

Over the years, during the month of October, companies from Proctor & Gamble to KFC jump on board in the name of breast cancer awareness (I mean, in the name of their bottom line, because when there’s a chance to support a cause, there’s also a chance to make money) failing to point out that often the products whose percentage of proceeds goes to breast cancer awareness are full of the chemicals that cause the cancer in the first place.

Much of this discussion is focused around beauty products – like providing breast cancer care packages with beauty products laden with chemicals known to cause cancer – but there are a wide variety of food brands who get on board as well. Not to mention companies who develop and use pesticides to grow our food in the first place.

Did you know that the primary corporate sponsor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month is Astra Zeneca? Yes, the pharmaceutical company. The same pharmaceutical company who makes a profit off of its cancer treatments (the sales of their top selling breast cancer drug Tamoxifen comes in at $573 million per year worldwide), as well as parenting a successful agrochemical business, developing and selling carcinogenic pesticides.

As the Breast Cancer Fund notes, “Modern food-production methods have opened major avenues of exposure to environmental carcinogens and endocrine-disrupting compounds. Pesticides sprayed on crops, antibiotics used on poultry, and hormones given to cattle expose consumers involuntarily to contaminants that become part of our bodies. Some of these exposures may increase breast cancer risk.”

Some examples of pink food products you can get your hands on this year: pink pizzas, brownies with pink frosting, pink pancakes, a buttery chardonnay or just get completely decked out in pink Hard Rock Cafe gear and then down a Hard Rock Cafe energy drink. And for those food companies who don’t participate, consumers fail to pull back the layers on what these kind of marketing campaigns really mean, that people rally together to try to get chains like Taco Bell to launch a pink taco.

The food and cancer connection isn’t a new discussion; what we eat matters. Obesity for example has been shown to increase the risk of premenopausal breast cancer by 70 percent, which make the sales of things like breast cancer awareness pizzas and energy drinks so disgusting.

But as Breast Cancer Fund points out “tips to ‘fight cancer’ often list reducing fat intake as a crucial step, but don’t mention that one reason this may reduce your risk is because high-fat, animal based foods are a main route of exposure to cancer-causing organochlorine pesticides and dioxin.”  In other words, there are a lot of chemicals used in modern day food production that are known carcinogens, and whether or not we are watching what we eat, we may still be ingesting them.

Some of the big agricultural players and their favorite pesticides have been linked to increased in risk for cancer, like Monsanto’s Round-Up and Syngenta’s Atrazine (which is so bad the European Union banned it in 2005). You will be very happy to know that, yes, Monsanto does take part in Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and even sends volunteers to Race for the Cure. Pesticides and pinkwashing are a match made in heaven.

Considering the severity of breast cancer – today 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime – this is about more than just eating well. It is about holding companies accountable for putting chemicals into our food system. Because while huge amounts of money have poured into breast cancer awareness and research, these companies haven’t done anything to actually tackle the problem; breast cancer cases are projected to increase by 50 percent by 2030. Huge corporations make money off of the pesticides and herbicides that cause cancer, and then pharmaceutical companies reap the benefits of more and more breast cancer patients needing their treatments. It’s a vicious cycle.

“Pinkwashing has become a central component of the breast cancer industry: a web of relationships and financial arrangements between corporations that cause cancer, companies making billions off diagnosis and treatment, nonprofits seeking to support patients or even to cure cancer, and public relations agencies that divert attention from the root causes of disease,” wrote Breast Cancer Action Executive Director Karuna Jaggar in an op-ed piece last year.

Money for research into finding a cure for breast cancer is essential. Just ask any breast cancer survivor. But as we have seen, often that money is tainted, and if we want to eliminate breast cancer in the first place then we need to do more than just treat it.

We need to regulate (and in many cases, eliminate) the use of chemicals, pesticides and herbicides. As a friend of mine recently put it, “thanks to anyone who has supported cancer research – my friends and I appreciate it. We are living proof that it really does help people. Pinkwashing, however, does not.”

This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, think about what’s on your plate, and think about what companies are doing something to change the status quo of how our food is produced. Boycott the ones who aren’t. Sign a petition calling for change. Support a local organic farmer, and thank them for not putting pesticides into our watersheds.

That’s where the real change is going to come from, not from a plate of pink cupcakes.

Related on EcoSalon

We Love Breast Cancer Awareness, We Hate Breast Cancer Commercialization

Behind the Label: Avon’s Crusade Against Breast Cancer

‘Tis the Irony: Susan G. Komen Partners with Major Fracking Company

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: DixieBelleCupcakeCafe

The post Beware of Pinkwashing in Your Food: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

Avon has long been a major player in the fight against breast cancer. But why do they continue to use chemicals that have been linked to cancer in its products?

Last week, Avon rolled out its latest effort at corporate transparency: Avon’s Calling, a blog focusing on issues related to social responsibility and the global cosmetic company’s three “pillars:” sustainability, philanthropy, and female empowerment.

While greater transparency is always a good thing, one has to wonder whether what the blog will do to mitigate criticism against Avon, particularly around its reported history of “pinkwashing” – promoting the fight against breast cancer with pastel pink ribbons, while continuing to produce products using chemicals linked to cancer. There are also accusations of greenwashing with Avon’s Hello Green Tomorrow initiative – though the campaign aims to “save the rainforest,” Avon utilizes palm oil in many of its products, which is a major cause of deforestation (though with its Palm Oil Promise, it is trying to source more sustainably). And then there are the numerous lawsuits recently levied against Avon, on everything from animal testing fraud to bribery of Chinese officials.

In short, it’s been a rough couple of years.

That aside, Avon’s dedication to corporate responsibility dates back to the days before CSR was a marketing buzzword. Founded in 1886, the company was created with the commitment “to meet fully the obligations of corporate citizenship by contributing to the well-being of society and the environment in which it functions,” states Avon’s website. Today, it is one of the world’s leading cosmetics companies, with over $11 billion in annual revenue. The company is based on an affiliate business model, in which independent “Avon Ladies” sell products and earn commission on sales. Historically, this model helped to revolutionize female entrepreneurship by offering women a chance at financial independence during a time when it was unheard of.

The Good

The “pillars” of Avon’s corporate responsibility efforts – the empowerment of women, sustainability, and philanthropy – have been at the heart of Avon’s operations from the very beginning. One of the company’s largest ongoing projects is the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade, which is aimed at funding research and access to quality care. Now in its 20th year, the project has donated more than $740 million to the cause, making it one of the world’s leading corporate supporters of the fight against breast cancer. Among the successes that Avon lists on its website:

• Linking more than 15 million women around the globe to early detection programs and mammography screenings.
• Educating 100 million women on breast health
• Expanding into 55 countries
• Enabling access to care for underserved populations
• Providing $175 million to breast cancer research projects since 1999
• Creating Love/Avon Army of Women, a program designed to accelerate the pace of prevention research by enlisting more than 350,000 women (potential study volunteers) for this effort.

Avon fundraises for these efforts through various methods, like hosting the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer series and selling Crusade Pink Ribbon fundraising products, which currently include pins, tennis bracelets, ear buds, scarves, and nail polish.

The Bad

Despite its philanthropic efforts, Avon has been criticized by researchers and advocacy groups for positioning itself as a leader in the fight against breast cancer, while continuing to use hormone-disrupting ingredients linked with cancer, like parabens, phthalates, synthetic musks, and triclosan, in its cosmetics and personal care products. The company has often been singled out by Breast Cancer Action’s Think Before You Pink™ campaign, which aims to encourage both companies and consumers to think more critically about breast cancer fundraising. The watchdog group coined the term “pinkwasher” in 2003 and has since addressed pink ribbon marketing by companies including Yoplait, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.

Last year, an academic article in Environmental Justice furthered the debate. In the report, titled “Pastel Injustice: The Corporate Use of Pinkwashing for Profit,” authors Amy Lubitow and Mia Davis highlighted Avon’s “Kiss Goodbye to Breast Cancer” campaign, which promoted six shades of lipstick whose proceeds would be donated to breast cancer research. Citing the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database, Lubitow and Davis stated that the lipsticks “may have contained ingredients that disrupt hormone functions (which is in turn linked to breast cancer)” and that according to the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition, more than 250 Avon products listed in a database “are listed in the “highest concern” category due to the presence of hormone disruptors, neurotoxins, and possible carcinogens.”

Soon after the publication of the Environmental Justice article, Lubitow and Davis published a related piece in Forbes on pinkwashing, lambasting it as “the co-optation of breast cancer symbolism by corporate actors who stand to profit from the use of breast cancer awareness imagery.”

Breast cancer is useful for corporate cause marketing campaigns because it is a disease that many people are intimately familiar with (currently, one in eight women in the US are diagnosed with breast cancer) and it is associated with beloved family members and friends … In addition, women control somewhere between $0.70 and $0.85 of every household dollar spent, so marketing in relation to women’s health is a logical business move. 

The Forbes article again spotlighted Avon cosmetics, but this time, Avon responded. Tod Arbogast, Avon’s vice president of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility, sent Forbes a letter disputing claims about the cancer-causing effects of hormone-disrupting ingredients like parabens. Arbogast stated that “scientific bodies have extensively studied the safety of parabens” and “not a single government-scientific body has determined that parabens are unsafe,” but that Avon has eliminated parabens from “some products where there are safe alternatives.”

Soon after the letter was added to the original article as an addendum, Lubitow and Davis bit back with a letter of their own, disputing Arbogast’s claim that the health effects of parabens have been adequately studied and reinforcing their previous claim that “chemicals that cause cancer or have been linked to cancer have no place in consumer products.”

While we applaud the efforts to reduce the presence of toxic chemicals in Avon products, we maintain that continuing to build brand recognition through breast cancer cause-marketing while continuing to sell products that are not completely free of toxic chemicals is a harmful contradiction.

The Questionable

Avon’s track record in the world of corporate responsibility hasn’t just been impressive – it’s been groundbreaking. As one of the first major corporations to make issues like sustainability, philanthropy, and female empowerment exist at the core of their business, Avon has set a CSR standard that has been followed by many of the companies that have proceeded it.

But as we noted in the recent Behind the Label: Tommy Hilfiger, there’s a difference between donating to good causes and doing good business. It’s common to separate noble corporate responsibility goals from profit-driven business practices, and indeed, that is what Avon continues to do by utilizing cancer-linked chemicals in their products. Sure, spending more to produce products with natural ingredients may result in less profit, which may mean less money for philanthropy. But perhaps a world that is freer from cancer-causing toxins will be a world where less of that charity is needed. I hope that’s one issue that the company will address on Avon’s Calling.

SEE ALSO:

Behind the Label: The Body Shop’s ‘Against Animal Testing’ Campaign

Behind the Label: McDonald’s See What We’re Made Of Campaign

Behind the Label: Burt’s Bees

Read more Behind the Label here.

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