Activities
The group defines its mission as fighting against "a growing cabal of food cops, health care enforcers, militant activists, meddling bureaucrats, and violent radicals who think they know what's best for you, are pushing against our basic freedoms."
The CCF has argued against smoking bans and for keeping the legal blood-alcohol level for drivers at 0.10. It questions the dangers of red meat consumption and pesticides.
In a 1999 interview with the Chain Leader, a trade publication for restaurant chains, Berman said his organization attacks activists more aggressively than other lobbyists. "We always have a knife in our teeth," he said. Claiming that activists "drive consumer behavior on meat, alcohol, fat, sugar, tobacco and caffeine," his strategy is "to shoot the messenger... We've got to attack their credibility as spokespersons."
In 2002 CCF spokesman John Doyle described nationwide radio ads put out by the group as efforts to attract people to their website and "draw attention to our enemies: just about every consumer and environmental group, chef, legislator or doctor who raises objections to things like pesticide use, genetic engineering of crops or antibiotic use in beef and poultry."
CCF gives out annual "Tarnished Halo" awards to so-called "animal-rights zealots, celebrity busybodies, environmental scaremongers, self-appointed "public interest" advocates, trial lawyers, and other food activists", and its Guest Choice Network affiliate gives out the "Nanny Awards" to "food cops, anti-biotech activists, vegetarian scolds and meddling bureaucrats".
The CCF had posted a number of videos to YouTube until June, 2010, when its 'consumerfreedom' account was suspended for undisclosed Terms of Service violations. It posted the trailer for the children's movie Charlotte's Web, claiming that the movie "encourages kids to 'say no to bacon' and print out stickers reading 'Tofu Rulez'" and links to groups it states are "extremist," such as the Humane Society of the United States.
The CCF criticizes statistics used by nutrition groups to describe a global "obesity epidemic," and in 2005, it filed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests against the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in response to a CDC study claiming that 400,000 Americans die each year as a consequence of being obese. After the CCF campaign CDC reduced its estimates to 112,000 annual deaths, leading the CCF to advertise widely that it had discredited the study.
Read more about this topic: Center For Consumer Freedom
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
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—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
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—Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865–1932)