Food & Water Watch is a Washington, D.C.-based non-governmental organization group which focuses on corporate and government accountability relating to food, water, and corporate overreach. Resulting issue areas include stopping fossil fuel and fossil fuel extraction, regulating factory farms, advocating for renewable energy, fighting water privatization, stopping bad trade deals, increasing transparency in our food system, and standing up for human rights. The organization was founded by staff from Public Citizen in 2005. Food & Water Watch was the first U.S. national organization to call for a ban on fracking and helped achieve bans in New York and Maryland. It was the first to break the news of the high rate of salmonella in US chicken processing plants in July 2006. It has also been critical of the growing bottled water industry for health and environmental concerns. On August 24, 2007, it announced success in its effort to get Starbucks Coffee to stop using milk originating from rBGH-treated cows The organization does not take government or corporate donations. Charity Watch rates it an "A" grade.
The "Load of Crap" campaign, an educational campaign about the dangers of factory farm waste/waste disposal and overuse of antibiotics on factory farms that included a Times Square billboard advertisement.
Restricting the practice of aquaculture in American waters.
Food & Water Justice is the organization's legal department, which files lawsuits and provides legal analysis to further the organization's campaigns. It has supported work opposing the use of pollution trading to solve environmental challenges as well as calls for more regulations of concentrated animal feeding operations. Food & Water Watch sued the USDA's Farm Service Agency in 2017 for “failing to adequately consider environmental impacts before supporting a loan guarantee for a poultry operation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.” The organization's lawyers also backed the Environmental Protection Agency in a 2016 suit that challenged the agency's practice of making public the location of permitted concentrated animal feeding operations. BP Whistleblower Following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster, a subcontractor at BP'sAtlantis oil rig provided “e-mails, a BP database and other documents” to Food & Water Watch. These documents indicated that BP had violated its own policies by not having all the necessary engineering documents on board the Atlantis when the rig started operations in 2007. The subcontractor, Kenneth Abbott, would later file a lawsuit with Food & Water Watch against then Secretary of the InteriorKen Salazar and the Minerals and Management Service. The lawsuit sought to stop the operation of Atlantis.
Food & Water Action
Food & Water Action, originally Food & Water Action Fund, is the organization's political arm, and is classified as a 501. It has endorsed candidates in a number of election races.
