Month: July 2013

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Ethics-International, Green Business, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice, travel Tagged with , , ,

I can think of no better way to celebrate July 4th this year than to acknowledge the huge honor my hero and friend Dean Cycon, CEO of Dean’s Beans in Orange, MA recently received.

Dean Cycon, CEO, Dean's Beans, jamming with musicians in Rwanda
Dean Cycon making music in Rwanda

Dean Cycon is the most ethical business owner I know, and the only person to be a guest twice on the business ethics radio show I hosted and produced for four years, from 2005 to 2009. Dean has done 100% organic and fair trade coffee and cocoa since the day he opened his company, which he located in a depressed area where jobs are scarce. Dean not just funds but also actively partners with people in the villages that supply his coffee to do “people-centered development” projects, led by the folks who live and work in those villages. He also partners with local charities in western Massachusetts to create private label coffee they can sell as fundraisers. Oh yes, and he’s also the author of one of my favorite travel books: Ippy Award gold winner Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee (Chelsea Green, 2007). And he’s a fun guy who hasn’t let success interfere with his playful spirit.

And now, OMG, Dean Cycon has been awarded one of the most prestigious honors in the world: the Oslo Business for Peace Award, also known as the alternative Nobel Prize for business. The award judges are actual Nobel Laureates, including microlending pioneer Prof. Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel prize in Economics in 2006, and Prof. A. Michael Spence, winner of the Nobel prize in economics in 2001. Dean is one of five honorees, and the only American. All I can say is, he richly deserves it.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Social and Economic Justice, Technology

Many developed countries have embraced the Precautionary Principle, which states that new processes and products have to be proven safe, and if we don’t understand their effects, we wait.

The United States, on the other hand, passed the “Monsanto Protection Act,” which not only utterly violates the Precautionary Principle, but actually removes the court system’s power of oversight over GMO (genetically modified) food safety, even when the products (developed not only by Monsanto but by other agribusiness/chemiculture companies) and  have been found to cause health risks.

This horrible law was slipped into a much larger bill and has the potential to wreak havoc in all sorts of ways—not the least of which is the threat to organic agriculture if their fields become contaminated by windblown GMO seeds (and the further threat to farmers’ livelihoods when Monsanto actually sues the farmers whose fields it contaminates, for using their seeds without permission). Organic farmers have countersued Monsanto, but by logic I don’t understand, the courts have generally sided with Monsanto, ruling over and over again that the chemical giant’s pollution and ruination of organic crops allows Monsanto to collect damages for the illegal use of its products, while denying the organic farmers compensation for trashing their crops.

And now, there’s a threat to US exports: South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the entire European Union are among the countries canceling contracts and testing shipments after a Monsanto-developed GMO “zombie wheat” contaminated a wheat farm in Oregon.

Oh, and let’s not forget that many genetic modifications are designed to allow plants to tolerate larger quantities of herbicides whose safety is widely questioned—including Monsanto’s own Roundup.  Yes, in a triple-whammy, Monsanto sells “Roundup-ready” GMO seeds, and then sells the Roundup to spray on those plants, which causes weeds to develop resistance, so farmers respond by spraying even more Roundup. Eeeeew!

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