WASHINGTON, DC – As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, campaigners from the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) were arrested last Wednesday morning for trespassing on Walt Disney’s headquarters in California. While RAN contends that Disney is endangering rainforests with its children’s books, in reality, its campaign of misinformation, flawed research and “greenmail” threatens to reduce the number of books available to kids worldwide, raises the costs of buying books for millions of families and hurts efforts to alleviate poverty in developing countries. The Consumers Alliance for Global Prosperity (CAGP), after researching and detailing this issue extensively in multiple reports and investigations, issued the following statement:
“While RAN activists dress up as Mickey and Minnie Mouse and break the law, Walt Disney produces more than 50 million books each year to help educate our children and youth around the world. RAN’s continued attacks against companies like Disney, who provide such unique and creative ways to help educate our kids about other cultures and the world around them, are shameful. Since last year, CAGP has been sounding the alarms about RAN’s dubious activities, ones that tear books out of children’s hands and increase prices for families. In no way, shape or form does RAN stand for the values of Disney. For the sake of child development, consumer choice and free trade, we will continue to pull the saving-the-planet façade off of RAN’s callous antics,” said Andrew Langer, spokesman for CAGP.
Last year, CAGP issued a report, Misguided Reading: How RAN’s Book Guide Stacks Down on American Consumers and Developing World, which scrutinized the activist group’s campaign against children’s books and its attacks against pulp and paper producers. The report brought to light how RAN’s advocacy is not only deceitful, but also anti-learning and anti-poor. CAGP found that RAN’s analysis amounted to little more than pressuring consumers to accept its misguided agenda. Moreover, claims made by the Environmental Paper Network have fortified RAN’s efforts, such as stating that “Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is the only acceptable international certification program” to meet its agenda, and advocating for burdensome and downright inefficient use of printers and paper. It’s not surprising, then, to see RAN serving on the Network’s steering committee, furthering a network of collusion that includes protectionist U.S. paper companies and big labor unions.
Langer continued, “RAN’s actions don’t stop with children’s books. They are now running a campaign against the Girl Scouts, those good cookies and their maker Kellogg’s to drop the use of palm oil. This special interest campaign being supported by competitors results in parents of young girls in Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, countries in Africa and even in Malaysia, who work at palm plantations or own a small oil palm farm, going out of business and losing income. This perpetuates poverty and diminishes the advancement of young girls. Now that’s not very moral, nor supportive of women’s development is it? Come on RAN, where is your decency?”
To learn more about RAN’s biased campaigning against Walt Disney, and why the activist group hates children’s books, please click here.
For more information, please visit CAGP online, on Twitter and on Facebook.
To schedule an interview with Andrew Langer, please contact media@consumerprosperity.com.
