Get on the Bus! - 30 recommended organizations include: Foods Not Bombs, Reef Relief, and Mothers and Others for a Livable Planet

Vegetarian Times, Nov, 2000 by Mark Harris

But offering medical aid is only half their mission. Because they witness firsthand the atrocities that are committed to their charges, these brave men and women contact the media and speak out on behalf of the wounded and dead, in an effort to draw the attention of a world that's either unaware of or apathetic to their plight.

Organic Consumers Association

6114 Highway 61
Little Marais, MN 55614
(218) 226-4164
Email: info@organicconsumers.org
Web site: www.purefood.org
Founder: Ronnie Cummins

They're in grocery store parking lots outfitted in biohazard suits, dumping genetically engineered foods into fake hazardous waste bins. They're petitioning courts to allow organic suppliers to label their milk hormone-free. Or you'll see them in the streets, protesting against factory farming, food irradiation or practices that could give mad cow disease a hoofhold in this country.

Wherever they are, the 50,000 activists with the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) can be counted on to act up in defense of pure food. Originally called the Beyond Beef Campaign and later the Pure Food Campaign, the group has been at the forefront of contentious food fights since the early 1990s, when it was among the first to condemn the use of bovine growth hormone. According to founder Cummins, "Organic agriculture is the wave of the future, and we are the only group in the United States that is explicitly advocating for--and trying to express the views of--America's 10 million organic consumers."

Today the OCA takes on every threat to food safety, from the genetic engineering of plant foods to the cloning of animals. Its goal, however, has remained constant: to take the factory out of the farm and return agriculture to its sustainable, organic roots. Thus its latest initiative, a petition calling for a moratorium on genetically engineered food and a commitment to convert 30 percent of U.S. agriculture to organic production by 2010.

Honorable Mention

The Fund for Animals

200 West 57th St., Suite 705
New York, NY 10019
(888) 405-FUND
Email: fundinfo@fund.org
Web site: www.fund.org
Founder Cleveland Amory

It's one thing to rescue animals from abusive situations--but once you do, where do you put them? Since 1979, The Fund for Animals has provided a home for these orphaned creatures at Black Beauty Ranch, a 1,400-acre animal sanctuary located in the plains of east Texas. Today the ranch hosts more than 900 animals, ranging from giraffes to bobcats, which have been rescued from circuses, roadside zoos, laboratories, public lands or bad domestic situations.

Black Beauty is one of The Fund's three animal shelters. The group also operates a 24-hour medical facility where they treat wounded wild animals before returning them to their homes, as well as a sanctuary for abused rabbits. And in an effort to control the proliferating population of dogs and cats in Manhattan, The Fund also runs a low-cost spay and neuter clinic in that city.

Founded in 1967 by late humorist Cleveland Amory (author of The Cat Who Came for Christmas), The Fund for Animals has long been a main player in the animal protection movement. Among its many victories: direct actions that led to the end of canned pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania and a tourism boycott that compelled Alaska to abandon its aerial hunting of wild wolves. Says Amory, "We speak for those who can't."