Carrot & stick

a CARROT to:

* Whirlpool Corporation for deciding to reduce its global green-house gases by 3 percent from its 1998 emission levels--an annual reduction in emissions equal to those of 10 million cars or nearly 30 coal-fired power plants.

* The California Fish and Game Commission for banning the sale of the country's first "Frankenpet" a fluorescent zebra fish artificially created through genetic engineering.

* A judge in Kerala, India, for ordering Coca-Cola Co. to stop using local groundwater at its plant in the village of Plachimada. Coca-Cola was drawing nearly half a million gallons from the local water supply, causing "a severe drain on the water resources of the entire area," a city attorney told the Associated Press. Drink that, Coca-Cola!

a STICK to:

* The US Department of Agriculture, whose chief spokesperson on mad cow disease, Alisa Harrison, turns out to have been the director of public relations for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the industry's most powerful lobby.

* The fashion industry for making for chic again, leading to a resurgence of the black market in illegal furs and the deaths of thousands of endangered fur-bearing animals. "In the 1980s and 1990s, the illegal skin trade virtually ceased to exist because it was not fashionable," says John Sellar of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. "But we are seeing models going back into it and a consequent boom in the trade."

* Vice President Dick Cheney for his Pennsylvania "hunting" trip in November 2003 at which he and his gun-totin' pals shot about 400 ring-necked pheasants raised in pens and released for the sole purpose of being shot. Cheney himself bagged more than 70 of the birds in what the Humane Society official described as "a shooting-gallery operation."

* The Washington, DC-based Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) for again lobbying the US Food and Drug Administration to ban the popular meat substitute Quorn. Although he admits that beef kills "far more people" through heart disease, CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson wants Quorn banned because 2 percent of participants in one controversial study reported some form of tummy upset after eating the mushroom-derived product.

* The National Soft Drink Association (NSDA) for fighting efforts by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to ban the advertising and sale of soft drinks in public schools. Channel One, the in-school television channel, now advertises sweetened drinks to a captive audience of 8 million students, a practice the AAP says should cease in the interests of reducing childhood obesity. Not so fast, says the NSDA, whose executive director, Jim Finkelstein, says soft drinks can be "part of a balanced lifestyle."

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