Center for Consumer Freedom

[Guest guest]

http://www.consumerdeception.com

 

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root & name=ViewWeb & articleId=8984

 

What Is the Center for Consumer

Freedom,

and Why Is It Attacking

PETA?

 

 

 

 

The Center for Consumer

Freedom is a nonprofit corporation run by lobbyist Richard Berman through his

Washington, D.C.-based for-profit public relations company, Berman & Co.

The Center for Consumer Freedom, formerly known as the Guest Choice Network,

was set up by Berman with a $600,000 “donation” from tobacco

company Philip Morris.

 

Berman arranges for large sums of corporate money to find its way into

nonprofit societies of which he is the executive director. He then hires his

own company as a consultant to these nonprofit groups. Of the millions of

dollars “donated” by Philip Morris between the years 1995 and 1998,

49 percent to 79 percent went directly to Berman or Berman & Co.

 

Richard Berman is an influence peddler. He has worked out a scheme to funnel

charitable donations from wealthy corporations into his own pocket. In

exchange, he provides a flurry of disinformation, flawed studies, op-ed pieces,

letters to the editor, and trade-industry articles, as well as access to his

high-level government contacts, who are servants of the industries he

represents.

 

Berman’s name might sound familiar. In 1995, Berman and Norm Brinker, his

former boss at Steak and Ale Restaurants, were identified as the

special-interest lobbyists who donated the $25,000 that disgraced then-House

Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was hauled before the House Ethics Committee for

influence-peddling over the money. Berman and Brinker were lobbying against

raising the minimum wage.

 

Richard Berman is a spin doctor. For example, he has argued against a Mothers

Against Drunk Driving (MADD) initiative to lower the blood alcohol content

(BAC) limit for drivers by claiming that the stricter limits would punish

responsible social drinkers. He has claimed that U.S. Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention (CDC) warnings about salmonella-related food poisoning

are just “whipping up fear over food.”

 

Here’s how an internal Philip Morris memo described Berman’s spin:

“His proposed solution would broaden the focus of the ‘smoking

issue,’ and expand into the bigger picture of over-regulation.”

Smoking won’t kill you; over-regulation will.

 

Berman is “a one-man wrecking crew on important issues.” His

approach has been described as “misleading” and

“despicable.” Berman has been called “a tobacco company

whore,” but he’s branched out since then.

 

Using “freedom of choice” as his battle cry, Berman has now taken

on PETA and a number of other groups and organizations whose points of view

could have an impact on the profits of his clients by waking consumers up.

Berman’s Guest Choice Network has an “advisory panel” whose

members in 1998 included officials representing companies ranging from Cargill

Processed Meat Products and Outback Steakhouse to Minnesota Licensed Beverage

Association and Sutter Home Winery. Berman’s clients are companies with

vested interests in low employee wages; cheap, unhealthy restaurant-chain food,

particularly meat; and tobacco, soft drink, and alcohol

consumption—companies like Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, Armour Swift,

and Philip Morris, whose product line includes Kraft Foods and everything from

Marlboro cigarettes to Oscar Meyer wieners and which is a major shareholder in

its former subsidiary Miller Brewing, now known as SABMiller.

 

PETA’s recent successes in gaining fast-food industry concessions for

more humane conditions for farm animals have sent ripples of fear through the

food and beverage service industry. About the same time that McDonald’s

buckled to PETA’s demands, Richard Berman changed his front group’s

name and stepped up his attacks.

 

The key to Berman’s aggressive strategy is, in his own words, “to

shoot the messenger ... we’ve got to attack their credibility as

spokespersons,”—an interesting remark from someone whose background

and funding so severely challenge his own credibility.