Demand Transparent Marketing

We are writing to you today as consumers and farmers out of concern regarding some of the marketing tactics being used by the Organic Valley Cooperative.

Whether you are a producer or a consumer, we all benefit from ensuring that accurate and positive information about agricultural production is available to consumers.  In particular, it is important that our children are educated about safe and responsible food production through appropriate educational outreach.

It has come to our attention that Organic Valley Cooperative is responsible for an aggressive online marketing campaign targeting children with fear-based messages associated with the safety of conventional production practices.  In addition to its highly negative and misleading nature, the campaign is being conducted by Organic Valley without any clear disclosure or transparency of the co-op ownership, funding and involvement in the campaign.

We are concerned that this lack of transparency suggests that you, as producers who embrace the values of America%u2019s family farmers, may be unaware of this apparently substantial marketing investment being conducted on your behalf.  

Here is some background:

- In January 2011, the marketing department of Organic Valley Cooperative launched the Frog TV campaign. The initiative includes a website (FrogTV.com), Facebook social media profile (facebook.com/FrogTV) and YouTube Channel (youtube.com/user/FrogTVNews).  Since its launch, the campaign has released weekly animated cartoon video "webisodes" and blog postings - all of which attack non-organic farming methods as unsafe.  These attacks are highly misleading, fear-based and, given the medium and methods used, clearly targeted toward children.

- These fear-based messages falsely characterize conventional crop protection products as "deadly" and "poisoning" to children. Further, they go so far as to claim that pesticides inside mothers' wombs cause ADHD, asthma, autism, mutations and cancer. 

- Animated characters Triball and Diego tell kids that their moms should only eat organic foods to prevent them from passing pesticides to children in their breast milk, which they also claim can cause heart disease or diabetes. The characters specifically note, "A pregnant mom should make sure her breast milk is pesticide free by eating organic food." [1] 

- There is no disclosure on the FrogTV website[2], Facebook pages or YouTube channel that this campaign stems from Organic Valley. Using such marketing tactics specifically targeted to children creates misleading fears over competing conventional food products and should have no place in American agriculture, period. 

As consumers, fellow producers and family farmers we hope you find this to be unacceptable and take measures to address the damage done by this campaign.  As parents, educators and farmers, we ask that you pledge both accuracy and full transparency in this and any other Organic Valley-funded initiatives used to market your products.  We also ask that you urge the Organic Valley corporate staff take these materials down and disclose any other direct or indirect investments that may use producer revenues to disparage other agricultural producers - conventional, organic or other.

We should all agree that attacks on fellow family farmers' and neighbors' use of safe, approved production methods will serve only to drag down public perceptions of all American agriculture.  All producers, conventional and organic, should promote their products based on their own quality attributes - not false or misleading information and fears about the safety of the production tools they choose. 

 We look forward to and welcome your response.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/user/FrogTVNews#p/u/8/x8WbFmt9gnk

[2] The FrogTV.com website domain name registration, which was originally purchased and assigned to Organic Valley%u2019s Interactive Marketing Director Mark Brickl, was specifically masked in July 2010 using a proxy privacy service to block people from seeing the website owner%u2019s identify. It is clear that Organic Valley owns the site, hosts the site on company-owned servers and produces the content through public relations and marketing agencies paid by the company.

OVP Board Members: 

Wayne Peters
Peters Farm, Inc/ Organic Valley Chaseburg Creamery
203 S Main St
Chaseburg, WI  54621 
(608) 483-2104

Arnie Trussoni
Elm Terrace Farm
E1404 Mundsack Rd
Genoa, WI  54632
(608) 689-2192

Pam Riesgraf
Full Circle Dairy
18160 Pueblo Avenue
Jordan, MN  55352
(952) 445-2470

Jim Miller
R&G Miller & Suns
1706 County Road V
Columbus, WI  53925-9146
(608) 837-3792

Mark Kruse
Kruse Family Farm
2601 Lafayette Ridge Rd.
Lansing, IA 52151
(563) 586-2433

Travis Forgues
Forgues Family Farm
245 Alburg Springs Rd
Alburgh, VT  05440-4024
(802) 796-3279

Dan Pearson
Pearson%u2019s Mann Valley Farm
524 Cty MM
River Falls,  WI  54022
(715) 425-9488