Source: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Backstory here.

Meeting Minutes
North American Metal Packaging Alliance, Inc.

May 28, 2009, 10:00 a.m. - 3:10 p.m. EDT
RE: BPA Joint Trade Association Meeting on Communications Strategy
Meeting Goal: Develop potential communication/media strategies around BPA

Discussion Topics: Consideration of available web-based communication options, including targeted geographies, as well as mainstream media response

Attending Companies: Coca-Cola, Alcoa, Crown, North American Metal Packaging Alliance, Inc., Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), American Chemistry Council, Del Monte

Summary: Attendees discussed the need to be more proactive in communications to media, legislators, and the general public to protect industries that use BPA, prolong the life of BPA, put risks from chemicals in proper prospective, and transcend the media and the blogosphere. Attendees believe a balance of legislative and grassroots outreach (to young mothers ages 21-35 and students) is imperative to the stability of their industry; however, the association members continue to struggle to initiate research and develop a clear-cut plan to defend their industry. The committee will spend approximately $500,000 to develop a survey on consumer BPA perceptions and messaging and eventually content and outreach materials. Overall, the committee seemed disorganized, and its members frustrated. Lack of direction from the committee and these associations could continue to allow other associations and environmental groups to push BPA out.

Other Points: Attendees suggested using fear tactics (e.g. “Do you want to have access to baby food anymore?”) as well as giving control back to consumers (e.g. you have a choice between the more expensive product that is frozen or fresh or foods packaged in cans) as ways to dissuade people from choosing BPA-free packaging. Attendees noted, in the past, the different associations have had a reactive strategy with the media, with very limited proactive outreach in reaching out to journalists. The committee agrees they need to promote new, relevant content to get the BPA perspective into the media mix. The committee believes industry studies are tainted from the public perspective.

The committee doubts social media outlets, such as Facebook or Twitter, will work for positive BPA outreach. The committee wants to focus on quality instead of quantity in disseminating messages (e.g. a young kid or pregnant mother providing a positive quote about BPA, a testimonial from an outside expert, providing positive video, advice from third party experts, and relevant messaging on the GMA website). Members noted traditional media outreach has become too expensive (they have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars) and the media is starting to ignore their side. The committee doubts obtaining a scientific spokesperson is attainable. Their “holy grail” spokesperson would be a “pregnant young mother who would be willing to speak around the country about the benefits of BPA.”

Eventually, the committee concluded before deciding on the tactics to spread their messages, they need to develop the messages. The committees plan to fund a joint survey and message testing—what new messages they need to sell—before implementing a website and creating materials. Another task group will be implemented to finalize how to develop messages and aggressively use electronic media to deliver those messages.

Members noted the industry needs research on how perceptions of BPA are translating into consumer behavior—Is it translating into most moms not buying canned products or just a minority of moms? They hope to form messages relevant to how people live their lives—What does not having BPA mean to your daily lifestyle? Focusing on the impact of BPA bans on minorities (Hispanic and African American) and poor is also important. The members want to put the danger of BPA into perspective.

Legislatively, the committee is focusing on Connecticut and California. Committee members are meeting with as many representatives on the Health Committee as possible. The members are focusing on more legislative battles and befriending people that are able to manipulate the legislative process. They believe a grassroots and legislative approach is favorable because the legislators worry about how the moms will react. If the Connecticut bill goes through, the committee believes it will be a good opportunity to talk about the negative impact that ban will have on businesses and employment—How will it affect the union workers? The committee wants to put a proposal together for the right way to deal with legislative issues in each state.

The committee discussed Prop 65 in California—requiring the Governor to publish, at least annually, a list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity. The committee will form a coalition to write a submission about the benefits of using BPA by the deadline for submissions on June 30, 2009. Members will also build up their contact base in Sacramento. The committee does not want to win at the legislative level and then not have anyone to buy the product.

The committee questioned whether or not trade associations should challenge what is being said about BPA. Other trade associations for plastics have begun writing letters in response to “lies” being told about BPA. The committee proposed to be involved in the dialog and comment electronically and directly back to reporters. Attendees noted it does not matter what the next material is, there will be issues with it, and the committee wants to work to make people feel more comfortable with BPA and “BPA2” or whatever chemical comes next.

The committee suggested dividing the costs of the work and research equally by the members. The members are guesstimating it will cost at least $200,000 for the message testing and the survey and $500,000 for the entire project. The committee is also looking for new members to help with costs and outreach.

Consumers have been abandoning BPA's miracle plastic, polycarbonate, by the droves, the biggest U.S. baby bottle manufacturers have promised to stop using it, and cities, counties, and states have begun passing bans (various NY counties; Minnesota; and now Chicago). But polycarbonate is just the tip of a great big BPA iceberg, as we've been reporting for a while now. A recent study suggests that BPA leaches from polycarbonate bottles not only when heated, as the baby bottle makers used to be so fond of assuring us, but even, and quite floridly, in cases when bottles are not used for hot liquids or washed in dishwashers. (Incidentally, we're guessing that the BPA iceberg itself is, in fact, the tip of another iceberg... and yes, it's icebergs all the way down.)

Consumers finally seem prepared to screw this logic to the sticking place. If BPA in polycarbonate is bad, then it must also be bad in epoxy resins in infant feeding utensils, infant formula packaging, baby food jars, canned goods, and even paper packaging. (You know the slick surfaces of those frozen entree containers? We (and others) can't say much about any particular paper food packaging, but I can guarantee you some of it uses BPA.) Connecticut looks ready to ban BPA in food packaging, with legislation on the governor's desk that would ban it by 2011 and require warning labels beforehand. The U.S. Congress is considering a federal ban on BPA in food packaging, baby bottles, and cups as well.

While the baby bottle and sports bottle companies have been able to shift gears without too much trouble, food packagers don't have it so easy. Some alternatives exist, but some foods pose more of a risk than others, implementation of any change would be costly, and any misstep could open a company to new liability if materials proved less reliable under the icky real-world stresses canned food can go through in its long journey from factory to table. Naturally, none of these companies were studying or investing in these alternatives when this issue was sitting on the burner on high, because hey, the water was kinda nice. Now that the issue is actually boiling over, and moms across America are buying frozen or fresh produce instead of the suddenly-sketchy canned stuff, food packagers are getting concerned. And what better way to communicate that concern, the North American Metal Packaging Alliance has sagely reasoned, than with a fear-mongering anti-anti-BPA PR campaign?

Some guilty soul in the industry slipped a reporter at the Washington Post the notes from an industry meeting outlining their planned response to the BPA-in-food-packaging crisis. Listen up, moms:

The notes said the executives are particularly concerned about the views of young mothers, who often make purchasing decisions for households and who are most likely to be focused on health concerns.

Those at the meeting held at the Cosmos Club "believe a balance of legislative and grassroots outreach [to mothers 21 to 35 years old and students] is imperative to the stability of their industry; however, the association members continue to struggle to initiate research and develop a clear-cut plan to defend their industry," an unidentified participant wrote.

Industry representatives weighed a range of ideas, including "using fear tactics [e.g. "Do you want to have access to baby food anymore?" as well as giving control back to consumers (e.g. you have a choice between the more expensive product that is frozen or fresh or foods packaged in cans) as ways to dissuade people from choosing BPA-free packaging," the notes said.

The attendees estimated it would cost $500,000 to craft a message for a public relations campaign, according to the notes. "Their 'holy grail' spokesperson would be a 'pregnant young mother who would be willing to speak around the country about the benefits of BPA,'" the notes said. [Link]

That's $500K for "crafting a message," folks. How much will the industry spend to insult us with it in print, on television, and online?

And how much would it cost to develop and roll out a viable alternative - one which was cleared in advance of any estrogenic activity, so Coca-Cola, Campbell's, and Gerber knew they were minimizing the chances of another issue like this cropping up three or five more years down the road?

I think my favorite part is where the Post quotes the note as saying industry leaders are primarily interested in "legislative battles and befriending people that are able to manipulate the legislative process." I'm pretty sure you wouldn't see such bald language even in the most nefarious progressive circles. Read the article for much more.

A few weeks ago we conducted an experimental sale of Thinkbaby's BPA Free Feeding Set, one of our favorite children's dish sets on the market, and called it retail advocacy. The model is simple: We host a sale of a limited number of products for a limited window of time, keep our profit margins tight to offer a good deal to consumers, and split the proceeds with a non-profit organization that does good work.

The portion we keep helps us to do the kind of reporting you turn to Z Recommends to provide - honest, thoughtful explorations of what's happening in industry and politics as well as unflinching product reviews, in-depth consumer research, and safety information. For this sale, we decided to do our 50/50 split with the Breast Cancer Fund.

After shipping costs, which were relatively high for this trial sale, we earned $381.84 on about 50 units sold. Half of that is $190.92, which we're thrilled to send to the Breast Cancer Fund on behalf of everyone who chose to purchase a feeding set from us. For us, this is just the first step - as far as we're concerned, it's just a drop in the bucket compared to what we can do as we improve on this system. We've begun outlining ways to streamline the process, to reduce our overhead, and to begin running sales on a more frequent basis, with our previous policies and procedures for publicizing the sale on our blogs in effect.

We've been considering a variety of products for our second sale, trying to select one we think a significant cross-section of ZRecs readers will be interested in and can't easily get at the price we can offer while still offering a fair return on what will be a money-down investment in product. We made up a short list of a dozen or so children's products we knew we could stand behind 100% - we already know the design of these products, inside and out, as well as hundreds (thousands?) of others that just wouldn't make the cut - and started running some numbers.

We knew that in addition to meeting our high expectations for materials safety, the product we selected had to be a great value, easy to package and ship, and an innovative product that commanded attention for all the right reasons. We ruled out some products because of their minimum retail pricing, others because they're for little babies and we think our readership trends towards toddlers. In the end, there was one clear standout - two more of the best products we've seen since we launched Z Recommends and began reviewing products over two years ago, from a company that has been at the forefront of both safer plastics and innovative design for children.

We'll have a firmer date soon on when we'll launch the second ZRecs 50/50 sale, and can't wait to tell you about it, as well as the charity we'll be donating 50% of the proceeds to.

Thanks again to everyone who made our first ZRecs 50/50 sale a success for both ZRecs and the Breast Cancer Fund!

Ever wonder what people in the plastics industry say to each other about reform efforts aimed at banning phthalates and BPA? We caught a glimpse of that often private conversation this week in Plastics News, an industry publication that just cited "renewed attacks from activists" as the No. 2 issue that has faced the plastics industry over the past two decades. Interestingly, the News points out that attacks on the plastics industry are nothing new - they're just more effective now because they involve marketplace campaigns as well as legislative ones.

"[T]he reality is that attacks on plastics were just as persistent 20 years ago, with efforts then under way to ban chlorine, a ban in New York’s Suffolk County on PS and PVC takeout food containers, and the first concerted effort by environmentalists to ban plastic bags and PS takeout containers," the News writes. "What’s different is that yesterday’s visible rallies have taken a back seat to well-organized new media campaigns that are designed to create public pressure, not just on governments to take action, but on retailers to remove products from their stores - in other words, achieving the effect of a legislative ban without getting one enacted."

The article goes on to discuss the role of various industry groups, who we know primarily as the folks who set up industry-run websites that weigh in on public health debates with the chemical industry's perspective. As many web surfers digest information they find on websites fairly quickly, these sites' scientific and objective tone often give them an effectiveness beyond what one would typically grant a trade organization with a significant vested interest in the status quo. To their credit, most sites we've seen along these lines do provide clear, if subtle, marks indicating their parent organizations or backers.

Anti-reform plastics organizations Plastics News cited which work in the media include:

• The Progressive Bag Affiliates: "formed to meet the threats posed by proposed plastic bag bans or taxes." Organized by the American Chemistry Council.


• The Plastics Foodservice Packaging Group: Combats legislation banning polystyrene takeout packaging. Formerly called the Polystyrene Packaging Council, and organized by the ACC.


• The Phthalates Ester Panel: Responds to calls for bans and other criticisms of phthalate plasticizers. Backed by the Chemical Manufacturers Association.


• The Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group: Combats warnings and proposed bans on BPA. The organization behind Bisphenol-A.org and Facts on Plastic. Current spokesman, widely cited in the media, is Stephen G. Hentges.


• The Vinyl Institute: Promotes and defends vinyl (PVC) against critics.

But all is not lost, the News concludes. The industry has held its own in many of these battles to date, particularly in its anti-environmental efforts:

"To its credit, the plastics industry has successfully fended off many chemistry-specific bans, phthalates notwithstanding. What’s more, possibly because it has so often been under the gun, the industry has learned how to successfully ward off product bans, with the exception of numerous bans on PS take-out packaging in California. Only Westport, Conn., and three communities in California - San Francisco, Malibu and Fairfield - actually have enacted plastic bag bans. But the industry has been less successful in devising a successful strategy to combat what is likely to be the battleground of the 21st century - the new media campaigns that pressure retailers and large institutions, including health-care facilities and governments, to de-select products, so as to avoid any association with potential negativity.

At the moment (and this is our analysis here, not the publication's) no one in the industry seems to have a counter-strategy for this market-based activism, in part because there are ready substitutes for the chemicals and materials under fire, and new brands have emerged that place their chemical safety status front and center in their operations and marketing. This has meant that major retailers have faced competitive pressures within their industry to establish their own, more progressive chemical policies, and the manufacturers have no real choice but to follow suit.

The true irony is that many twentieth-century baby care empires were built by repetitively and creatively triggering and enhancing anxieties among parents in order to spur demand for new purchases. Now that parents' concern about potential risks to their children is demanding that companies respond to those concerns rather than creating the concern to help sell a product they've created, companies often seem downright perplexed by these impulses to err on the side of caution when it comes to childrearing issues.

You can read the full article, and comment on it, here, or find out what else made Plastics News' top twenty issues for the industry (for the "#1 issue," you'll have to wait until March 16).