Boycott Kettle Foods-Energy for people, not profit

sorry i cant agree

yes i've heard the commercials with cameron healy saying that kettle foods uses "green energy" but so also do a number of other smaller businesses, such as, Hot Lips Pizza, Food Front Cooperative, First Alternative Cooperative, Ashland Cooperative, Burley Design Coopertaive in Eugene, New Seasons Markets.

In addtion Cameron Healy has also helped Sequential bio fuels get started in Salem. The cooking oil from their chip production goes to Sequential.

So I'm sorry a boycott of Kettle Foods does not make sense to me.

Who is the General?
And why the boycott?

I understand the previous commentor's difficulty with boycotting Kettle. Still, I also heard the ad on AM 620 radio and felt highly disillusioned that they are pimping for PGE. Maybe we should all call Kettle and at least ask them to stop pimping for PGE?

Why don't you give us some actual details so we know what's actually going on. All I've heard is Kettle is supporting biofuels production and hopefully is profiting off the arrangement so they can continue to support the project with Sequential.

You mean Kettle Foods is advertising..... green energy???!!? What are they thinking? Why, they may encourage other companies to use greener energy too. Madness!!

Give me a break

I agree that Kettle Chips does some cool things (as others have mentioned!) but Kettle is also doing PR advertising on the radio for PGE. This ticks me off immensely because PGE is promoting itself like crazy trying to shake off the stink of Enron. Well, PGE may or may not still be part of Enron (I think Enron is like the mafia, you can never leave...) but the point is that PGE was a utility originally built with public resources and as a for-profit entity they have shafted Portland and the public in a million ways for literally billions of $$$. Ergo, a growing movement exists to revert PGE to a city-owned utility. Ergo, the bloodsuckers at PGE, with the help of their lackeys at the Oregonian, have been on a huge PR campaign for many months now.

Which brings us to Kettle Foods. PGE is running an ad on AM 620 radio in which the head of Kettle Chips gushes about how swell PGE is. I did not do the original post here, but I did hear the ad on the radio this AM and it cheezed me off. I personally think we should be calling/writing Kettle and asking them to quit pimping for PGE:

Kettle Foods
P.O. Box 664
Salem, OR 97308-0664

Telephone: 503-364-0399

Kettle is using Green Energy. Where are they receiving it from?
Gosh, golly gee whiz - is it PGE? What other local power company is offering Green Energy? No one? Oh my!

You say you cannot boycott PGE. Why not? If you truly wanted to, you could get yourself off the grid. Why haven't you? Why aren't you boycotting all businesses who buy power from PGE? Is it because they are not saying the name outloud? Is Kettle trying to promote Green Energy? Are they trying to pretend they don't get it from PGE?


To turn around and take aim at Kettle while you are feeding from the same trough is laughable at best.

Herbert posted that a growing movement exists to revert PGE to a city owned utility. THERE IS YOUR TARGET. Aim your "personal energy" and effect some monumental change.

You and Me may raise our eyebrows at any sort of mingling between Corporate and Progressive, because we read sites like THIS and pay attention to information like THAT.

But the majority of Oregonians? The hundreds of thousands who think Entertainment Tonight is a news program and wouldn't know total Dick Cheney if he came up and shot them in the face? They don't know Green Energy either -- But they know them some salty chips! And now they know there's alternative sources of energy out there.

It's called COMPROMISE. Really, who's exploiting who? Healy rides the coat tails of PGE and gets to shout his message on their dollar.



C'mon

"...For example, there is Kettle Foods, world-renowned makers of potato chips in Salem. Working with the Energy Trust of Oregon, Kettle recently installed a huge set of solar panels on the roof of its plant, and I'm told that at peak solar periods, they'll be able to produce up to 25% of their own energy demands. That's not small potatoes! It takes a lot of energy to cook potato chips."

 http://www.sos.state.or.us/executive/speeches/022604.htm

But it still would be a good idea to contact them.

 http://www.kettlefoods.com/index.php?cID=89

"Here are some other ways to contact us[them]:

Kettle Foods
P.O. Box 664
Salem, OR 97308-0664

Telephone: 503-364-0399
Fax: 503-371-1447
Office hours: 8am-5pm Pacific Time."

I am wondering why, if SeQuential Biofuels is picking up waste oils from Kettle Foods, why then did Kettle Foods dump oil into the Salem sewer system ? when they could have picked up the phone and called sequential.
And why do they decide to buy potatoes from Threemile Canyon farms, who is being boycotted by the,UFW (United Farm Workers Union), for years of bad and unfair labor practices, and most recently animal abuse ?

Nov. 10, 2005 Three women workers file a second lawsuit against the farm over sexual discrimination. As part of that action, attorneys file sworn affidavits from 12 current Threemile Canyon Farms employees that reveal dairy co-owner A.J. Bos said, "I don't want women at the farm?they are only good for the bed." (Estrada v. Columbia River Dairy Multnomah County Circuit Court Case No. 0511-11801 filed in Portland, Oregon).






Salem slaps penalty on Kettle Foods
07:20 AM PDT on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Associated Press
SALEM, Ore. -- The city fined Kettle Foods more than $12,000 because a worker at the potato chip plant pumped cooking oils and solids from the food processing operation into Salem's sewer system.

The Salem plant makes a variety of chips. (File Photo)
Moreover, the city found the company could only produce records of effluent flows for a three-week span, not the required five-year period.
City officials detected the problems March 23, and issued a civil penalty on April 20.
Kettle Foods officials blamed a mistake made by workers who were upgrading a waste water treatment system. They said the city discovered the error during a routine visit.
"We worked quickly to correct the situation," company officials said in a statement.

I like Kettle foods. I mean, we all eat, right? And truth be told, lots of us still eat (gasp) junk food. If I'm gonna eat chips, I would prefer they be made locally, from a small outfit, by a neighbor, who uses green energy. Hey, PGE sucks. Yes indeed. And Kettle should think before climbing into bed with them, just like many of us should think before doing some of the silly things we do. So...why not start by contacting Kettle, as someone suggests above? I think that's a far better, and in the end a more assertive approach than calling for a boycott that is ill considered and bound to be ignored.

The thing is, many of us have been conditioned to think no one will listen to us, so we go off half-cocked. It's a lack of assertiveness, I think. We expect to be ignored, so we wait till we can't stand it before we speak up, and then we shout and posture because we figure they're not gonna listen so why not be rude and hard to ignore. But if we practice just talking to each other, maybe we will find people actually listening after all.

So again, maybe if we all call Kettle and talk to them about the wisdom of supporting only good organizations, and not bad ones like PGEnron, maybe they will listen. Let's do that first, and if we can manage to do that, then maybe we will have the strength to actually pull off a boycott, should one ever be necessary. Then again, maybe it won't be necessary. Wouldn't that be nice?

Boycotts should be a last resort. Kettle Foods is local, employs local people and I believe is locally owned. They make organic products and built a new factory with the entire roof covered with solar panels.

As much as I dislike PGE, I can easily understand that they may have been a valued vendor/resource for Kettle Foods' alternative energy needs. Why shouldn't they get props for doing the right thing?

What the hell are you doing listening to AM 620- talk about compromise!!
And you're talking to us about potato chips boiled in solar heated oil?

Don't you know Air America is broadcast on a Clear Channel-owned radio station? One of the biggest media global conglomerates on the planet?

Go do a web search if you don't know anything about Clear Channel.

KBOO rules!

Has anyone who posted about this bothered to actually call Kettle yet? If so, what's the word? Because, think about it. It's very easy to rant about things that suck, but it's harder, and more necessary, to actually take that step. I don't say this to put anyone down, by the way. We all need to take those first steps.

I see no reason to boycott Kettle at this time, but I also disagree with any rude posts implying that the person who wrote the original piece above is some kind of bonehead, even for listening to clear channel. Clear channel, like PGE, sucks bigtime. Both are corporate vampires willing to suck out our souls if we turn a soft belly to them. So yeh, they suck. But the person who wrote this piece is trying to figure this out and make things better, just like the rest of us. I totally understand being frustrated upon learning that Kettle sold out to PGE. We just need to learn the difference between a reversable mistake by well meaning people, and an all out assault by our enemies.

Dam I am caught between my hatred of Corporate controlled energy and my Love for Local Economy that supports ecological and social responsiblity. Dam I hate this its like the delema of throwing a granade into a bunker where Hitler is sitting, but he has cute kittens and puppies in his lap. Dam you Enron for making me choose!!!


Why doesn''t someone just ask Cameron Healy directly. Hey here is an idea one of our indy reporters (meaning the common well informed Jane or Joe on the street) could interview him about biodiesel, local economy, social responsiblity in the "free market" and of course PGE as well as throw in the Sikhism questions. Maybe the key is simply an interview.

This pdf may help with some basic research
www.energytrust.org/Pages/about/ library/case_studies/KettleFoods/KettleFoodsCS.pdf

And yes of course Enron tainted PGE needs positive advertisement (smart on their diabolical part to use pro-environmentalist busness people... its all part of divide and conquer) and its all connected with the newest story  http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/06/341524.shtml

I really appreciate your thinking and attempt to communicate what might be going on here. As activists I think we do start to feel unlistened to (because we frequently are) and so we pull out our "big guns" first. I'm so tired of the black and white/no mistakes allowed/lack of process thinking of some activists (none here in particular, just some I've met in my life who had a big negative impact on me). It's a challenge to communicate simply, with humility, and with hope.

I was one of the founding group at N.S.Khalsa aka Kettle Foods, as the first production employee, I helped expand the plant as well as recipes for thier products, I had many conflicts with the owner over safety, sanitation and employee issues. I stirred the first Kettle Chip, developed the cooking process, packed the first bag, and even helped pick the name. Cameron wished to call them Pot Chips. Thier history reads like rags to riches, it's not, thier history is full of half-truthes, pictures of a beat-up VW bus that I never saw or knew one existed, we/I was selling and/or recycling our oil long before it was a cool marketing pitch, yet glad they are recycling. We also sold food scraps to a local pig farmer. The recipe is not even the same, we used cold-press safflower oil, local potatoes from the Sherwood. I only choose one kind of potato, did not need to search though 122 varities. It troubles me, that they stirred clear of the union issues in Eastern Oregon, and they know better than to pollute, for a while potatoes were purchased from the Klamath basin, I wonder what impact on fish/water that may have had? Lots of pesticides are needed to produce potatoes and vegetable oil, should a successful company put thier money were thier mouth is, go totally organic with a recyclable package. Can an employee at Kettle afford a Bio-car, is there a program for them to do so? It troubles me that they can not even be honest about the origin of the product. Happy 25th birthday to new age capitolism!!!

kettle chip is no local small business and sold for $3oo mil! duh!