Halloween is a scarily successful time for selling chocolate in the United States. With 42.5 percent of the market, Hershey — the maker of Hershey's Bars, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and Hershey's Kisses — is a leader on sales but not on human rights. In the last 10 years, they have lagged behind their competitors in ensuring that that child labor is not used and that the rights of workers and farmers are respected in the production process. Tell Hershey today that child labor is unacceptable.

UUSC supporters across the country have practiced compassionate consumption by promoting fair trade and ethical eating. And almost 1,200 supporters have signed UUSC's Choose Compassionate Consumption pledge, furthering their commitment to make value-driven purchasing decisions.

Today, we ask you to join with over 50,000 consumers nationwide who have signed petitions asking Hershey to "raise the bar" and go fair trade. Through this campaign led by UUSC's collaborative partners Green America and Global Exchange, send a message to Hershey that it is time for the company to live up to its commitment to end forced and child labor!

A bill to repeal the exemption for hydraulic fracturing (also called "fracking") contained in the Safe Drinking Water Act was introduced in the United States Congress on March 15, 2011. The exemption, passed in 2005, ignores mounting evidence that fracking poses serious threat to drinking-water sources and to human health. The Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act of 2011 would make it law that corporations involved in hydraulic fracturing must disclose all chemicals used in fracking operations, with the exception of proprietary information.

Hydraulic fracturing is a process that involves injecting millions of gallons of water, chemicals, and sand particles underground to crack open rock formations and release natural gas and oil for collection. A recent New York Times investigation revealed that wastewater from fracking operations containing high levels of radioactive contaminants is being released into waterways supplying drinking water.

The bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa) and a similar version was introduced in the House of Representative s by U.S. Representative Diana DeGettte (D-Colo). We hope this bill passes. Success could lead to the adoption of policies by the government and corporations to protect public drinking-water sources and the environment from fracking hazards.

As part of its shareholder-advocacy program, UUSC has co-filed shareholder resolutions with ExxonMobil and Chevron, requesting that they disclose known and potential environmental impacts of their fracturing operations to the public. The resolutions also urge that policy options above and beyond regulatory requirements and existing efforts be adopted to reduce or eliminate hazards to air, water, and soil quality from fracturing operations.

In the wake of the massive oil drilling disaster created by the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig, many of you responded to our action alert pressuring BP to take full responsibility for the disaster's environmental and economic impact. We want you to know that your voices matter. BP took notice of your e-mails and calls, and contacted us directly to share their reply, which we've included below.

We need more than just BP's promise, though; we need accountability.

Urge your senators today to cosponsor the Big Oil Bailout Prevent Liability Act of 2010. If passed into law, this bill would increase corporate liability for oil spills from only $75 million — which amounts to less than one day's average earnings for a company like BP — to $10 billion.

Last Friday, March 19 — on the eve of World Water Day and in response to a shareholder resolution by NorthStar Asset Management, Inc., that was cofiled by UUSC — Intel, one of the world's largest manufacturers of semiconductor chips, adopted a formal policy that supports the human right to water.

As Todd Brady, Intel's global environmental manager, said in a post on the Intel Corporate Social Responsibility blog, "We concluded that formally establishing a policy that documents our current practices and acknowledges the importance of water as a natural resource would help guide our future decision making, formalize our commitment and perhaps in a small way help raise the recognition of water as a valuable resource. In short, it was simply the smart and the right thing to do." Intel has a particular responsibility to the human right to water: the production of semiconductor chips involves massive amounts of water; Intel reported using 7.8 billion gallons of water in 2008.

Spearheaded by NorthStar Asset Management, with technical assistance from UUSC staff, the shareholder resolution that was filed last fall outlined arguments for a proposed policy based on the principles expressed in the United Nations' definition of the human right to water: the safety, sufficiency, acceptability, physical accessibility, and affordability of water. And Intel responded. "This agreement moves beyond the vague promises of water conservation that many corporations purport," says Julie Goodridge, CEO of NorthStar Asset Management. "It fully commits the company to respecting the human right to sufficient clean water, as well as individuals' rights to be involved in the development of processes that extract water from their communities."

Intel's newly articulated dedication to the human right to water will help influence other corporations as well as governments to state — and, more importantly, act on — the same commitment. UUSC welcomes Intel's new water policy and will continue working to ensure that the human-right-to-water obligations of the private sector are implemented. Commitments are made to be lived up to.

UUSC and Investors Against Genocide (IAG), a colleague organization in the anti-genocide campaign in Sudan, are celebrating the February 18, 2010, announcement that another major financial investment company has joined the growing divestment movement. Following a November shareholder vote, American Funds has divested its extensive holdings — almost $190 million — in PetroChina, a Chinese oil company that has been identified as a major financial and military supporter of the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

As related in IAG’s press release, Eric Cohen, chairperson of IAG, welcomed the news and reiterated the desire for future American Funds investment action: "We congratulate American Funds for divesting from PetroChina. Their action is a positive affirmation of their human rights policy. We trust that, going forward, American Funds will promptly apply their human rights policy to avoid other cases of investments that substantially contribute to genocide." American Funds is the largest mutual fund company to date to divest from PetroChina.

This news comes on the heels of the successful campaign to urge TIAA-CREF’s divestment, announced January 4, from several Asian energy companies that failed to adequately address the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Together with IAG and several other human-rights organizations, UUSC has urged major U.S.-based financial-services companies to divest from companies linked to the seven-year-old Sudanese genocide.

Learn more about UUSC’s response to the genocide in Darfur.

Rob Robinson, a long-time UUSC supporter and environmental activist, recently organized a special delegation to Guatemala to investigate environmental damage that may be connected to a new gold-mining venture. He filed this report from his home in Colorado.

I just got back from attending the PepsiCo Annual Shareholder’s Meeting in Plano, Texas, where the UUSC-NorthStar Human Right to Water Resolution got a fantastic vote – 7 percent! I know that might not sound like much, but in the shareholder advocacy world, it’s a big victory. For a shareholder resolution to appear on the agenda next year, it needs 4 percent support. Most first-time resolutions, such as this one, don’t reach that threshold.

At the meeting, which was highly choreographed, Claire DeWitte, of NorthStar Asset Management, and I were led to our reserved seats, not too close, but not too far away from where PepsiCo President Indra Nooyi would give her annual report. After a feel-good review of “great Pepsi commercials of the past,” Nooyi gave a glowing report of the company’s performance. She also predicted that the economic slow-down would be good for a company like PepsiCo, owner of Frito-Lay, because in hard times, people can still afford its "comfort foods.”

After her presentation, the shareholder resolutions were presented. Claire and I did a joint presentation of our resolution. PepsiCo was actually very generous with time, and we spoke for about seven minutes. We explained that by adopting a human-right-to-water policy, PepsiCo could take a step forward in showing that they respect their customers and the communities in which they operate. We also argued that the company could prevent massive depletion of water resources before it happens and that adopting our policy could reduce PepsiCo’s liability as it operates in many countries around the world that either have or are integrating a human-right-to-water policy into their national legal framework.

Nooyi responded to our presentation, that “as an Indian woman, the issue of water was very close to her heart.” She then went on to tout PepsiCo as a leader in the industry, while avoiding the issue of why Pepsi would not adopt our proposed human-right-to-water policy. She also failed to address the fact that bottling companies have created water-scarcity problems in the areas in which they operate. In India, it is has been documented that water tables dropped 26 feet in the last seven years in some areas due to beverage-company operations.

PepsiCo states it is investing in water-scarce regions of India by digging public wells and boreholes. But in many cases, it was their operations that exacerbated the water-scarcity problem in the first place.

Because Pepsi is such a huge water consumer – around 90 billion liters of water per year internationally – they have a legal and moral responsibility to monitor and correct the negative impacts they have on the availability and safety of water resources.

I pushed Nooyi with follow-up questions, but she didn’t get to be the president of PepsiCo without being able to deflect hard questions. I did have a chance to speak with her afterward, where I let her know that if the company is interested, UUSC and NorthStar are willing to work with them on developing a human-right-to-water policy, but that if not, we will be seeing them at the next annual meeting!

You can hear the complete PepsiCo Annual Meeting via webcast. Our presentation can be heard at the 43:00 minute mark.

You can also read UUSC's statement by clicking here.