Dole, Chiquita Targeted by Anti-Tar Sands Ads

Dole and Chiquita were confronted yesterday by full-page ads in USA Today, criticizing the banana distributors for their use of Canadian fossil fuels.

Green campaigners ForestEthics used the ads (pictured) to highlight and decry the firms’ use of diesel from tar sands deposits in Alberta, Canada, for shipping and refrigeration.

ForestEthics says that such operations in Alberta represent one of the most resource-intensive oil extraction processes in history. The health effects of refining tar sands are already evident in Alberta where downwind and downstream communities have levels of cancer more than 400 times the normal rates, according to the pressure group.

ForestEthics says that extracting tar sands threatens an area of boreal forest the size of Maine and that 90 percent of the water consumed in tar sands mining ends up in the world’s largest lakes of toxic waste.

So far 20 major companies have taken supply chain action to reduce their use of what ForestEthics calls “extreme fuels” like those from tar sands, the group says.