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Company Press Release

INFACT Links Tobacco to Philip Morris' Kraft Macaroni & Cheese

BOSTON, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ --``Purchasing Kraft Products is Dangerous to Your Children's Health!'' So reads the warning on INFACT's box of ``Krafty'' Macaroni & Cheese. Showing cigarettes coming from the top of a box of Philip Morris' Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, the image graphically illustrates the direct ties of the cigarette maker's tobacco and food divisions. As part of an organizing strategy to expand the boycott of Philip Morris's Kraft Foods, one hundred INFACT activists in more than 50 cities across the US will distribute 25,000 ``Krafty'' leaflets to holiday shoppers on Saturday, December 12. INFACT is the Boston-based corporate watchdog organization known for its successful boycotts of Nestle and General Electric.

Kraft Mac & Cheese is an ``icon brand'' for Philip Morris, an essential product of the corporation's recently launched ``Holiday Helper'' promotional campaign designed, says Kraft CEO Robert Eckert, for ``helping families'' by providing a ``holiday meal.'' Eckert's tobacco-hawking parent company, however, is renown for its aggressive marketing of lethal products that wreak havoc on families by spreading deadly tobacco illnesses.

``Philip Morris,'' says INFACT Executive Director Kathryn Mulvey, ``is desperate to keep the public in the dark about the link between their food and tobacco businesses, but the tobacco giant uses Kraft to protect the Marlboro Man. Kraft CEO Eckert recently solicited his employees to contribute to PHIL- PAC, the Philip Morris Political Action Committee, to help the tobacco transnational fend off serious tobacco control measures. INFACT's Boycott and leafleting campaign make the Kraft/tobacco link plain for the public to see.''

Shortly after the launch of INFACT's Tobacco Industry Campaign in 1993, an internal Philip Morris memo -- one of hundreds in response to INFACT's Tobacco Industry Campaign -- warned that once INFACT gets ``down to a boycott tactic..., then we will have to fight with everything we have.'' The Kraft Foods holiday campaign is part of Philip Morris' fight.

INFACT National Organizer Sangita Nayak noted the widespread enthusiasm for the Boycott. ``In the wake of the tobacco deal recently agreed to by the tobacco industry and 46 states, people around the country are anxious to apply direct economic pressure on Philip Morris. Now in its fourth year, the Boycott of Philip Morris' Kraft and RJR's Nabisco food brands is reaching critical mass.''

INFACT's Tobacco Industry Campaign and Boycott has been endorsed by former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop and US Representative Henry Waxman.

Founded in 1977, INFACT's purpose is to stop life-threatening abuses of transnational corporations and increase their accountability to people around the world. In April, INFACT released the 1998 People's Annual Report, Global Aggression: The Case for World Standards and Bold US Action Challenging Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco, a graphic account of international tobacco industry marketing and promotional abuses.

SOURCE: INFACT