Center for Food Safety
Center for Food Safety’s mission is to empower people, support farmers, and protect the earth from the harmful impacts of industrial agriculture.
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Center for Food Safety's mission is to empower people, support farmers, and protect the earth from the harmful impacts of industrial agriculture. Through groundbreaking legal, scientific, and grassroots action, we protect and promote your right to safe food and the environment. CFS's successful legal cases collectively represent a landmark body of case law on food and agricultural issues. Every day we're in Court fighting some of our earth's biggest polluters: Monsanto-Bayer, Dow Chemical, Dupont, and the federal agencies that give these polluters a green light. The pesticides we are legally challenging disproportionately harm the health of farmworkers and family farmers, and the long-term health of our environment. Children and families should not be exposed to unsafe and carcinogenic chemicals in our food. Our legal team is here to stop the use of dangerous pesticides that threaten our health and the health of our planet.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Food and Farming
CFS is committed to developing a new food future where organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture provide the baseline for what we eat. CFS is dedicated to developing food solutions emphasizing food that is organic and beyond, which includes farming methods that are biodiverse, socially-just, appropriately-scaled, local, and humane.
Food and Technology
While CFS does not oppose the use of technology in food as an overarching principal, CFS does have major concerns with certain technologies that may be harmful to human health and the environment. Our focus is to curb the use of these technologies until they have been proven safe.
Food and Climate
Industrial agriculture is the leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, more than any other source. Yet, the role of agriculture in climate change--both as a problem and a solution--continues to be largely ignored. CFS is highlighting this critical connection and promoting climate-friendly food solutions.
Food and Health
CFS is committed to protecting human health by holding government agencies accountable for ensuring the safety of our food. By advocating for a move away from the current industrialized system, CFS is creating a new food future that reduces foodborne diseases.
Where we work
External reviews
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of audience members willing to take action on behalf of a specific issue
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Adults, Families
Related Program
Food and Farming
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
We got more than 50,000 people to demand that Tillamook Creamery support local family farms and not source from polluting factory farms. We’re currently advancing the next stage of this campaign.
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
CFS protects human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
CFS uses an integrated suite of legal, policy, educational, and community organizing tactics to achieve our vision of creating a more healthy, sustainable, and transparent food system for everyone. Working in conjunction with impacted communities, much of our work begins at the legal or policy level. For example, we file impact lawsuits mostly against state and federal agencies for violating environmental and other laws. CFS then leverages our litigation to educate, empower, and mobilize individuals and impacted communities to demand change and advocate for progressive policies at the local, state, and federal level that will result in reduced toxins from agriculture in our environment and communities. CFS strategically pursues legal and policy actions as a way to create precedents that can be scaled and replicated across the country, systematically changing the legal and political environment that has enabled industrial agriculture to thrive.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
For the last twenty-five years, Center for Food Safety has been at the forefront of creating a new food future, organizing an increasingly powerful food movement that is fighting the industrial agriculture model and promoting organic, ecological, and regenerative alternatives.
Center for Food Safety's experience and mission make it the perfect organization to fight for a better food system. CFS has a variety of tools in its arsenal including legal action, grassroots organizing, large media campaigns, and coalition building. These tools mean CFS is always ready and adaptable as we continue to pursue our members' goals.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
The past year has been a historic one for Center for Food Safety. We are incredibly proud of our victories and accomplishments protecting public health, native salmon and oceans, animal welfare, endangered species and the environment, and pollinators like Monarch butterflies. During these challenging times, our work has increased, and we continue to fight every day to protect people and the planet. Together, we share a vision for a food system that prioritizes health and the environment and we're proud to share these updates with you.
First GE animal approval held unlawful: After a four-year CFS lawsuit, a federal court declared the approval of the first-ever genetically engineered (GE) animal, a GMO salmon to be illegal! This decision is a huge victory for wild salmon, the environment, tribes, and our fishing communities.
Overturned a toxic Monsanto pesticide: We had one of the most important legal victories ever against pesticides and GE crops in 2020. As a result of our lawsuit, we made history when a federal court overturned the approval of Monsanto's toxic pesticide dicamba, used primarily on GE crops. The decision also forced EPA to consider impacts of pesticide drift on farmers and the environment when approving future pesticides.
Saving Monarch butterflies! As a result of CFS’s legal and scientific actions and a court settlement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that Monarch butterflies deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This means Monarchs will soon be protected from further risk of extinction and put on the path back to recovery. This is a major and much needed victory for the survival of these iconic butterflies!
Banned brain-damaging pesticide: After studies found that the pesticide chlorpyrifos harms children's brain development, CFS wrote, lobbied, and passed a first-of-its-kind bill that banned the pesticide chlorpyrifos in Hawaii, and helped secure similar bans in California, New York, and now at the federal level.
Struck Down Illegal Aquaculture Regulations: CFS is one of the only organizations fighting industrial fish farms, also known as aquaculture facilities. We scored a landmark victory when a federal appeals court struck down illegal regulations that would have established for the first time permanent commercial aquaculture operations in U.S. federal waters. While the case centered on the Gulf of Mexico, the scheme was a model for all US federal waters.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
We don't have any major challenges to collecting feedback
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Center for Food Safety
Board of directorsas of 08/16/2023
Adele Douglass
Certified Humane
Adele Douglass
Humane Farm Animal Care
Randy Hayes
Rainforest Action Network; Foundation Earth
Andrew Kimbrell
Deborah Koons Garcia
Documentaries “The Future of Food” and “Symphony of Soil”
Dan Imhoff
Watershed Media
George Naylor
National Family Farm Coalition
Amy Bricker
Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
The organization's co-leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
No data
Gender identity
No data
Transgender Identity
No data
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 07/24/2023GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.