Mission

Food & Water Watch champions healthy food and clean water for all. They stand up to corporations that put profits before people, and advocate for a democracy that improves people’s lives and protects our environment.

Vision

They are working to create a healthy future for our families and for generations to come—a world where all people have the resources they need, including wholesome food, clean water and sustainable energy. Making this happen requires organizing people from all over the country to build a large movement with the political power to make our democratic process work. Large numbers of people are a countervailing force to corporations “buying” public policy.

Values

Independence. They are a public interest organization that remains independent of corporate and government influence. They are funded fully through our members, individual donors, and foundation grants.

Democracy. They engage and mobilize citizens politically through person-to-person, on-the-ground organizing, educational campaigns and new media technologies. They believe political involvement is critical for holding governments accountable to their constituents and for creating policies that ensure a sustainable world with safe food and clean water.

Human Rights. Although food and water are human rights, the political will to ensure that all people have adequate nutrition and drinking water is lacking. They are part of the growing global movement fighting this injustice.

Sustainability. They believe in a sustainable future — one that ensures access to essential resources for future generations while protecting the quality of our environment.

History & Impact

In Fall 2005, 12 members of the Energy and Environment Program at the advocacy organization Public Citizen created Food & Water Watch. Our goal was to help build a powerful grassroots movement that can protect our most important resources. Since then, with the support of our membership, individual donors and foundations, they have grown to more than 100 staff members and have offices around the country.

In the last ten years, with the help of our generous supporters and committed activists, they have accomplished the following:

• -As the first national organization to call for an all-out ban on fracking, our work was key to building momentum to fight back against the oil and gas industry. They supported the grassroots movement to protect our drinking water and environment from fracking with research and initiated the formation of the national coalition, American Against Fracking.
• -With allies, they initiated the formation of leading state based coalitions, fighting fracking and related infrastructure on the front lines in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida and elsewhere. 
• -Our affiliate Food & Water Europe helped allies there to convince Members of the European Parliament to vote in favor of an immediate moratorium on fracking.
• -They worked with the international water justice movement to win a resolution at the United Nations recognizing the human right to water; our affiliate Food & Water Europe successfully campaigned with allies to win support from the European Parliament to consider water as a common good and to implement the human right to water in Europe.
• -They helped many communities organize across the country to stop the corporate takeover of their publicly owned water systems
• -They defended consumers’ right to know what they’re eating by fighting for mandatory country-of-origin labeling and ensured that technologies like food irradiation continue to be labeled
• -They worked with grassroots allies in creating a national movement to label GMO foods.
• -They have raised awareness nationwide about the environmental, health and equity problems with the bottled water industry.