Sutter Home is full of false hopes

"Sutter Home for hope" ad. Source: Real Simple Magazine, September and October 2004

October is breast cancer awareness month, and for the fourth year Sutter Home Winery is promising to donate $1 to breast cancer research for every bottle sold of Sutter Home White Zinfandel-if consumers remember to send them the special pink "quality seal."

At first blush, this promotion may look like an example of corporate generosity. But, because more than 50 epidemiologic studies have shown that alcohol consumption is a risk factor for breast cancer, the Sutter Home for hope campaign is actually an exercise in cynical and exploitative marketing.

According to the 2005 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans , women who consume more than one drink per day (i.e. one 5 oz glass of wine) experience a 10 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer. In Marin County, California-where breast cancer rates are among the highest in the nation-a two-year study by Marin Breast Cancer Watch and the University of California, San Francisco revealed that women who consumed two or more alcoholic drinks per day were diagnosed with breast cancer more than twice as often as those who drank less. At three drinks a day, the breast cancer rate is nearly four times higher.

Sutter Home Winery does a disservice to millions of women when it uses concern about breast cancer to promote a product that actually contributes to the risk of this devastating disease. We are calling on Sutter Home Winery to end future Sutter Home for hope campaigns and to label all of its wines with a consumer warning about the increased risk of breast cancer from alcohol consumption.

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