Since 2012, the agrichemical and food industries have mounted
a complex, multifaceted public relations, advertising, lobbying
and political campaign in the United States, costing more than
$100 million, to defend genetically engineered food and crops
and the pesticides that accompany them.
The purpose of this campaign is to deceive the public, to
deflect efforts to win the right to know what is in our food via
labeling that is already required in 64 countries, and
ultimately, to extend their profit stream for as long as
possible.
This campaign has greatly influenced how U.S. media covers
GMOs. The industry’s PR firm, Ketchum, even boasted that
“positive media coverage has doubled” on GMOs. The report
outlines fifteen things that Big Food is hiding with its artful
PR campaign on GMOs.
#1: The agrichemical companies have a history of
concealing health risks from the public. Time and
again, the companies that produce GMOs have hidden from
consumers and workers the truth about the dangers of their
products and operations. So how can we trust them to tell us
the truth about their GMOs?
#2: The FDA does not test whether GMOs are safe.
It merely reviews information submitted by the agrichemical
companies.
#3: Our nation’s lax policy on GMOs is the work
of former Vice President Dan Quayle’s anti-regulatory
crusade. It was designed and delivered as a
political favor to Monsanto.
#4: What the agrichemical and tobacco industries
have in common: PR firms, operatives, tactics. The
agrichemical industry’s recent PR campaign is similar in
some ways to the most infamous industry PR campaign ever –
the tobacco industry’s effort to evade responsibility for
the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans each year.
#5: Russia’s PR firm runs the agrichemical
industry’s big PR salvo on GMOs. We don’t trust the
PR firm Ketchum when it spins for Russia and President
Putin. Why should we trust its spin on GMOs?
#6: The agrichemical industry’s key front groups
and shills aren’t trustworthy. Many of the
industry’s leading advocates have records of defending the
indefensible, or other scandals and conduct that inspires no
confidence.
#7: The agrichemical companies have employed
repugnant PR tactics. These tactics include attacks
on scientists and journalists, and brainwashing children.
#8: The agrichemical companies have a potent,
sleazy political machine. They have allies in high
places, and employ their power vigorously – and sometimes
corruptly — to protect and expand their markets and their
profits from GMOs.
#9: Half of the Big Six agrichemical firms can’t
even grow their GMOs in their own home countries.
Because of the health and environmental risks of GMOs,
citizens of Germany and Switzerland won’t allow farming of
BASF, Bayer, and Syngenta’s GMO seeds.
#10: Monsanto supported GMO labeling in the UK
but opposes it in the USA. Although Monsanto is
based in St. Louis, Missouri, Monsanto believes that British
citizens deserve stronger consumer rights than Americans do.
#11: The pesticide treadmill breeds profits, so
it will likely intensify. It is in the financial
interest of the agrichemical companies to promote the
evolution and spread of the most pestilential superweeds and
superpests, because these will spur the sale of the greatest
quantities of the most expensive pesticides.
#12: GMO science is for sale. Science
can be swayed, bought or biased by the agrichemical industry
in many ways, such as suppressing adverse findings, harming
the careers of scientists who produce such findings,
controlling the funding that shapes what research is
conducted, the lack of independent U.S.-based testing of
health and environmental risks of GMOs, and tainting
scientific reviews of GMOs by conflicts of interest.
#13: There are nearly no consumer benefits of
GMOs. The GMOs that Americans eat are not
healthier, safer or more nutritious than conventional foods.
They do not look better, nor do they taste better. By any
measure that consumers actually care about, they are not in
any way an improvement. Profits from GMOs accrue to the
agrichemical companies, while health risks are borne by
consumers.
#14: The FDA and food companies have been wrong
before: they have assured us of the safety of products that
were not safe. Many drugs and food additives that
the FDA allowed on the market have subsequently been banned
because they were toxic or dangerous.
#15: A few other things the agrichemical industry
doesn’t want you to know about them: crimes, scandals, and
other wrongdoing. The agrichemical industry’s six
major firms — Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, DuPont, Bayer, and
BASF — have been involved in so many reprehensible
activities that documenting them would require at least an
entire book.
U.S. Right to Know is a new nonprofit food organization. We
expose what food companies don’t want us to know about our food.
We stand up for the right to know what’s in our food. We bring
accountability to Big Food and its compliant politicians. For
more information, please see our website at
usrtk.org.
Gary Ruskin is the co-founder and executive director
of nonprofit organization U.S. Right to Know. In 2012, Gary
was campaign manager for California Right to Know
(Proposition 37), a statewide ballot initiative for labeling
of genetically engineered food in California.
For 14 years, he directed the Congressional
Accountability Project, which opposed corruption in the U.S.
Congress. For nine years, he was executive director and
co-founder of Commercial Alert, which opposed the
commercialization of every nook and cranny of our lives and
culture. Gary was also director of the Center for Corporate
Policy.
He has often been quoted in major newspapers across
the country and has appeared scores of times on national TV
news programs. He received his undergraduate degree in
religion from Carleton College, and a master’s degree in
public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy
School of Government.