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The Biotech Brigade is a global directory on the massive and deceptive PR push behind genetically modified (GM) food.
The directory's profiles provide an A-Z of key players - corporate-friendly scientists, PR companies, front groups, lobbyists and political networks
The directory also provides information on
- how the public is being misled and the media manipulated
- the corporate influence and funding that enmeshes 'independent' science and scientists, and the resulting conflicts of interest.
The directory is intended to be useful to journalists, researchers, campaigners and students, as well as to the general reader interested in exploring the real agendas of those using the media to promote GM.
A directory of disinformation
The profiles contain many startling examples of the war of disinformation being waged. These include:
The background
The introduction of GM foods and crops has triggered world-wide concern, uniting consumers, small farmers, especially in the developing world, and the environmental movement. Questions have been raised about potential health effects, environmental safety, agronomic and economic impacts, and about the power of corporations to control what we grow and what we eat.
There is also concern about the extent to which commercial interests are driving the science and the regulatory system. A key question remains why such an enormously powerful technology, about which there are still deep uncertainties, has been introduced so rapidly without meaningful public consultation.
The hidden soapbox
The corporations promoting GM, and the politicians, bureaucrats and scientists that support them, initially watched in dismay as opposition mushroomed and spread about the globe. The PR firm Burson Marsteller had previously warned the biotech industry lobby group EuropaBio, 'All the research evidence confirms that the perception of the profit motive fatally undermines industry’s credibility on these questions'. (Communications Programmes for EuropaBio, January 1997) According to a former advisor to Tony Blair, 'What inflicted the greatest damage', as concerns over GM foods spread, 'was that the case for the defence was fronted by the biotech groups', such as Monsanto.
As a result of this experience, industry has increasingly been replaced in the front line by a host of third parties :
Cyber-wars and fake persuaders
The Internet is a medium where the line between the virtual and the real can easily be erased. Images projected on the net of grassroots organisations, institutes, NGOs and even 'citizens' may be misleading or even entirely bogus.
see CFFAR.org, Andura Smetacek, Mary Murphy, Bivings, Jay Byrne,Foodsecurity.net, and the article Biotech's Hall of Mirrors
Faces from the South
The image of the poor and hungry in the developing world has repeatedly been used to push GMOs. More recently 'real, live' GM advocates from the developing world have emerged on the public stage (see The Fake Parade).
When, for instance, the U.S. Trade Repesentative launched a WTO case against the European Union over its moratorium on GM product approvals, he was flanked not by the heads of the U.S. corporations that stood to benefit from the hoped for improvement in market penetration, but by scientists who came, at least originally, from India and Kenya and by a 'small farmer' from South Africa.
There is good reason for scepticism about some of the pro-industry 'faces' being flown in from the global South. In some cases 'small farmers' supposedly leading a 'hand-to-mouth existence' in Asia or Africa have turned out not to be subsistence farmers at all. Some have been groomed by Monsanto and appear to be reading carefully scripted statements.
'Independent' scientists, websites and lobby groups claiming to represent those in developing countries can also prove not to be as independent or representative as they claim.
Attacking alternatives
Organic agriculture excludes GMOs and agrochemicals and many supporters of GM and intensive farming display an extreme antipathy towards the organic movement.
A whole series of press articles and radio and TV programmes on both sides of the Atlantic have reported that organic agriculture is actually more risky than industrial agriculture. Such reports, often grounded in bogus research claims, appear to be part of a deliberate, and often industry-backed, campaign of disinformation.
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see Dennis Avery, Graydon Forrer, John Hillman, Sir John Krebs, Tony Trewavas, Philip Stott, Roger Bate, Julian Morris, Institute of Economic Affairs, European Science and Environment Forum, Alex Avery, Scientific Alliance
The corporate take-over of science
British Member of Parliament, Alan Simpson, suggests the antipathy towards organic farming needs to be seen in a wider context, ''The pursuit of knowledge for public or environmental safety has already been ditched in favour of a culture which says we will pursue knowledge for the purpose of commercial gain, and anything that steps in the path will either be excluded or suppressed.'
The Report of the Royal Society of Canada's Expert Panel on the Future of Biotechnology (published February 2001) noted with concern the growing evidence of university researchers building 'unprecedented ties with industry partners' and the 'profound impact' this is having.
A study by the UK's Institute of Professionals, Managers and Civil Servants showed that one in three government-funded laboratories had been asked to modify their conclusions or advice to suit the customer's preferred outcome. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that clinical research into cancer drugs is eight times more likely to reach a positive conclusion when funded by drug companies than when publicly funded.
But public funding is itself becoming increasingly corporatised. This is a world where government funding agencies are dominated by industry-linked scientists.
Suppression of dissent
Public funding guidelines can ban scientists at institutes which receive public money from involvement 'in political controversy on biotechnology'. Uncritically supporting GM crops, by contrast, is considered not to be a breach of this code.
The profiles detail what happens to those scientists that do speak out - how they have been threatened, gagged, vilified and in some cases even sacked. It also identifies those behind such campaigns of misinformation and intimidation.
Dr Arpad Pusztai and Dr Ignacio Chapela are two of the more prominent victims of such abusive campaigns.
Fixing the debate - science and the media
The profiles also detail the efforts being made to manipulate how science-related issues are reported in the media so as to inhibit the reporting of research that is unhelpful to the biotech industry.
Independent advice and expertise
Money flows from the industrially-aligned public-funding agencies into institutes which are encouraged to find corporate partners and to pursue commercially relevant research.
Much of the scientific and regulatory advice to government on GM is drawn from scientists with connections to these institutes.
As well as serving on key regulatory committees, such scientists have also been notable contributors to reports on GM that are known to have been influential with government.
see Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Royal Society
Publicly-funded PR
Sometimes publicly-funded institutes actively engage in dubious propaganda exercises in order to support GM or attack alternatives.
see John Innes Centre, SCRI, and the report Biospinology in our Science Communication?
Taxpayers money has even been channelled into lobby groups to support pro-GM PR work.
see Life Sciences Network
'If climate change and the CJD fiasco can teach us anything, it is that science is too important to be left to the politicians or to a scientific establishment in bed with big business. Our academic institutions have given up all pretence of being citadels of higher learning and disinterested enquiry into the nature of things; least of all, of being guardians of the public good. The corporate take-over of science is the greatest threat to our survival and the survival of our planet. It must be resisted and fought at every level.'
Geneticist Dr Mae-Wan Ho and GM Watch editor Jonathan Matthews
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