GM-free Scotland

January '08 | Push-polling opinions

Democracy EU-style seems to involve using the internet to create an illusion of informing and consulting the people, without really doing either (see DEMOCRACY DIRECT – News, January 2008). Overseas, governments are resorting to push-polling their people in an effort to 'prove' that GM crops are now becoming acceptable.

In Australia, the government stands accused of using revised wording to 'show' shifts of public opinion in favour of GM compared with two years ago. For example, respondents were primed with the ideas that artificial genes would produce food which was healthier, would last longer and be cheaper while crop plants would be easier to farm and need fewer chemicals. After this entirely positively skewed presentation, people were asked how 'valuable' they felt such developments would be. Not a mention of safety nor costs anywhere for them to respond to.

The Australian Industry Minister followed this up by cherry-picking the survey results, ignoring the high ratings for organic foods compared with non-organic, and the even lower ratings for GM foods.

On the other side of the world, the American International Food Information Council (IFIC) continues to carry out public polls on GM foods as it has annually since 1997, attracting wide-scale media coverage. In 2002, the Council reported “American consumer support for food biotechnology is holding steady, while specific benefits are resonating even more”. By 2003 this had become “a growing majority of Americans support the benefits of food biotechnology as well as the Food and Drug Administration labeling policy”.

What is the IFIC? It claims to exist “to bridge the gap between science and communications by collecting and disseminating scientific information on food safety, nutrition and health” and stresses that it doesn't “represent any product or company or lobby for legislative or regulatory activities”. The Council is described as 'food industry funded', but no information about its backers is obvious on its website. (COMMENT There isn't any obvious reason for the IFIC to call itself 'International', except that it recognises that the rest of the world has food and safety issues too.)

The IFIC surveys were devised by a professor of sociology and food science who is a keen supporter of genetic engineering and is listed as an AgBioWorld expert (AgBioWorld, Foundation and website, was created to promote biotechnology.)

An American professor of communications and past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research said of the survey that it was so biased with leading questions favouring positive responses that any results were meaningless. Another US professor agreed, adding that the questions “only talk about the food tasting better, being fresher, protecting food from insect damage reducing saturated fat and providing benefits”.

OUR COMMENT

In 2007, the Burmese army used bullets, tear-gas and clubs on demonstrators whose crime was to stand in the street of the capital city and ask for democracy: Buddhist monks and a journalist covering the event were reported to have been killed by the gunfire. In China around the same time, a human rights activist was arrested for gathering signatures on a petition rejecting the 2008 Olympics there.

The subversion of democracy in the EU, Australia and the USA is being carried out with more subtlety, but does that make it less, or more, dangerous?

If you haven't seen it yet, try to catch John Pilger's film, 'War on Democracy'. This describes how the USA has used dollars, stealth and well-placed bullets to switch democracy on and off in the countries of South America to engineer access to its own empire of easily exploitable 'colonies'. This is now clearly being cemented into place by flooding them with GM crops. America will ultimately have control over the countries' food security, fuel supplies, export industries and, very likely, their water too which will disappear as GM plants take priority over human needs.

One point made in the film is that, the smaller country, the more easily it can act (or rebel) with unity and the more threatening it is to US plans for domination.

Well, countries don't come much smaller than Scotland.

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