GM-free Scotland | News | November '06

News | November | Distract and attack

GM vigilantes such as GM Watch have noted a variety of anti-GM disinformation
initiatives over the years.

The oldest trick of presenting the anticipated wonders of GM crops as if they
are already accomplished facts continues. In Australia, for example, the
Government and pro-GM lobbyists are trying to exploit the current
record-breaking drought there to pressurise States to lift their moratorium on
the GM crops, even claiming that drought-resistant GM crops could save farmers
millions of dollars. The GM reality, however, is not so bright: after 10 years
of research on the use of gene technology in drought-resistance, the value of
the GM approach remains unproven. Such crops may still be decades from
commercial availability, while non-GM drought resistance strains, traditionally
bred using markers assisted breeding, have already been developed and
field-trialled, with the first expected to be commercially ready next year.

In a bad week for the biotech industry, in which the New York Times featured the
suicide of a Bt cotton farmer in India, the Wall Street Journal and the
Washington Post reported on the GM rice crisis with headlines like Gene-altered
Profit Killer, the South Australian Government was busy extending its GM ban,
and India's Supreme Court was calling a halt to new GM trials, what better way
to distract attention than to vilify GM enemy No.1, ORGANIC AGRICULTURE.

It all started with the news that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was
advising consumers across the USA not to eat fresh spinach or fresh
spinach-containing products until further notice. The problem was a
spinach-related outbreak of E. coli 0157 which had made 120 people ill with one
death. E. coli is a toxin-producing bacterium which causes diarrhoea and kidney
damage, and is a killer. In other words, it is a very emotive subject, ideal for
linking to organic produce if you want to say something bad about it. The
voluntary removal of all spinach (organic and conventional) from sale as a
precautionary measure quickly became a warning on the dangers of food poisoning
from organic food, plus an indignant sermon on the huge cost to US citizens of
having to throw out food because of organic contamination, and even the deaths
of millions of children in Africa due to malaria. (OUR COMMENT If you're having
trouble getting your head round that one, it goes something like: the same
anti-chemical mindset which stopped the use of DDT to fight malaria in Africa
and so killed children also gives us contaminated organic food.)

A more realistic version of the spinach story is that, since the primary source
of E. coli comes from untreated manure generated by cows fed an unnatural diet
of grain, any crop near intensively farmed animals is at risk. In California,
where the E.coli contamination originated, there are huge herds of intensively
farmed dairy cows in close proximity to the spinach fields. Pathogens are known
to migrate in surface- or ground-water, in dust from feedlots or from
conventional fields where untreated manure is routinely spread (this practice is
not permitted in organic agriculture).

Readers might recall similar tricks in the past when, for example, unpasteurised
apple juice spuriously became 'organic' when it turned out to be contaminated,
and organic lettuces harbouring E. coli O157 after being washed in water
contaminated by run off from a nearby dairy farm was not a conventional farm
pollution problem, nor a hygiene problem, but a DANGER from ORGANIC FOOD.

A more subtle form of distraction is to slip in a subtext: nature is a
virulently pathological enemy we must wage war on; the countryside is a
dangerous reservoir of filth and deadly disease; therefore we can only be safe
if we use toxic pesticides, synthetic fertilisers, irradiation and GMOs. People
who don't want sterile foods are brainless, dangerous, medieval, luddites who
are putting the world at risk.

To summarise, as GM Watch put it neatly “ we're talking corporate spin – a world
where perception's all so facts don't matter, and where, when you're in a hole,
distract and attack may be your only forms of defense”.

OUR COMMENT
A number of names keep popping up in the GM/organic disinformation exercise.
It's worth taking a note of them, because they generally sound quite respectable
unless you know a bit more about them:

Australia has a chief GM lobbyist called AusBiotech, and its Heartland
Institute seems to fight any issue which threatens big business.
America's Hudson Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute have been very
active in exploiting the spinach affair; these and other organisations such as
the International Service for Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), the
Biotechnology Industry Organisation (BIO), (ASA), the National Corn Growers
Association (NCGA) receive significant funding from biotech corporations.
EuropaBio represents companies world-wide and has been described as having a
direct role in government policy making.
AfricaBio is active in Africa and beyond.
In the UK we have our very own Agricultural Biotechnology Council (ABC).

Also treat with caution information originating from government ministers and
farmers representatives: they are heavily targeted by the biotech industry.
These individuals are often working quietly towards down-grading organic
standards, and eroding consumer rights, including labeling and safety
regulations.

SOURCES:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com/ 7.10.06
GMOpundit.blogspot.com Sept 2006
GMWatch 7.10.06, 19.09.06 and 15.09.06
http://www.dpc.vic.gov.au/ 9.08.06
http://www.agbioworld.org/ October 2006
http://www.infoshop.org/ 22.09.06
/www.wtkrt.com 19.09.06
New York Sun 18.09.06
Cornucopia Institute 17.09.06
Genetically Modified Food, 2006, Andy Rees, ISBN 0-7453-2439-8