GM-free Scotland

An experiment carried out on a single small farm to examine the farm-to-fork agronomic and consumers considerations for three different crops (two varieties of maize and one variety of potato) accompanied by an exhaustive PR drive seems a huge effort to put in. Especially when you consider the tiny amount of generally useful knowledge likely to be gained by it. Yet, support was obtained from the Canadian Government, the biotech industry and commercial interests for just such a study, and, the resulting paper was published in a top scientific journal. (see MISCONCIEVED WORMS and SLAPP ON FREE SPEECH – News, November 2007).

What was the reasoning behind the study which proved so attractive to all these backers?

The introduction to the published paper suggests that “While ... Bt crops have been extensively evaluated in a scientific setting, and have been the source of numerous public opinion surveys, they have rarely been evaluated in the purchasing environment where consumers actually make buying decisions”. A gap in knowledge is a solid reason for a piece of scientific research and for a journal to be interested in publishing it. (COMMENT That the experiment seems too wide in scope and too limited in scale to fill any gaps in knowledge meaningfully is another matter.)

Three years after publication, a letter to the Journal from the paper's lead author, suggested more personal reasons. The first was that the farmer who participated in the experiment had lost $25,000 one year trying to please his customers by avoiding the use of pesticides. The second was that “inquiring about his customers' preferences is not just good manners, it is good business.” (COMMENT Was the purpose of the experiment to sort out one small farmer's finances and customer relations?)

GM Watch's version of why the experiment was done is set in a much bigger context. It describes how, in 1999, the main author (an assistant professor) and the farmer whose land and shop were used in the experiment were involved in heckling an anti-GM demonstration outside a grocery store. The punch-line, then, along with a graphically , bug-ravaged, cabbage, went something like “WOULD YOU BUY WORMY CABBAGE?” The pro-GM hecklers ended up in a shouting match with a resentful shopper who objected to them “putting stuff into my food I don't want”. By the following year, the street-theatre had worked its way onto a scientific stage.

In the GM Watch account, the purpose of the exercise seems to have been to test how the public could be successfully manipulated into wanting GM.

GM-free Scotland took a closer look at the published paper itself, beyond its introduction, for a reason.

The methods section describes “direct consumer evaluation of purchaser preferences” to buy GM or conventional corn. The presentation of the two corn types for sale in the store is described in great detail., giving an impression of rigorous control to avoid bias. However after this, it emerges that free samples were made available in some unspecified way and undescribed presentation at the door, and at some stage, corn cooked in some way for immediate consumption seems to have gone into the study (unless Canadians eat their sweetcorn raw). The study also extended in some unspecified way and undescribed presentation to a Farm Show and a Ploughing Match. Owing to practical constraints, only 35 questionnaire responses and 115 comments were finally recorded and analysed. What were consumers actually expressing a preference to, or commenting about?

OUR COMMENT

Scientific experiments which experience this level of practical problems are very common. Such studies are routinely abandoned and redesigned in the light of experience. They are not published because they are not of publishable quality. Why didn't this happen in the case of the wormy corn?

The clue perhaps is that another major part of this study was the massive PR exercise including media coverage which began before the maize was even in the ground (see WORMY CORNERSTONES – News, November 2007). Admitting you have made a mess of an experiment after receiving funding from some of your best sources and after all that publicity, would be embarrassing indeed. Indeed the project seems to have been set up in a way which didn't dare fail: a recipe for experimental bias to ensure a planned conclusion is reached.

The more one looks at it, the WORMIER AND WORMIER – News, November 2007 – it gets.

SOURCES

• British Food Journal, 2003, 105.10 pp.700-713 and, 2006, 108:8 letters
• www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=72&page=1