Flack Attack

The current campaign by agribusiness to win public approval for genetically modified foods gives new meaning to the phrase, "the carrot and the stick."

The carrot in this campaign consists of promises that biotechnology means better food, a cleaner environment, and prosperity for struggling farmers. The stick consists of lawsuits and threats of lawsuits against biotech's critics--now made easier with the "agricultural product disparagement laws" that industry has lobbied into law in more than a dozen states. Threats of lawsuits have been used repeatedly against writers who have exposed the activities of the personnel engaged in flacking for biotech foods. In "The Professor Who Can Read Your Mind," Karen Charman describes one such threat that she encountered in the course of researching her stories for this issue.

The food industry wants to "educate" you about "ethical and scientific issues" associated with genetically modified foods, but its notion of education is based on a propaganda model in which you, as student, are meant to sit still and listen while it, the teacher, tells you what to think. That is why secrecy and control of information is a major part of its educational campaign.

Secrecy is what motivates Professor Tom Hoban's legal threat and his refusal to disclose the identity of his clients, just as it motivates the Burson-Marsteller PR firm's refusal even to confirm that it has been hired by the Monsanto company to flack for biotech foods.

The biotech food industry likes to pretend that education is necessary because the public is ignorant, irrational and easily moved by "Luddite technophobia," "hysteria" and "environmental scare tactics." And it is true that the public is ignorant--especially about the scale and scope of the changes which industry has already begun to introduce without public consultation or consent. But ignorance is not irrationality, and it is precisely the fear of an informed public that now has industry and its minions running scared.