More ILLUMINATING contributions to the great GM debate! Three nominations for the November/December's PANTS ON FIRE Award:
1. The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)
2. Thomas Hoban
3. Roger Morton
Details of the Award, past winners and a magnificent pair of burnt out undies at: http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/pants.htm
Hit reply and send us your vote!
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Nomination 1. The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)
In November 2000 the truly unsavoury origins of the anti-organic campaign that has been waged by biotech supporters on both sides of the Atlantic finally became clear.
On this side of the pond, the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) has been a key player in attacks on organic agriculture. Its director, Julian Morris, has appeared in a series of TV and radio programmes as a critic of organic food. Morris also notably turned up, along with the IEA's Richard D. North, in an attack on organic food which was broadcast on BBC 2 in January 2000. This 'Counterblast' TV programme was presented by his IEA sidekick, Roger Bate.
Bate and Morris have also co-edited a book, 'Fearing Food: Risk, Health and the Environment' which has a chapter by Dennis Avery attacking organic agriculture. Indeed, Bate and Morris even used Avery's bogus e-coli claims against organic food as part of a publicity stunt to launch the book. [see: http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/rightwing.htm]
The IEA has also been busy supporting the anti-organic campaign on the other side of the Atlantic. On September 21st 2000 an anti-organic report 'Organic Industry Groups Spread Fear for Profit' was launched by NoMoreScares.com. The report's authors acknowledge editorial, writing and research support from "the London Institute for Economic Affairs."
NoMoreScares.com's members include the National Center for Public Policy Research, from which one of the report's authors also comes. NCPPR is advised by, amongst others, Dennis Avery. His son Alex Avery of the Hudson Institute, which also provides a base for his father, is another of the report's authors. Hudson Institute sponsors include Aventis, Dow, Monsanto, Novartis and Zeneca.
In November 2000 PR Watch published articles exposing how the majority of those behind NoMoreScares.com, such as Junk Science's Steve Milloy, had been the recipients of Big Tobacco money, emanating principally from a Philip Morris campaign to undermine industry critical research. This campaign has been waged not just in North America:
"In consultation with APCO and Burson-Marsteller, [Philip Morris] began planning to set up a second, European organization, tentatively named "Scientists for Sound Public Policy" (later renamed the European Science and Environment Forum). ... the European organization would attempt to smuggle tobacco advocacy into a larger bundle of "sound science" issues, including the "ban on growth hormone for livestock; ban on [genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone] to improve milk production; pesticide restrictions; ban on indoor smoking; restrictions on use of chlorine; ban on certain pharmaceutical products; restrictions on the use of biotechnology." [PR Watch, Volume 7, No. 3: http://www.prwatch.org]
When Roger Bate presented the anti-organic Counterblast TV programme, it was not as the director of the Environment Unit at the Institute of Economic Affairs but as the then director of the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), ie the tobacco industry front organisation set up by Big Tobacco. Just how intimately ESEF is tied in to the IEA was shown by a domain enquiry about the ESEF website: esef.org:
Registrant: European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF-DOM) UK Domain Name: ESEF.ORG Administrative Contact: Morris, Julian (JM4309) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Interestingly, ESEF's 'Administrative Contact', appeared to hold no official position in relation to ESEF. Morris is, of course, the director of the IEA.
The ESEF website has now disappeared and Bate has also retired as ESEF director. Any connection with the emerging Philip Morris funding scandal is entirely speculative. Either which way, the dubious origins of the European wing of the anti-organic, pro-GM campaign waged by ESEF/IEA are absolutely clear.
Smoking pants indeed!!
ngin
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Nomination 2. Thomas J. Hoban
Karly Graham nominated biotech booster Tom Hoban in the light of his terribly reassuring article on 'Tacogate' - according to the title of the piece, 'There Is Barely A Kernel of Truth' in any concerns over Starlink.
Hoban's article even suggested the EPA didn't know what they were doing when they banned Starlink from the human food chain. According to Hoban, it's just more corn - an argument that would presumably hold even if Aventis had put a gene for anthrax into it! Concerned environmental groups like Greenpeace are dismissed as simply opposing "most modern agricultural methods".
Hoban is described by the Washington Post as "a professor of food science and sociology at North Carolina State University". In fact, Hoban's a GM zealot - a doyen of Prakash's pro-GM list - who specialises in GM spin, particularly in the form of consumer-surveyed opinion. In a brilliant exposé Karen Charman of PR Watch pulled Hoban's work to pieces. Charman got James Beniger, a communications professor at the University of Southern California and past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, to review a major Hoban survey. Beniger concluded it was so biased with leading questions favouring positive responses that any results were meaningless. The results might be somewhat different, UCLA communications professor Michael Suman suggested to Charman, if it contained questions biased in the other direction such as: "Some people contend that some foods produced from biotechnology cause higher rates of cancer. If that is so, what effect would that have on your buying decision?" [http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1999Q4/hoban.html]
Hoban was also among the GM proponents quoted in the NoMoreScares.com report (see item 1 above). Hoban authoritatively proclaims, “This anti-biotechnology campaign is a key marketing strategy for the organic industry.”
As Hoban says, "Barely A Kernel of Truth"!
Karly writes:
My vote for November/December's Smoking Shorts is for Thomas Hoban (chair of a US-wide university task force to 'educate' consumers about biotechnology) writing in the Washington Post on the Aventis Starlink diaster. My favourite quotes:
"StarLink has not been approved for human consumption because of concern that its new protein may cause human allergies. Food allergy specialists have questioned this, pointing out that it's virtually impossible for anyone to have an existing allergy to a protein that would be completely new to the human diet"
Well, derr...
"With all the hue and cry, you'd think a dangerous, if not deadly, ingredient had been introduced into the U.S. and international food supply".
Yup.
"... research has shown that a simple statement that a food "contains genetically modified ingredients" would serve chiefly to confuse and alarm consumers".
I wonder why?
"The EPA has plenty to do regulating the ecological impact of bioengineered plants, which is the greatest biotechnology-related concern of most scientists. "
Not in Lyng it's not. The scientific team contracted to monitor the Aventis 1999 Lyng (Chardon LL ) GM maize trial post-harvest for environmental impact explains helpfully: '...now that we have moved to the full field programme there was not the need to continue the monitoring.'
Karly Graham Lyng Norfolk
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Nomination 3. Dr Roger Morton
Nominated by Jean de Bris:
Zut alors! Is anybody uncertain why zis aussie gène-jockey, from ze pro-GE organisme CSIRO, deserves some blazing pantalons?!
If so, just read Dr Pusztai's démolition of ze good docteur's claims zat GM food is safe and zat zere's a big litérature to support zat -- you will be in doubt no longer!! [http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/pusztaidebate.htm]
Pusztai showed ze good docteur had duplicated and even triplicated his references and that only a tiny proportion were ze kind of peer-reviewed studies zat he had claimed. Oh, la, la ... he was caught with ze smoking panties well and truly down!
Morton claimed previously that it was a step monumental for humankind if Golden Rice contributed even a miniscule amount to people's Vit A needs:
If this level of vitamin A intake is very low at the moment then shifting the dietary intake to 1.3% may be a massive improvement.
....
Activists have a blind spot in their vision which makes them unable to accept the fact that this technology could have some possible use for the poor and will produce any argument they can............. Just face it - golden rice disproves just about every argument the activists have had on GM foods.
Sacre bleu - go eat a carotte, Docteur M!
And then, of course, Morton ze Troll has been caught impersonating anti-GM campaigners etcetera as part of his promotion infâme de gène-tech.*
As we said, pants down et pants en feu!
Jean DeBris smoking pantalons international
[hmmm.. while this is a very understandable nomination, might the good doctor see an award from us as something of an accolade?!! - ed]
*for more on this see: http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/224.htm