Trust Us, We're Experts PA

by Sheldon Rampton

  In Europe, the public’s concerns in this regard are particularly acute as a consequence of the “mad cow disease” scandal in England, which erupted in 1996 when government ministers and scientists reversed more than a decade of denial by admitting that a fatal brain disease in cows had begun to infect humans.21 Formally known as “bovine spongiform encephalopathy,” or BSE, mad cow disease kills its victims by filling their brains with microscopic spongelike holes. Prior to the 1980s, BSE had never been identified in British cattle. It reached epidemic levels in the British cattle population due to an innovation in animal feeding practices—the widespread use of “rendered animal by-products” as feed supplements. Rendering consists of cooking the inedible remains of slaughtered animals. Some researchers believe mad cow disease originated when cows were fed the rendered remains of sheep that were infected with a BSE-like disease called scrapie. Whether this theory is correct or not, scientists who have studied the disease agree that the practice of feeding rendered cows back to other cows is what enabled mad cow disease to spread and multiply into an epidemic. In its eagerness to use every bit of protein from slaughtered animals, agribusiness had created a cannibalistic feeding loop. “It happened when, for economic reasons, herbivores were fed offals derived from other species, something they would never eat in nature,” says developmental biologist Stuart Newman. “Basically, commercial interests forced the crossing of biological boundaries, leading to a new disease.”

  The practice of feeding rendered animal protein back to cattle is actually a fairly low-tech procedure. As innovations go, it is simplicity itself compared to the complexity and scope of changes being considered and introduced into our food as a result of new scientific discoveries such as chemical antibiotics and pesticides, fake fats, and fake sweeteners. Of all these innovations, genetic engineering is the most radical and innovative procedure, the most complex, and the least understood even by scientists. For European consumers, the mad cow outbreak marked a warning shot across the bow, an example of the unpredictable dangers inherent in scientific efforts to tamper with their foods. Arpad Pusztai’s 150 seconds of fame came at a time when European opinion was turning sharply in favor of greater caution and greater safety, and his saga added further fuel to the fires of an already growing debate about the wisdom of introducing genetically modified organisms into the human food supply. Monsanto and the other commercial interests seeking to profit from biotech foods regard this debate as an example of unwarranted public hysteria, driven by fear-mongering activists and media sensationalism. “Everybody over here hates us,” lamented Dan Verakis, Monsanto’s chief European spokesman, in February 1999.22

  The public’s concern reflects the arrogance with which the biotech industry has attempted to manipulate public opinion and awareness. In July 1999, the journal Science published a comparison of news coverage in Europe versus the United States on the subject of biotechnology and concluded that while Europeans were more scientifically literate than their U.S. counterparts, they were “more likely than Americans to perceive GM foods as menacing or dangerous based on scientifically inaccurate assumptions.”23

  Many of the public’s concerns in fact go beyond narrow issues of scientific interpretation or technical expertise. The Pusztai case, for example, raised questions about the political effect of the interlocking relationships between research institutions and their government and corporate sponsors. The Rowett Research Institute receives a small percentage of the funding for its research through contract arrangements with Monsanto. More important, 90 percent of its funding comes from the British government, which at the time of the Pusztai controversy was aggressively courting biotech investments. “We now have to recognize a new sort of scientist, and with it a new sort of science,” observed one commentator at the time. “The scientists working for publicly funded institutions are . . . hired and fired by convenience, they are assigned tasks set by their bosses, and they have few rights, or none, to the intellectual property of their work. And their employers may be engaged in work that involves risks, small, great or unquantifiable. If the scientist-worker doesn’t like it, he can, like Pusztai, choose to be a whistle-blowing martyr or he can search for another career. The difference in the situation of the ‘independent’ university-based scientists is only of degree, not of kind; they all need grants. And, as the GM affair shows so clearly, industry-based scientists have influence in high places—they move in the corridors of government. What then is the price of criticism?”24

  Mutatis Monsanto

  The world leader in the biotech industry has been Monsanto, whose 1997 sales of $10.7 billion and market capitalization of $22 billion easily dwarfs the many tiny start-up companies also clamoring for a share of the emerging biotech market. Although Monsanto today calls itself a “life sciences” company, most of its history has been devoted to chemical manufacturing. Founded in 1901 to manufacture saccharine, the first artificial sweetener, Monsanto quickly branched out into the production of industrial chemicals. During World War II, it participated in the development of plastics and synthetic fabrics and also played a significant role during the Manhattan Project in developing the atom bomb. In the decades following the war, it was one of the agrochemical companies that relentlessly promoted the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture. By the 1960s, it had become the primary producer of PCBs—the widely used chemical compound that causes cancer and birth defects. Monsanto was also the largest producer of dioxin-contaminated Agent Orange herbicide, used by U.S. troops to defoliate the rain forests of southeast Asia during the Vietnam War and a known cause of skin rashes, joint pains, muscle weakness, neurological disorders, and birth defects. By the late 1960s, the company’s association with some of the world’s worst poisons had begun to threaten not only its reputation but its future corporate viability. “We were despised by our customers,” admitted former Monsanto vice president Will Carpenter. 25 Its interest in genetic engineering was driven as much by the need to escape this past as by an interest in the future. By the 1980s, it had begun to divest its chemical interests and invest in biotechnology with an eye to positioning itself as a savior and solution to many of the pressing environmental problems that it had created in the first place. As recently as 1996, Monsanto was still the fourth-largest chemical company in the United States, but in 1997 it spun off its industrial chemicals business as a separate company and devoted itself fully to biotech.

  Many of the battle lines in the biotech food debate were drawn during Monsanto’s PR and lobbying campaign to win approval for recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a controversial product that, when injected into dairy cows, can induce them to produce more milk. In 1986, Wisconsin dairy farmers led by fifth-generation milker John Kinsman formed an alliance with biotechnology critic Jeremy Rifkin to oppose rBGH, and by 1988, the anti-rBGH coalition had come to include family farm organizations, consumer groups, and animal welfare activists. One thing that these groups easily agreed upon was the need for safety testing and mandatory consumer labeling so that individual consumers could decide for themselves whether or not to purchase rBGH-treated milk. As early as 1986, however, industry surveys showed that labeling milk from cows treated with the drug would lead to consumer rejection. Not content with escaping from mandatory labeling, Monsanto tried to make it impossible for anyone to voluntarily put labels on milk from cows that had not been injected with rBGH. When some states and several dairies tried to label their products as rBGH-free, Monsanto threatened to take the dairies to court and backed up the threat by actually filing suit against two of them.

  The Washington, D.C.-based PR and lobby firm of Capitoline/ MS&L brought together drug and dairy industry groups in an ad hoc network called the Dairy Coalition, comprising university researchers funded by Monsanto, as well as carefully selected “third party” experts. Participants included:• The International Food Information Council, which calls itself “a non-profit organization that disseminates sound, scientific information on food safety and nutritio
n to journalists, health professionals, government officials and consumers.” In reality, IFIC is a public relations arm of the food and beverage industries, which provide the bulk of its funding. Its staff members hail from industry groups such as the Sugar Association and the National Soft Drink Association, and it has repeatedly led the defense for controversial food additives including monosodium glutamate, aspartame (Nutrasweet), food dyes, and olestra.

  • The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, representing the top executive of every department of agriculture in all 50 states.

  • The American Farm Bureau Federation, the powerful conservative lobby behind the movement to pass food disparagement laws like the one under which Oprah Winfrey was sued in Texas.

  • The American Dietetic Association, a national association of registered dietitians that works closely with IFIC and hauls in large sums of money advocating for the food industry. Its stated mission is to “improve the health of the public,” but with 15 percent of its budget—more than $3 million—coming from food companies and trade groups, it has learned not to bite the hand that feeds it. “They never criticize the food industry,” says Joan Gussow, a former head of the nutrition education program at Teachers College at Columbia University. The ADA’s website even contains a series of “fact sheets” about various food products, sponsored by the same corporations that make the products (Monsanto for biotechnology; Procter & Gamble for olestra; Ajinomoto for MSG; the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers for fats and oils).26

  • The Grocery Manufacturers of America, the country’s leading trade association for the food and beverage industries. Its member companies account for more than $460 billion in sales annually in the United States. GMA itself is a lobbying powerhouse in Washington, spending $1.4 million for that purpose in 1998.

  • The Food Marketing Institute, a trade association of food retailers and wholesalers, whose grocery store members represent three-fourths of grocery sales in the United States.

  In the campaign for rBGH approval, its proponents engaged in extensive media monitoring to detect and attack unsympathetic journalists. In 1989, the PR firm of Carma International was hired to conduct a computer analysis of every story filed on rBGH, ranking reporters as friends or enemies. This information was used to reward friendly reporters while complaining to editors about those who filed reports that were deemed unfriendly. Leaked internal documents from the Dairy Coalition reveal how journalists who failed to toe the line have been handled. On February 8, 1996, dairy officials wrote Mary Jane Wilkinson, assistant managing editor of the Boston Globe, to complain about an upcoming food column by freelance writer Linda Weltner. In her column, Weltner cited concerns about rBGH expressed by Dr. Samuel Epstein, a professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois and author of the prizewinning 1978 book The Politics of Cancer, as well nine other books and 280 scientific articles. Epstein has been a leading critic of rBGH and the use of growth hormones for fattening cattle in feedlots and has consulted on these topics for the European Community, on whose behalf he testified during hearings before the World Trade Organization.

  “On [January] 23rd, [Dr.] Samuel Epstein . . . made unsupported allegations linking milk and cancer,” the letter stated. “We’re concerned that Ms. Weltner will give Epstein a forum in the Boston Globe to disseminate theories that have no basis in science.” The letter smeared Epstein as a scaremonger with “no standing among his peers in the scientific community and no credibility with the leading health organizations in this country.” It noted that “others in the news media who attended Epstein’s press conference or reviewed his study—such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Washington Post—chose not to run this ‘story.’ . . . USA Today was the only newspaper to print these allegations and we recently held a heated meeting with them.”27

  Another internal dairy industry document described the handling of USA Today health reporter Anita Manning, whose article on the subject offended rBGH lobbyists. “On Wednesday representatives of the Dairy Coalition met with reporter Anita Manning and her editor at USA Today. When Manning said that Epstein was a credible source, the Dairy Coalition’s Dr. Wayne Callaway pointed out that Epstein has no standing among the scientific community. . . . When Manning insisted it was her responsibility to tell both sides of the story, Callaway said that was just a cop-out for not doing her homework. She was told that if she had attended the press conference, instead of writing the story from a press release, she would have learned that her peers from the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press chose not to do the story because of the source. At this point Manning left the meeting and her editor assured the Dairy Coalition that any future stories dealing with [rBGH] and health would be closely scrutinized.”28

  A February 1996 internal document of the Dairy Coalition notes that “the Coalition is convinced its work in educating reporters and editors at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the Associated Press led to those organizations’ dismissal of Samuel Epstein’s pronouncements that milk from [rBGH] supplemented cows causes breast and colon cancer. They did not run the story.”29

  The same document tells of knocking New York Times food reporter Marian Burros off the beat entirely. “As you may recall,” it stated, “the Dairy Coalition worked hard with the New York Times last year to keep Marian Burros, a very anti-industry reporter, from ‘breaking’ Samuel Epstein’s claim that milk from . . . supplemented cows causes breast and colon cancer. She did not do the story and now the NYT health reporters are the ones on the [rBGH] beat. They do not believe Epstein. Marian Burros is not happy about the situation.”30

  In Florida, Monsanto’s attorneys intervened in 1997 when investigative reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre attempted to air a critical story about rBGH. Their investigation, conducted for Tampa Bay Fox network affiliate WTVT, made a series of disturbing claims about Monsanto and its product:• Bovine growth hormone was never adequately tested before FDA allowed it on the market. A standard cancer test of a new human drug requires two years of testing with several hundred rats. But rBGH was tested for only 90 days on 30 rats. Worse, the study has never been published, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has refused to allow open scientific peer review of the study’s raw data.

  • Some Florida dairy herds grew sick shortly after starting rBGH treatment. One farmer, Charles Knight, reported losing 75 percent of his herd and said that Monsanto and Monsanto-funded researchers at University of Florida withheld from him the information that other dairy herds were suffering similar problems.

  • Interviewed on camera, Florida dairy officials and scientists refuted Monsanto’s claim that every truckload of milk from rBGH-treated cows is tested for excessive antibiotics.

  • A visit by Akre to seven randomly selected Florida dairy farms found that all seven were injecting their cows with the hormone. Wilson and Akre also visited area supermarket chains, which two years previously had promised to ask their milk suppliers not to use rBGH in response to consumer concerns. In reality, store representatives admitted that they have taken no steps to assure compliance with this request.31

  • Finally, the story dwelt heavily on concerns raised by scientists such as Epstein and Consumers Union researcher Michael Hansen about potential cancer risks associated with “insulin-like growth factor one” (IGF-1). Treatments of rBGH can lead to significantly increased levels of IGF-1 in milk, and recent studies suggest that IGF-1 is a powerful tumor growth promoter.

  The resulting story, a four-part series, was cleared by management and scheduled to begin airing on Monday, February 24, 1997. As part of the buildup to network ratings sweeps, the story was already being heavily promoted in radio ads when an ominous letter arrived at the office of Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, the former Republican political operative who now heads Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network news. The letter came from John J. Walsh, a
powerful New York attorney with the firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, who accused the reporters of bias and urged the network to delay the story to ensure “a more level playing field” for Monsanto’s side. “There is a lot at stake in what is going on in Florida, not only for Monsanto but also for Fox News and its owner,” Walsh wrote.32

  “Monsanto hired one of the most renowned lawyers in America to use his power and influence,” Wilson says. “Even though our stories had been scheduled to run, even though Fox had bought expensive radio ads to alert viewers to the story, it was abruptly cancelled on the eve of the broadcasts within hours of receiving the letter from Monsanto’s lawyer.”

  Initially, the story was postponed for a week. Akre and Wilson offered to do a further interview with Monsanto and supplied a list of topics to be discussed. In response, Walsh fired back an even more threatening letter: “It simply defies credulity that an experienced journalist would expect a representative of any company to go on camera and respond to the vague, undetailed—and for the most part accusatory—points listed by Ms. Akre. Indeed, some of the points clearly contain the elements of defamatory statements which, if repeated in a broadcast, could lead to serious damage to Monsanto and dire consequences for Fox News.”