Good PR is Growing (Excellent Biotech Industry/Gov Expose)

Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 16:27:04 -0400
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An edited (shortened) version of this article was featured in the May/June 
issue of THIS Magazine <http://www.thismag.org/>

It is based on access-to-information research by Bradford Duplisea, born 
and raised in PEI.

What appears below is only about a third of the article. The full version 
can be found at
<http://www.healthcoalition.ca/goodprisgrowing.html>
===================================================

Good PR is Growing
By LYLE STEWART

July 15, 2002

If you've watched television or read a newspaper at all in the past
couple years, you're likely familiar with the biotechnology industry's
"Good Ideas Are Growing" television advertising series, broadcast repeatedly
whenever the controversy over genetically engineered foods flares up.

Sponsored by the Council for Biotechnology Information, the spots rely
on soothing, dreamlike imagery: sun-drenched green crops surrounding an
old-fashioned barn on the prairie; a healthy, tanned farm family rocking

gently on a rope swing; a sturdy Third World peasant at work in fields
of bounty. It's a relatively straightforward, almost facile attempt to
project images of health, prosperity and good corporate citizenship.

But few Canadian consumers are aware that the Good Ideas Are Growing
campaign is only one part of a multi-pronged public-relations campaign
to sell genetically engineered foods in Canada and abroad, one largely
funded by taxpayers themselves over the past two years.

They include other bromides such as "A Growing Appetite For
Information," a pamphlet produced by the Guelph-based Food
Biotechnology Communications Network as a insert in Canadian Living
Magazine. The pro-GE brochure "Food Safety and You" was mailed to
every household in Canada by the biotech industry's ostensible
regulator, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, last year. Meanwhile, seemingly
independent non-governmental organizations, such as the Consumers'
Association of Canada and the National Institute for Nutrition, have
conveniently backed the hands-off federal policy on labelling.

At the same time, Ottawa has stonewalled the growing demands for
mandatory labelling of genetically engineered foods with a Canadian
General Standards Board committee whose carefully chosen membership
and terms of reference forestall any possibility that we may soon be
able to choose whether or not to consume GE foods.

The Liberal government also ignored the Royal Society of Canada report
it requested on how to deal with food biotechnology. And they buried senior

Liberal MP Charles Caccia's private member's Bill C-287 on labelling
biotech foods.

These episodes may appear to be unconnected battles in the propaganda
war over biotechnology. But thanks to the dogged investigation of
Canadian Health Coalition researcher Bradford Duplisea, it's now
becoming clear that they have been coordinated as part of a multimillion

dollar strategy industry to engineer consent in Canada and abroad on
biotechnology. Working almost single-handedly from his "war room," a
file-filled office in his Hull apartment, Duplisea has unearthed a
remarkable series of documents under Access To Information requests that have
exposed a spider's web of influence; web that brings together the
biotech and agri-food industries, large grocery distributors, a prominent
public-relations firm, several federal government departments, and a
handful of third-party NGOs funded in equal measure by taxpayers and
industry to push the pro-GE message on Canadians.

"There's no clear line between government and industry," says Duplisea.
"As far as biotechnology is concerned, the government should be
implementing and enforcing regulations, period. The industry should be
left to promote itself. You must keep promotion and regulation of industry
under different roofs or you get disasters like bad blood and mad cow
disease. If the Krever Commission taught us anything, it's that we have
to regulate in the interests of the public, not in the interests of the
regulated."

But Ottawa now spends over $400 million each year in research,
development and public relations as part of a decade-long effort to turn

Canada into a biotechnology powerhouse. It is a partner with Monsanto
Canada in the development of GE wheat. Outside the university campuses
in Guelph and Saskatoon - the two largest centres of biotech research in

Canada - it's an investment that's little known and less understood,
however. Indeed, some Ottawa insiders say the federal government is the
ag-biotech industry.

For the businessmen and bureaucrats, all was sailing along fine until
the late 1990s. But the spring of 1999 was a worrying time. Groups such as
Greenpeace Canada and the Council of Canadians had launched
campaigns against GE foods that were raising public awareness.
Consumers and advocacy groups were waking up to the fact that the
sudden appearance of genetically modified foods on their grocery shelves

had taken place with little notice, debate, or independent and
verifiable long-term testing.

And for Ottawa, which had hopes of exploiting vast new export markets,
the prospect of a European-style revolt over GE was a nightmare
scenario. That's why federal Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief convened an
extraordinary - and secret - roundtable meeting for April 12, 1999.
Invited were many of the stakeholders: representatives from the PMO; the
Canadian Food Inspection Agency; and big players from the biotechnology
industry, including Novartis head Byron Beeler and then-Monsanto
Canada president Ray Mowling. Also invited were the communications
specialists - Joyce Groote of the industry lobby group BIOTECanada and
Diane Weatherall of the Food Biotechnology Communications Network.
Many of the propositions that came out of the meeting were realized over
the following two years, largely thanks to hidden taxpayer dollars.

According to Groote's notes, the meeting "helped to highlight the need
for immediate coordinated action to deal with this crisis at hand.... I
would like to suggest that a Task Force with a short reporting timeframe be
established to develop the framework of a National Communications
Strategy. We have moved from issues to crisis mode. This likely
translates into a 2 year window to deal with the communications issue."

<snip>

The rest of this article appears on:
<http://www.healthcoalition.ca/goodprisgrowing.html>
===========================

Bradford Duplisea
Canadian Health Coalition
613-521-3400  Ext. 219#
brad@healthcoalition.ca
www.healthcoalition.ca 



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