How Corporations Disinform Consumers

In 1962, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring launched the grassroots environmental movement by exposing the hidden dangers of agricultural pesticides. Ever since, the corporations that dominate American agribusiness have been waging a counterattack. "Disinformation" is a Cold War-era national security term describing, in the words of one dictionary, "false or misleading information." Industry-promulgated disinformation, including public relations and spurious lawsuits, can suppress information, such as how foods are produced and processed, that by right belongs to the public.

Take the example of the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone, rBGH. In numerous surveys, consumers have shown their demand for labeling of rBGH dairy products, as well as of the other genetically engineered foods now on the market: abalone, canola, catfish, cheese enzymes, corn, cottonseed oil, potatoes, prawns, salmon, soybeans, and tomatoes, with thirty more on the way. But the Food and Drug Administration approved rBGH even though Monsanto's own studies showed its use is linked to increased udder infections and other health problems in cows. And, once having approved rBGH, the FDA declined to require mandatory labeling of all milk and dairy products from injected cows.

Monsanto has filed lawsuits against dairies advertising that their milk is rBGH-free. Monsanto has also maintained, in a huge press campaign, that there was no difference in the milk from treated vs. untreated cows. This, despite the fact that increased levels of bovine Insulin-Like Growth Factor One (IGF-1) are found in the milk of cows given the hormone. Human IGF-1, molecularly identical to bovine IGF-1, has been linked to breast and colon cancers.

Outlawing Free Speech

Now, lawsuits are being used in new ways to disinform the public regarding food. Consider, for example, the recent silencing of TV talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. In May 1996, Oprah was hit with a food disparagement lawsuit filed by a Texas beef feedlot owner after she aired an April 16 program on mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), and its risk factors in the United States.

On March 20, 1996, the British government shocked the world when it announced that ten young people who had died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the human version of mad cow disease, most likely became infected after eating British beef a decade earlier. Oprah's show included the grandmother of a young victim of CJD, a representative of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official, and Howard Lyman of the Humane Society of the United States. Lyman said that the practice of feeding rendered cow byproducts to cows, which caused BSE in Britain, was ongoing in the United States, and discussed the possibility that the disease may already exist in U.S. cattle.

The next day, cattle prices dropped. The beef industry pulled $600,000 in advertising and canceled all scheduled advertising for the following year, as reported in Meat Processing in June 1996. Texas feedlot owner Paul Engler and a company named Cactus Feeders then filed their lawsuit, alleging that "the defendants allowed anti-meat activists to present biased, unsubstantiated, and irresponsible claims against beef not only damaging the beef industry, but also placing a tremendous amount of unwarranted fear in the public." Oprah has since been silent on the issue, but Howard Lyman says, "This is about free speech."

Oprah and Lyman became the first people in the U.S. to be sued for the new crime of "food disparagement," now illegal in thirteen states and being considered in more. Food disparagement laws outlaw the dissemination of controversial information about food unless it's based on "sound science," and put the onus on the activist or journalist to prove in court the validity of their statements.

In legal jargon, food disparagement suits are called SLAPPs, for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. They're based on legislation that is designed to protect industry profits, by preventing people from expressing opinions that might discourage consumers from buying particular foods.

The SLAPP against Oprah originated in a coordinated campaign spearheaded by the non-profit Washington-based Animal Industry Foundation (AIF) whose funding comes from the agribusiness industry. AIF developed a "model" food disparagement statute which it distributes to legislators and agribusiness interests in state capitols across the country. Farm bureau lobbyists have been especially active in winning passage of the legislation. Each state's law is somewhat unique but based on the AIF model.

Essentially, food disparagement laws are industry's payback for the victory won by consumers when, following a consumer and media campaign, the pesticide Alar was pulled off the market by its manufacturer, the Uniroyal Corporation.

The Alar "Scare"

Alar was a chemical, first marketed in 1968, that growers sprayed on trees to make their apples ripen longer before falling off. In processing, however, Alar breaks down to a byproduct called unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine, or UDMH. In 1985, the EPA concluded that Alar and UDMH might be causing as many as 100 cancers per million people exposed to it in their diet for a lifetime. This was 100 times the human health hazard considered acceptable by EPA standards. In 1997, the EPA classified Alar as a probable human carcinogen. Under pressure from Uniroyal, however, EPA allowed Alar to stay on the market.

On February 26, 1989, CBS-TV's 60 Minutes aired an exposé titled "A is for Apple," and announced a new report, Intolerable Risk, on children's health and pesticides by the Natural Resources Defense Council. (Mothers & Others was then a program of NRDC.) NRDC also distributed public service announcements featuring actress Meryl Streep, who warned that Alar had been detected in apple juice bottled for children. Public outcry ensued, as mothers poured apple juice down sink drains and school lunchrooms removed apples from the menu. The apple industry, its back to the wall, hastily abandoned its use of Alar.

On November 28, 1990, apple growers in the state of Washington filed a libel lawsuit against CBS, NRDC and its public relations consultant Fenton Communications, seeking damages in excess of $500,000. The food industry's publicity machine began cranking out propaganda. An industry front group called the Center for Produce Quality distributed food-retailer resource kits which scoffed at the scientific data presented on 60 Minutes. So did organizations such as the industry-funded Advancement of Sound Science Coalition and American Council on Science and Health. "They've attacked our science to this day--science that's been substantiated by government, independent researchers, and the industry's own data," says Wendy Gordon, M.S., executive director of Mothers & Others.

The apple growers' lawsuit was dismissed. The presiding judge pointed to failures in the federal government's own food safety policies, noting that "governmental methodology fails to take into consideration the distinct hazards faced by preschoolers." The National Academy of Sciences in 1993 confirmed the central message of the Alar case, which is that infants and young children need greater regulatory protection from chemicals on and in their food.

An actual court victory, however, was only part of the objective behind the apple growers' lawsuit. SLAPP suits also aim to chill speech by forcing defendants to spend huge amounts of time and money defending themselves in court. "The longer the litigation can be stretched out ...the closer the SLAPP filer moves to success," observed New York Supreme Court Judge J. Nicholas Colabella.

And, as David Bederman, associate professor of law at Emory University Law School, comments, "The freedom of speech, always precious, becomes ever more so as the agricultural industries use new methods such as exotic pesticides, growth hormones, radiation, and genetic engineering on our food supply."

Disinformation on Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) in America

Most Americans believe that the feeding of cows to cows doesn't occur here following the March 30, 1996, announcement of a "voluntary ban" by the USDA and the meat industry. In fact, the feeding of animal remains back to livestock continues to be a widespread practice throughout the U.S.

The worst nightmare would, of course, be if CJD were already spreading via BSE-infected meat into the human population. ABC-TV World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings hinted at such a possibility in a May 12th report:

"The good news is that people may not be contracting Alzheimer's as often as we think. The bad news is that they may be getting something worse instead....It is fatal. It destroys your brain...," intoned the newscaster, referring to CJD. As ABC reported it, "...health officials have maintained there are only about 250 new cases of CJD in this country each year. But...when pathologists actually did autopsies and examined brain tissue from patients with Alzheimer's and other brain disorders, they uncovered hidden cases of CJD....These preliminary findings suggest a public health problem is being overlooked. If...even 1% of Alzheimer's patients had CJD that would mean 40,000 cases."

Since CJD has an invisible latency period of up to forty years in humans, could these cases just be the tip of a deadly epidemic? Why has the news media failed to cover this issue and inform the public of the magnitude of risk? Look at what happened to Oprah Winfrey when she tried.

One might have thought the Jennings report would have exploded from the next day's papers and wire services. In fact, the response was deafening silence--except for the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, which seizes every chance it can to attack "the Alar hoax."

On the morning of the ABC exposé, the Journal featured an opinion column claiming, "We can be virtually certain that mad cow disease poses no threat to humans.... Mad cow disease now joins the Dalkon Shield, electromagnetic fields, Alar, breast implants and other spurious health hazards. In each episode, the victims were the related industries--and the public, which is scared for no good reason."

The Alar case never made it to court, but today, under new laws, it most likely would. Environmentalists, consumer activists, and journalists find ourselves on the front line of a civil liberties battle to protect our most basic rights to free speech and free choice. A dangerous repression is afoot. "Corporate agribusiness is trying to manage food safety issues by criminalizing dissent and intimidating journalists and food activists. We must turn the tables and put them on trial in the court of public opinion," says Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association.

Food disparagement laws and corporate disinformation undermine our fundamental rights. We must demand that government and industry respect our right to know about critical issues, debate them openly, and make informed decisions in the marketplace of ideas and products by exercising consumer choice.

- John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton are editors of PR Watch newsletter and co-authors of Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry; Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? and Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future.