Organic Attack-Who's Behind
the Media Slander Campaign?

Sent: Monday, May 20, 2002 10:26 AM
Subject: ORGANIC ATTACK! : who's behind organicised crime?

ORGANIC ATTACK!
While the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations
reports numerous health and environmental benefits from organic farming
practices, including reduced levels of contaminants in foods, a whole series
of press articles and radio and TV programmes on both sides of the Atlantic
have recently been reporting the exact opposite: that organic agriculture is
actually more risky than industrial agriculture.

The items below show how these reports are actually part of an orchestrated
campaign of disinformation involving industry-backed proponents of GM and
how they are grounded in bogus research and a series of false claims.

INTRODUCTION

More organic attacks in UK press <http://ngin.tripod.com/organic.htm#More
organic attacks in UK press>
An article by John Vidal in THE GUARDIAN (London)

THE GODFATHERS: who's behind organicised crime?
<http://ngin.tripod.com/godfathers.htm>
Excerpt from 'Organicised crime: The backlash against organic food has
begun. But who is behind it?', Andy Rowell's report on how a loose network
of rightwing think-tanks, supported by agribiz and the biotech corporations,
have worked together with GM-supporting scientists to slander organic food.

Dennis Avery: Big Daddy of the E.co-lie!
<http://ngin.tripod.com/averylies.htm>
Reports on the bogus research with which Dennis Avery has originated much of
the anti-organic propaganda in recent circulation, and how his work is
supported by Monsanto, DuPont, Novartis, ConAgra, DowElanco and others who
profit from the sale of products prohibited in organic production.

John Stossel slanders organic farming <http://ngin.tripod.com/stossel.htm>
Reports on how ABC News correspondent John Stossel misled viewers in a
report on "20/20" implying organic food was dangerous. Includes articles
from The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Nation.

Prof Trewavas requires a health warning
<http://ngin.tripod.com/trewavas.htm>
Reports on the media-war waged against organics by a scientist renowned for
his extreme, unsupported and unfounded assertions. Includes an article with
detailed criticism of a Trewavas' piece in Nature.

Lord Haskins: merchant of doom <http://ngin.tripod.com/haskins.htm>
According to Blair advisor Lord Haskins organic food is not only risky but
if organic farming were widely adopted it would lead to mass starvation!

Prof Hillman attacked for promoting bogus claims
<http://ngin.tripod.com/hillmanimp.htm>
How Professor John Hillman, director of the Scottish Crop Research Institute
(SCRI) used the SCRI's annual report and the media to promote bogus smears
against organic farming. Professor Hillman is on the Board of Directors of
the BioIndustry Association, whose tagline is "Encouraging and Promoting the
Biotechnology Sector of the UK Economy".

SIR JOHN KREBS SLAMMED OVER ORGANIC FOOD ATTACKS
<http://ngin.tripod.com/krebsorg.htm>
How Sir John Krebs and his supporters are using the UK Food Standards Agency
to promote the interests of the biotechnology industry.

Anti-Organic Industry Groups Smear for Profit
<http://ngin.tripod.com/nomorescares.htm>
Exposing the industry groups behind 'Nomorescares.com' and its anti-organic
report 'Organic Industry Groups Spread Fear for Profit'

Rightwing clique behind organic attacks
<http://ngin.tripod.com/rightwing.htm>

Rebutting the myths: the OCouterblast¹ programme on BBC 2 TV
<http://ngin.tripod.com/counterblast.htm>
A Soil Association response to the propaganda attack of a Big Tobacco funded
rightwing clique <http://ngin.tripod.com/rightwing.htm>

United Nations FAO report exposes anti-organic propaganda
<http://ngin.tripod.com/fao-org.htm>
A UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report concludes organic
practices actually reduce e-coli infection that causes food poisoning (the
exact opposite of GM proponents' bogus claims) and they also reduce the
levels of contaminants in foods. Among the FAO's other conclusions:
* Organic agriculture contributes to cleaner drinking water and to higher
weed, insect and bird diversity
* Organic farming enhances genetic biodiversity and helps recover indigenous
crop varieties
* Organically produced foods have lower levels of pesticide and veterinary
drug residues
* Organic milk is less contaminated
* Organic farming is good for sustainable agriculture

INTRODUCTION

Is organic agriculture really more risky than industrial agriculture as a
whole series of press articles and radio and TV programmes
<http://ngin.tripod.com/organic.htm#More organic attacks in UK press> on
both sides of the Atlantic have recently been reporting?

Here we present items in response to these reports, showing how they are
stemming from GM proponents citing bogus research and making other false
claims.

The circulation of bogus research evidence critical of organic farming
hasn't been a phenomenon restricted to popular journalism. There has been a
concerted campaign of disinformation around the world with GM proponents
always to the fore. In the UK senior academics have been involved in raising
concerns about the safety of organic food (eg Ben Miflin, former head of
the Institute of Arable Crops Research, Prof Alan Gray of the Institute of
Terrestial Ecology and ACRE, Prof John Hillman
<http://ngin.tripod.com/hillmanimp.htm> of the Scottish Crop Research
Institute). Information critical of organic agriculture has also been
published in a booklet promoting GM food from the Food and Drink Federation.

Such attacks have even appeared in articles in reputable science journals.
For example, in MUCH FOOD, MANY PROBLEMS (Nature 402, 231 [1999] - 18/11/99)
by Prof Anthony Trewavas <http://ngin.tripod.com/trewavas.htm> of the
Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Edinburgh,
there are repeated claims of substantial problems. Yet the trail of evidence
for such claims often leads back to Dennis Avery
<http://ngin.tripod.com/averylies.htm> , the man at the heart of the
disinformation campaign on organics.

The pieces above <http://ngin.tripod.com/organic.htm#top> not only explain
the bogus nature of the claims being made but point to those, many linked
directly ot indirectly to a rightwing clique
<http://ngin.tripod.com/rightwing.htm> and a loose coalition of
'think-tanks' supported by agribiz and the biotech corporations
<http://ngin.tripod.com/godfathers.htm> , who have been supporting the
disinformation campaign.

What, of course, is so revealing in all this, is the way in which senior
academics have apparently been happy to join in the disinformation process,
thus lending it credibility, by repeating and promoting such views without
serious critical scrutiny of the evidence on which they are based. In this
we once again seem to pay the price of science having become so industrially
aligned that it is more preoccupied with corporate interests than with
serving the public good. [For more on this see: Prof Bullsh*t
<http://ngin.tripod.com/pb.htm> ]

More organic attacks in UK press
John Vidal, GUARDIAN (London) Tuesday May 16, 2000

The Daily Mail has been doing some good muckraking. Yesterday, it led its
front page with a nine-month-old scientific report suggesting that lettuces
and sprouts grown to organic standards with the help of farmyard manure had
100 times more E coli cells than conventionally grown ones. Shock. Was not E
coli responsible for all those deaths in Lanarkshire? "The findings will
alarm millions who switched to organic foods following the BSE crisis and
concern over the safety of GM foods," said the Mail.

But should it? Is organic farming inherently more risky than conventional
farming, as a stream of articles and TV programmes in the past six months on
both sides of the Atlantic have suggested? Unhappily for the Mail, the
answer is no. E coli is one of the commonest microbiological organisms on
the planet. It is everywhere. On your coffee cup, your pencil, your hands,
in everybody's stomach.

The Daily Mail report glossed over the fact that the E coli found in the
organically grown lettuces was totally harmless and indeed rather welcome.
Without E coli and other micro organisms our immune system would be in
tatters. Indeed, it would have been far more surprising if the Atlanta
veggies did not show higher numbers of E coli cells. At least they were
being grown in biologically alive land.

But one strain of E coli - 0157 - can indeed be virulent and deadly, and the
Mail was quick to report that Tesco had recently withdrawn all its organic
mushrooms after a routine check by environmental health officers found one
with 0157. But not with the deadly strain known as 0157:H7. It went on to
say that the strain found in the Tesco mushroom was completely harmless.

So where are all these organic scare stories coming from? What's new about
muck? As the Soil Association, which sets UK organic standards points out,
animal manure has been used for thousands of years as an essential component
to maintain the organic matter content, biological activity, fertility and
structural stability of agricultural soils. Moreover, conventional UK
farmers use about 80m tonnes of it a year as a fertiliser. Just 9,000 tonnes
goes on organic land and crops. So why the attacks on organic foods and not
conventional ones?

Enter the highly charged and politically motivated industry of environmental
"contrarianism". It questions accepted eco "truisms" which suggest that
global warming, holes in the ozone layer, large dams, intensive farming,
nuclear power and GM foods are major problems. However, it frequently uses
extremely selective scientific studies, funded by industries with strong
vested interests in keeping the status quo, to rubbish governments and
environmentalists. They are, variously, "negative", "against progress",
"luddite", "making the poor poorer" and "peddling bad science".

The spate of recent "organic scare" stories probably started with Denis T
Avery <http://ngin.tripod.com/averylies.htm> , Director of Global Food
Issues at the Hudson Institute, a rich and powerful US free-market,
pro-globalisation think tank funded, amongst others, by chemical companies,
agribusiness and biotech companies - all of whom have taken a battering in
the global GM furore.

In 1998, Avery published "The Hidden Dangers in Organic Food" in American
Outlook, a quarterly Hudson Institute publication. It began: "According to
recent data compiled by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), people who
eat organic and 'natural' foods are eight times as likely as the rest of the
population to be attacked by a deadly new strain of E coli bacteria
(0157:H7)."

The trouble was, the CDC denied ever having done the studies. But the Hudson
and its British counterparts such as the European Science and Environment
Forum, and the Institute of Economic Affairs
<http://ngin.tripod.com/rightwing.htm> , have been peddling variations of
the story to shock-hungry journalists, notably at C4, Living Marxism, a BBC
Counterblast <http://ngin.tripod.com/counterblast.htm> programme, and even
the Wall Street Journal.

No one denies that farmyard manure carries dangerous pathogens. But not even
the most naive vegetarian would suggest that you should ignore fundamental
rules of hygiene like washing fruit and vegetables before eating them, or
cooking meat thoroughly.