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PR Expert Warns Gene Giants on No-Labeling Stance

PR Week (US)
October 7, 2002

THE GM FOOD INDUSTRY'S INSISTENCE ON KEEPING SECRETS FURTHER EXPOSES ITS PR
SHORTCOMINGS

HIGHLIGHT:
By PAUL HOLMES, currently president of The Holmes Group and editorof
www.holmesreport.com

Let's say your company makes a massive technical advance, one that both
improves the quality of the product you sell and has the potential to solve
one of the world's most intractable problems. You'd be ready to spend
millions to promote it, right? Well, not if you're in the genetically
modified (GM) food business. Then you spend dollars 4.5 million on a
campaign to keep your new technology secret. Faced with a ballot initiative
that calls on food companies to label products that contain genetically
modified ingredients, the Coalition Against the Costly Labeling Law is
trying to sell Oregonians on the idea that such labeling would cost millions
in 'government bureaucracy and red tape.'

The campaign's premise is a lie, of course. The industry isn't concerned
about red tape - or if it is, it's a secondary issue. What truly worries the
industry - the reason it has resisted labeling since GM foods were
introduced a decade ago - is that consumers will select unmodified foods if
given a choice. So the campaign is about denying them that choice, but
calling the group the Coalition Against Informed Consumers probably sounded
like a bad idea.

Faced with labeling demands, the GM food industry falls back on the fact
that the FDA considers labels unnecessary. After I discussed this subject in
a recent column, a Monsanto rep pointed out (correctly) that the company
does label its products, which it sells to farmers rather than consumers,
but the FDA 'has determined that the biotech crops currently grown and
subsequent ingredients don't need to be labeled because biotech food is no
different than conventional food.'

But, the FDA's position notwithstanding, there is clearly a segment of the
public that wants to know how its food is made, and it is hard to see any
moral basis on which companies would deny that right. Apparently, the
increased corporate transparency we've heard about doesn't encompass this
kind of information. Instead, the industry is essentially saying, 'Trust us,
you don't need to know.'

But at the same time, it is also saying, 'We don't trust you. We think
you're so stupid that you won't be able to use the labeling information
intelligently. You're not smart enough to understand the science or to
process our arguments. Instead, you will be influenced by hysterical
Luddites who want to ban our product, and you won't buy it.'

But 21st-century PR isn't about controlling the flow of information or
deciding what information the public has a right to. It's about putting
information in context. If the GM food industry doesn't believe its PR
people are smart enough to explain its products' benefits, it should either
hire new PR people or get a new product.

Fighting against an informed public only creates the impression that it has
a sinister secret to hide.

- Paul Holmes has spent the past 15 years writing about the PR business for
publications including PRWeek, Inside PR, and Reputation Management.