Monsanto Campaign Tries to Gain Support for Gene-Altered Food
By Melody Petersen
With the nation's biotechnology industry being denounced as the creator of "Frankenfoods," at least one company has been working to get groups of church members, union workers and elderly residents to speak in support of genetically engineered foods.
Last week, Monsanto Co. helped pay for a demonstration in Washington by about 100 members of a Baptist church, said an organizer of the protest. The church members marched around a group of anti-biotechnology activists who were dressed as Monarch butterflies and as a 30-foot-long ear of corn.
While the anti-biotechnology activists held up posters denouncing "mutant corn," the church members waved signs saying "Biotech saves children's lives" and "Biotech equals jobs."
Some of the anti-biotechnology activists said church members told them that they had been paid $25 to demonstrate.
But Terry Wade, a spokesman at Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm based in New York, disputes that contention.
"They were out there because they believed in the cause," Wade said. "While we may have paid for their lunch and for a bus, we did not pay anyone to demonstrate."
Burson-Marsteller had been asked by Monsanto to contact people supporting biotechnology, a spokeswoman for Monsanto said Tuesday.
Larry DeNeal, who helped organize the protest by the Mount Lebanon Baptist Church of Washington, said a few protesters had been given $25 because they paid for their own lunch and transportation to the rally.
The other demonstrators had received lunch and a bus ride to the rally, DeNeal said, which Monsanto and other companies helped pay for. DeNeal identified one of the other companies as Archer Daniels Midland, an agricultural company based in Decatur, Ill., but a spokeswoman for the company said it was not involved.
Paying people to demonstrate would have violated Monsanto's ethics policies, the company spokeswoman said.
"That is abhorrent to us," she said, adding that the company planned to investigate.
Wade said it was also against Burson-Marsteller's policy to pay anyone directly to state a particular view.
DeNeal said many of the church members support gene-altered foods because some scientists are using biotechnology to develop crops that may help feed the growing populations in sub-Saharan Africa.
The protest in Washington, which occurred outside a hearing by the Food and Drug Administration on the gene-altered crops, was part of an effort by some biotechnology companies to counter demonstrations by environmental and consumer groups.
In recent months, Monsanto Co., Du Pont, Novartis AG and other biotech companies have formed a series of industrywide alliances and have set aside tens of millions of dollars to fight what they view as an ugly campaign that has vilified the companies.
Bioengineered crops have been the subject of ferocious debate for months in Europe, where public opposition to genetically modified foods led to calls for additional research, labeling and even the banning of such products altogether.
Now environmental advocates in this country have mounted their own effort to turn public opinion against such products, putting the biotechnology industry on the defensive.
In response, employees and consultants from Burson-Marsteller have been trying to recruit people from churches, labor organizations and senior citizens groups to speak at FDA hearings.
Before a hearing in Chicago on Nov. 18, Burson hired Jerry Morrison, a consultant who has worked to organize labor groups. Morrison said that he had spoken to eight groups, asking them to speak at the Chicago hearing.
An employee of Direct Impact, a consulting firm owned by Burson-Marsteller, also called the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, asking for their support at the FDA hearing in Washington.
The labor union declined, a union member said.
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