Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/738189
Page 20 | Abby's Magazine - www.AbbysMag.com • "The Organic Food Industry Has Been Engaged in 'Multi-Decade Public Disinformation Campaign' claims report" (Food Navigator) • "Report: Organic Industry Achieved 25 Years of Fast Growth Through Fear and Deception" (Food Safety News) • "A Scathing Indictment of Organic Food Marketing" (Hoard's Dairyman) • "Using Fear as a Sales Tactic" (Food Business News) In the New York Post, Naomi Schaffer Riley built a case against "tyranny of the organic mommy mafia" who are duped by disingenuous marketing tactics of the organic industry. Her sources included the Academics Review report and Julie Gunlock, author of a book about the "culture of alarmism." Riley didn't mention that Gunlock, and also Riley herself, are both senior fellows at the Independent Women's Forum, a group heavily funded by Donors Trust, which has bankrolled corporate attacks on unions, public schools and climate scientists. In the Des Moines Register, John R. Block, a former U.S. secretary of agriculture who now works for a law firm that lobbies for agribusiness interests, reported on the "blockbuster report" by Academics Review and its findings that the organic industry's secret to success is "black marketing." The corporate front group American Council on Science and Health, which receives funding from the agrichemical industry and where Chassy serves as a scientific advisor, pushed the "black marketing" theme in articles by ACSH president Hank Campbell and Henry I. Miller, MD, a Hoover Institute fellow who served as the spokesmodel in commercials for the effort to kill GMO labeling in California, for which Monsanto was the lead funder. Miller, who has a long history of making inaccurate scientific claims in support of corporate interests, also used the Academics Review report as a source for organic attacks in Newsweek and the National Review, and claimed in the Wall Street Journal that organic farming is not sustainable. Similar anti-organic themes run through other agrichemical industry PR channels. GMO Answers, a marketing website funded by the Big Six agrichemical companies (and where Chassy and Tribe serve as "independent experts"), promotes the ideas that organics are no healthier, no better for the environment and just a marketing program — although, ironically, the PR firm that runs GMO Answers has launched a specialty group in San Francisco to try to cash in on the organic market. Monsanto's top spokesperson, Robb Fraley, also repeatedly trashes the organic industry on his Twitter feed. Money Flow Goes Public; Academics Review Goes Silent In March 2016, Monica Eng reported for WBEZ on documents showing that Monsanto paid Professor Bruce Chassy more than $57,000 over a 23-month period to travel, write and speak about GMOs — money that was not disclosed to the public. According to Eng's investigation, the money was part of at least $5.1 million in undisclosed money Monsanto sent through the University of Illinois Foundation to university employees and programs between 2005 and 2015. "Chassy did not disclose his financial relationship with Monsanto on state or university forms aimed at detecting potential conflicts of interest," Eng reported. "Documents further show that Chassy and the university directed Monsanto to deposit the payments through the University of Illinois Foundation, a body whose records are shielded from public scrutiny. The foundation also has the ability to take in private money and disburse it to an individual as a 'university payment' — exempt from disclosure." In January 2016, Carey Gillam, research director of U.S. Right to Know, reported on emails showing that hundreds of thousands of dollars had flowed from Monsanto to the University of Illinois "as Chassy collaborated on multiple projects with Monsanto to counter public concerns about genetically modified crops (GMOs) - all while representing himself as an independent academic for a public institution." "What you find when reading through the email chains is an arrangement that allowed industry players to cloak pro-GMO messaging within a veil of independent expertise, and little, if any, public disclosure of the behind-the-scenes connections,"