Guess Who's Ashamed Of GMOs?
The front-line troops who run Monsanto's public-relations machine don't even know who their allies were in the 1990s when genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) were introduced to farmers. Oh sure, the chief executives at Monsanto know. But they're willing to allow their political allies on the Left to masquerade as anti-GMO knights-in-shining-armor by keeping their corporate PR departments in the dark.
Case in point. There's a general election underway in Canada, which would normally be of little interest to Americans, except that the Canadian New Democratic Party (NDP) is trying to get voters to forget they once courted big GMO execs, subsidizing them with tens-of-millions in public-private partnerships.
Since elections are the only time we get to hold politicians responsible, I brought this to the attention of Monsanto's Public & Industry Affairs Director. Here's Trish Jordan's response: "What the hell are you talking about? How did the NDP assist Monsanto back in the 1990s? I truly have no clue."
You can rest assured that Jordan's bosses know exactly why the NDP don't have an official policy on GMO labelling; same reason Democrats here in the United States don't.
In the 1990s, the NDP and Liberals in Canada, along with Democrats in America, led the way in helping develop and license GMO crops. But, political winds change, and top executives at Monsanto are now perfectly content to keep all of their public affairs people in the dark, and allow Leftwing politicians on both sides of the border to pander to their base by pretending to oppose GMOs, straddling the massive chasm between deep-green environmental ideology and science, hoping no one will remember they once were the political cheerleaders for GMOs.
Meanwhile, another 670,000 children will go blind and die this year in the Developing World due to Vitamin-A deficiency. GMO Golden Rice, the solution to this problem, remains on the regulatory back burner for a record-setting 14th year; a direct consequence of all the tax-funded, deep-green, negative publicity surrounding GMOs that GMO executives show little interest in dispelling.
Little bodies are piling up on the other side of the world. But heck... hiding from the truth is a highly-effective way of keeping the upstarts out of the GMO biz. Lucrative as well.
Mischa Popoff is a former USDA-contract organic inspector and is the author of Is it Organic? You can read the full article here.