but, what if they had GMO worms as well...hmmmm

[Guest guest]

RETRACT THIS PAPER - IT'S A DISGRACE TO SCIENCE

The British Food Journal's Award for Excellence for Most Outstanding Paper in

2004

went to research that should never have been published. What the reviewers

mistook

for an impressive piece of scientific enquiry was a carefully crafted propaganda

exercise that could only have one outcome. Both the award and the paper now need

to be retracted.

 

For the GM WATCH report together with links to source materials and a photo of

one

of the signs the researchers used to bias consumer responses, go to:

http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=72 & page=1

 

Here's a summary.

 

In late 1999 a Greenpeace news conference outside a Loblaws grocery store in

downtown

Toronto was disrupted by a group of GM supporters.

 

" The food is safe, " shouted Jeff Wilson, who farms northwest of Toronto.

He'd come to the store with the head of a lobby group that supports GM foods,

and

Doug Powell, an assistant professor at the University of Guelph.

 

And they'd come prepared. Holding aloft a bug-ravaged cabbage, Wilson demanded,

" Would you buy that? " Wilson claimed the cabbage could have been saved

by genetic engineering. Doug Powell ended up in a shouting match with a shopper.

 

A year later and Powell and Wilson's street theatrics had given way to a much

more

carefully choreographed exercise in persuading people that GM foods were what

they

wanted

 

The scene this time was not Loblaws but Jeff Wilson's farm store. Here Powell

and

Wilson were running an experiment that had been conceived following the Loblaws

encounter.

 

During summer 2000 Wilson grew both GM and conventional sweet corn on his farm.

And following the first harvest, both types of corn were put on sale amidst much

publicity. The aim was to see which type would appeal most to Wilson's

customers.

 

According to an award winning paper published in the British Food Journal, a

sizeable

majority opted for the GM corn. In the paper, authored by Wilson and Powell, and

Powell's two research assistants - Katija Blaine and Shane Morris, the choice

appears

simple - the bins were " fully labeled " - either " genetically engineered

Bt sweet corn " or " Regular sweet-corn " . The only other written information

mentioned in the paper that might have influenced the preference of customers

was

lists of the chemicals used on each type of corn, and pamphlets " with background

information on the project. "

 

What Powell and his co-authors failed to report was that they had used a

variation

on the bug-eaten cabbage stunt. The sign above the non-GM corn bin in Wilson'd

store

asked, " Would You Eat Wormy Sweet Corn? " Above the the Bt-corn bin, the

sign referred to " Quality Sweet Corn " !

 

Toronto Star reporter Stuart Laidlaw, who visited Wilson's farm several times

during

the research, says, " It is the only time I have seen a store label its own

corn 'wormy'. " In his book Secret Ingredients, Laidlaw includes a photograph

of the " wormy " corn sign, and notes that with those labels " it was

hardly surprising which sold more. "

 

Laidlaw also notes that any mention of the corn being labelled as " wormy "

or " quality " was omitted in presentations and writings about the experiment.

This is certainly the case with the paper in the British Food Journal. Yet the

paper

describes in significant detail the care that the researchers took to avoid

biasing

consumer choice!

 

Whether reviewers and editors will continue to collude with the researchers'

deceit

remains to be seen. Either way, important questions need to be posed about a

culture

of science and academia that allows scientists who raise questions about GM, and

other corporate interests, to suffer a barrage of criticism and abuse, and even

terminal damage to their careers; while those whose opinions and findings

support

GM are validated and affirmed, regardless of whether their claims stand up to

critical

scrutiny.

 

This is the context in which corporate propaganda came to be rewarded as

exemplary

science.

 

FOR THE FULL EXTRAORDINARY STORY AND A POINT-BY-POINT REBUTTAL OF THE ORWELLIAN

EFFORT TO COVER UP WHAT REALLY HAPPENED, GO TO:

http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=72 & page=1

 

 

You can bomb the world to pieces

You can't bomb it into peace