Dustin M. Wax

how Ms. Lauren at feministe manages to pull off complete site redesigns, each one cooler than the last, every couple weeks or so?! I mean, I’ve been struggling for weeks just to find the time to clean up my CSS layout (which I think I finally managed to nail, albeit at the cost of moving the navigation from the left side of the page to the right), in which time she’s had three or four completely different, completely kickin’, just plain awesome site layouts and graphic sets. I don’t even have children!

It’s a mystery, I tell you. A MYSTERY!

In Trust Us We’re Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, the authors describe the millions of dollars spent by the pharmaceutical, tobacco, biotech, agribusiness, and other industries to obscure and manipulate scientific data and research to advance their own interests (generally in opposition to the public’s). Working through “front” organizations with benign, positive, occasionally even lefty-sounding names like the The Advancement for Sound Science Coalition, the American Council on Science and Health, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, American Chemistry Council, the Foundation for Clean Air Progress, the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, and the Society for Women’s Health Research, corporations produce legitimate-sounding scientific studies that support their own products or actions, often at the expense of people’s lives. Under the guise of “sound science”, this data is not only poured into PR campaigns–through, among other things, scare stories and other public-interest pieces produced by corporate-funded organizations for your local news broadcasts–but also provide policy-makers with the plausible denial they need to, for instance, talk about the need for “further research” into global warming without actually having to take a political stand that might cost them their corporate donations in the next election cycle or their cushy jobs on leaving “public service”.

The latest act in the “sound science” assault on both science and the public interest is Monsanto’s lawsuit against the Oakhurst Dairy Co-op based in Maine, over their inclusion of the words “Our Farmers’ Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones” on their products’ labels. In a stunning piece of corporate double-speak, Monsanto claims:

Monsanto fully supports the right of people in grocery stores to make informed choices about what they purchase. We believe that consumers should be able to make these informed decisions based on fair and accurate factual information about the quality and safety of the products they purchase. Currently, the labels used by Oakhurst are contrary to the position of the Food & Drug Administration for the voluntary labeling of milk and milk products with respect to the non-use of rBST, and violate state laws regarding unfair and deceptive commercial practices. The current labeling practices of Oakhurst fail to fully disclose years of scientific evidence that milk from cows supplemented with rBST is the same as all other milk. Scientific studies conclude that the use of rBST to improve milk production does not change the nutrition, taste, quality, or any other health or safety characteristics of milk.

Without this information, independent market-research shows that many consumers are misled to believe that the milk with labels such as the Oakhurst Dairy label was healthier or safer than other milk. In surveys conducted by MSR Research Group, Inc., and overseen by independent third-party scholars, research revealed that more than two-thirds of consumers were misled to believe that the milk with the Oakhurst Dairy label was healthier to drink than milk labeled without such a statement, and that more than sixty percent of consumers were also misled to believe that the milk with the Oakhurst Dairy label was safer to drink than milk labeled without such a statement.

Now, I don’t know if milk from rBST-treated cows is, in fact, less safe than milk from non-treated cows. I do know, however, that the “years of scientific evidence” Monsanto cites are very likely to have been funded by Monsanto itself, through their sponsorship of research centers at various universities and at their own corporate headquarters in Missouri. Even blatantly obvious research manipulation pays off for Monsanto and its fellow agribusiness/pharmaceutical/chemical companies, by muddying the waters and throwing even the most positive scientific certainties into doubt. If Monsanto’s research is quite clearly fake, then so, too, might their critics’ research be, essentially taking the results of even legitimate scientific research out of the debate, leaving the field open to, essentially, whoever can spend the most money. Between multi-billion-dollar Monsanto and the 88 farms that make up Oakhurst, that’s a pretty clear outcome.

Monsanto has been bringing this sort of lawsuit against small farmers who refuse to use rBST hormone treatments–and had the gall to say so–ever since the product was introduced years ago. They brought so much pressure to bear in Vermont that the state changed its regulations on hormone-treated diary. Oakhurst is based in Maine, and is covered by a Maine state law that awards a “Quality Seal” to dairies that purchase at least 80% of their milk from Maine dairy farms that do not use artificial growth hormones (according to Oakhurst’s website). So Big M is clearly gunning to take down Maine’s regulations, as much as to hit small dairies where it hurts. As far as I can tell, Oakhurst isn’t saying anything that is not true. And they are providing a piece of information that many customers obviously want–as Monsanto itself says in their statement. Monsanto “supports the right of people in grocery stores to make informed choices about what they purchase” (“People in grocery stores”? Like, the stockboy? What about people in bodegas? No rights for them? Or people in restaurants? Or what about children in school lunchrooms? Does Monsanto not support their right to make informed choices?)–but Monsanto wants to be the only ones providing that information.

“Trust Us, We’re Experts” indeed! There’s an old joke, “How do you say ‘Fuck You’ in Yiddish? ‘Trust Me.'”