The phrase “Black Lives Matter” has entered the lexicon as a grassroots movement for a number of reforms—but there’s a difference between supporting the premise that “Black Lives Matter” and the official Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization. All people should believe that black lives matter, but the official BLM organization is being hijacked by operatives with a radical agenda.
Media Matters for America (MMfA) is an IRS tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization that purports to document supposed conservative media bias. Media Matters Action Network (MMAN) is the affiliated 501(c)(4) organization that is the advocacy arm of MMfA. Media Matters original goal was to serve as a “fact-checker” that focused on conservative media programming. But in practice, […]
Break Free From Plastic is a coalition movement aimed at reducing plastic waste throughout the globe via social media campaigns.
When is a foundation not a foundation? When it gives away other foundations’ money.
Most of America’s big-money philanthropies trace their largesse back to one or two wealthy contributors. The Pew Charitable Trusts was funded by Joseph Pew’s Sun Oil Company earnings, the David & Lucille Packard Foundation got its endowment from the Hewlett-Packard fortune, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation grew out of General Motors profits, and so on. In most cases, the donors’ descendants manage and invest these huge piles of money, distributing a portion each year to nonprofit groups of all kinds (the IRS insists that at least 5 percent is given away each year). This is the way philanthropic grantmaking has worked for over a century: whether a given endowment’s bottom line occupies six digits or twelve, the basic idea has remained the same.
Now comes the Tides Foundation and its recent offshoot, the Tides Center, creating a new model for grantmaking — one that strains the boundaries of U.S. tax law in the pursuit of its leftist, activist goals.
Set up in 1976 by California activist Drummond Pike, Tides does two things better than any other foundation or charity in the U.S. today: it routinely obscures the sources of its tax-exempt millions, and makes it difficult (if not impossible) to discern how the funds are actually being used.
In practice, “Tides” behaves less like a philanthropy than a money-laundering enterprise (apologies to Procter & Gamble), taking money from other foundations and spending it as the donor requires. Called donor-advised giving, this pass-through funding vehicle provides public-relations insulation for the money’s original donors. By using Tides to funnel its capital, a large public charity can indirectly fund a project with which it would prefer not to be directly identified in public. Drummond Pike has reinforced this view, telling The Chronicle of Philanthropy: “Anonymity is very important to most of the people we work with.”
In order to get an idea of the massive scale on which the Tides Foundation plays its shell game, consider that Tides has collected over $200 million since 1997, most of it from other foundations. The list of grantees who eventually received these funds includes many of the most notorious anti-consumer groups in U.S. history: Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Media Services, Environmental Working Group, and even fringe groups like the now-defunct Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet (which used actress Meryl Streep to “front” the 1989 Alar-on-apples health scare fraud for NRDC).
For corporations and other organizations that eventually find themselves in these grantees’ crosshairs, there is practically no way to find out where their money originated. For the general public, the money trail ends at Tides’ front door. In many cases, even the eventual recipient of the funding has no idea how Tides got it in the first place.
Remarkably, all of this appears to be perfectly legal. The IRS has traditionally been friendly toward this “donor-advised” giving model, because in theory it allows people who don’t have millions of dollars to use an existing philanthropy as a “fiscal sponsor.” This allows them to distribute their money to worthwhile charities, while avoiding the overhead expenses of setting up a whole new foundation.
In practice, though, the Tides Foundation has turned this well-meaning idea on its head. When traditional foundations give millions of dollars to Tides, they’re not required to tell the IRS anything about the grants’ eventual purposes. Some document it anyway; most do not. When Tides files its annual tax return, of course, it has to document where its donations went — but not where they came from.
Where the Money Comes From
The Tides Foundation is quickly becoming the 800-pound gorilla of radical activist funding, and this couldn’t happen without a nine-figure balance sheet. Just about every big name in the world of public grantmaking lists Tides as a major recipient. Anyone who has heard the closing moments of a National Public Radio news broadcast is familiar with these names.
In 1999 alone, Tides took in an astounding $42.9 million. It gave out $31.1 million in grants that year, and applied the rest to a balance sheet whose bottom line is over $120 million. Since 1996, one foundation alone (the Pew Charitable Trusts) has poured over $40 million into Tides. And at least 17 others have made grants to Tides in excess of $100,000.
The Tides Center: A Legal Spin-Off
While Tides makes its name by facilitating large pass-through grants to outside groups, many of Tides’ grantees are essentially activist startups. Part of Tides’ overall plan is to provide day-to-day assistance to the younger groups that it “incubates.” This can translate into program expertise, human resources and benefits management, assistance with facilities leasing, and even help with public relations and media. Tides typically charges groups 8 percent of their gross income for these services.
Until recently, these administrative functions were provided to grantees by the Tides Foundation itself. But in order to limit exposure to any lawsuits that might be filed against its many affiliated groups (many injured parties have considered suing environmental groups in recent years), a new and legally separate entity was born. In 1996 the Tides Center was spun off, insulating the Foundation’s purse and permanently separating Tides’ grantmaking and administrative functions.
Many environmental groups that now operate on their own got their start as a “project” of the Tides Center. These include the Environmental Working Group, Environmental Media Services, and the Natural Resources Defense Council — which was itself founded with a sizable Tides “grant.” The Tides Center began with a seemingly innocent transfer of $9 million from the Tides Foundation. The Center immediately took over the operations of nearly all of the Tides “projects,” and undertook the task of “incubating” dozens more. There are currently over 350 such projects, and the number grows each year.
This practice of “incubation” allows Tides to provide traditional foundations with a unique service. If an existing funder wants to pour money into a specific agenda for which no activist group exists, Tides will start one from scratch. At least 30 of the Tides Center’s current “projects” were created out of thin air in response to the needs of one foundation or another.
The Tides Center board of directors has been especially busy of late. In 2001 the first Tides “franchise” office (not counting Tides’ presence in Washington and New York) was opened in Pittsburgh. This new outpost, called the Tides Center of Western Pennsylvania, was erected largely at the urging of Pittsburgh native Teresa Heinz (the widow of Senator John Heinz, the ketchup heir). Heinz pulls more strings in the foundation world than almost any other old-money socialite; she’s presently married to U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA). The Tides Foundation has collaborated on funding projects with the Heinz Endowments (Teresa Heinz’s personal domain) for over 10 years.
The tangled web
The Tides “complex” has established itself as an important funding nexus for movements and causes aligned with leftist ideology. Everyone who’s anyone in the big-money activist world now has some connection to Drummond Pike and his deputies.
Consider that as early as 1989, when the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) wanted to promote the now-infamous health scare about apples and the chemical additive Alar, the Tides Foundation was used as a financial conduit to allow NRDC to pay Fenton’s fees. NRDC was itself set up by Tides, and has since incorporated on its own, one of over a dozen other multi-million dollar former Tides projects to do so.
Fenton Communications, itself a touchstone for radical political campaigns, made use of the Tides Center to set up its Environmental Media Services (EMS) in 1994 (it has also since emerged from under Tides’ protection and formally set up shop in Fenton’s offices). The fact that Tides originally ran EMS’ day-to-day operations provided PR spinmeister David Fenton with “plausible deniability” — a ready-made alibi against charges that this supposedly “nonpartisan” media outfit was just a shill for his paying clients. Now, of course, we all know that it is just that.
Similar stories can be told about SeaWeb, the Environmental Working Group, the National Environmental Trust (formerly known as the Environmental Information Center) and the Center for a Sustainable Economy, each of which received millions while under the Tides umbrella. Besides having been “incubated” in this fashion, the other principal commonality among these organizations is a client relationship with Fenton Communications.
The depth and financial implications of the Tides/Fenton connection is truly impressive, if not surprising. After all, long-time Fenton partner and recently-departed Environmental Media Services chief Arlie Schardt has sat on the board of the Tides Center/Tides Foundation complex since the very beginning. At present, the Fenton Communications client list includes at least 36 Tides grantees, as well as 10 big-money foundations that use Tides as a pass-through funding vehicle just about every year. In some cases, the Tides Foundation has been used to funnel money from one Fenton client to another.
Even taking into account the peculiar relationship between Tides and its in-house “projects,” Tides only spends about 40% of its money on these organizations. The rest goes to other left-leaning grantees, many of which have managers or board members that are connected to Tides in other ways.
For instance, the Tides Center’s corporate registration documents on file in Minnesota show that Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) president Mark Ritchie is its “registered agent.” This might explain why the Tides Foundation has paid over $20,000 to a commercial corporation owned by Ritchie and his brother. It’s a “sustainable coffee” company called Headwaters Inc., which does business with the public using the name Peace Coffee. The Ritchie brothers run this for-profit venture out of the same offices of their nonprofit (IATP), which just happens to advocate society’s total conversion to Peace Coffee’s main product. It’s a clever bit of flim-flammery, and the Tides Foundation has been helping to foot the bill.
This is business as usual for Mark Ritchie, though. He is the mastermind behind several other food-scare and health-scare organizations, all of which get appreciable funding through his Tides connection. A Tides Center “project” called the Trade Research Consortium lists its purpose as “research that illuminates the links between trade, environmental, and social justice.” Ritchie is its only discernable contact person. Similarly, Ritchie’s IATP runs the organic-only food advocacy group Sustain, but has taken great pains to hide this relationship (the group’s Internet domain listing was altered just hours after the connection was noted in an on-line discussion group in 2001). Ritchie also started the Consumer’s Choice Council, a Tides grantee that lobbies for “eco-labels” on everything from soybeans to coffee.
Tides also maintains an interesting relationship with the multi-billion-dollar Pew Charitable Trusts. Since 1993 Pew has used the Tides Foundation and/or Tides Center to “manage” three high-profile journalism initiatives: the Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism, the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, and the Pew Center for the People and the Press. These Pew “Centers” are set up as for-profit media companies, which means that Pew (as a “private foundation”) is legally prohibited from funding them directly. Tides has no such hurdle, so it has gladly raked in over $95 million from Pew since 1990 — taking the standard 8 percent as pure profit.
In practice, the social reformers at the helm of the Pew Charitable Trusts use these media entities to run public opinion polling; to indoctrinate young reporters in “reporting techniques” that are consistent with Pew’s social goals; and to “promote” (read: subsidize) actual reporting and story preparation that meets Pew’s definition of “civic journalism.” Civic journalism, by the way, is defined as reporting that “mobilizes Americans” behind issues that Pew considers important.
The Story of Stuff Project is an activist group spun out of a 2007 anti-plastic documentary of the same name. The documentary claimed that global use of everyday products like clothing, shoes, radios, and food packages was unsustainable and called for Americans to scale back their consumption to create a waste-free future, especially when it comes to plastic.
The Center for Media & Democracy (CMD) is a counterculture public relations effort disguised as an independent media organization. CMD isn’t really a center it would be more accurate to call it a partnership, since it is essentially a two-person operation.
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber operate, as do most self-anointed progressive watchdogs, from the presumption that any communication issued from a corporate headquarters must be viewed with a jaundiced eye. In their own quarterly PR Watch newsletter, they recently referred to corporate PR as a propaganda industry, misleading citizens and manipulating minds in the service of special interests. Ironically, Rampton and Stauber have elected to dip into the deep pockets of multi-million-dollar foundations with special interest agendas of their own.
Their books Mad Cow U.S.A. and Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! were produced and promoted using grant monies from the Foundation for Deep Ecology ($25,000) and the Education Foundation of America ($20,000), among others. Along with the more recent Trust Us: We’re Experts, these books are scare-mongering tales about a corporate culture out of control, and each implies that the public needs rescuing. Guess who the heroes in this fantasy are?
Despite his wild claims that federal agencies have covered up U.S. mad cow disease cases, John Stauber has become a quotable celebrity on the subject. In 1997, at the height of the initial mad-cow panic, a CMD press release warned: Evidence suggests there may already be a mad-cow-type of disease infecting both U.S. pigs and cattle. Rampton and Stauber have never provided any documentation to back up this reckless claim; no cases of mad-cow disease have ever been documented in U.S. livestock. John Stauber was one of only four mad-cow experts offered to reporters by Fenton Communications’ media arm, Environmental Media Services.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. PCRM is a fanatical animal rights group that seeks to remove eggs, milk, meat, and seafood from the American diet, and to eliminate the use of animals in scientific research. Despite its operational and financial ties to other animal activist groups and its close relationship with violent zealots, PCRM has successfully duped the media and much of the general public into believing that its pronouncements about the superiority of vegetarian-only diets represent the opinion of the medical community.
The restaurant industry has survived a broad assortment of political obstacles in the last century, including market depressions, alcohol prohibition, and — more recently — even smoking bans. But the latest attempt to impose politics on our dinner plates comes from an unexpected quarter — chefs.
“The cuisine of trepidation is All About Me,” writes Greg Critser in The Washington Monthly (July/August 2001). “It is about what it takes to make chefs and foodies feel superior to the uneducated masses. If that means weeping over an organic cherry, then they will weep over an organic cherry (and charge you $10 for doing so). If it means traveling to Belgium to find real organic chocolate, then they do just that (and bore you to death by telling you all about it on the menu). And if it means denying poor kids in India and Africa cheap and more nutritious [genetically modified] rice — rice that might eventually prevent them from going blind — well, so be it.” This is the world of the Chefs Collaborative.
The Chefs Collaborative (CC) was started in 1993 to give voice to a growing contingent of “celebrity” chefs who want no less than to tell the rest of us what to eat (and when we may have it). CC was originally a project of an obscure Boston nutrition organization called Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust, which came about in 1989 as the result of an unusual food fight.
In 1985 Robert Mondavi and Julia Child formed the American Institute of Wine and Food (AIWF), and installed as board members a variety of noted chefs, food writers, and nutritionists. The organization’s mission was an apolitical one: highlighting the pleasure of eating and drinking. Its first meetings, however, were anything but pleasurable. Julia Child’s biography describes the legendary chef berating Alice Waters (who would later become a central figure in the Chefs Collaborative) for incessantly evangelizing about organic foods. Waters was “bringing the whole spirit of the thing down,” Childs would later recall, “with this endless talk of pollutants and toxins.” Childs wanted the AIWF to avoid emphasizing such talk of doom and gloom, because she believed that it would serve to reinforce “the country’s ingrained fear of pleasure.” She also believed that Waters’ “romantic beliefs would not help feed two hundred million people.”
After four years of political tug-of-war, AIWF board member K. Dun Gifford (who sided with Alice Waters) resigned to start his own organization, taking most of the high-profile “celebrity” chefs and a handful of staffers with him. Greg Drescher, a young man who had organized AIWF’s conferences, also went with Gifford and became his business partner. In addition to a “progressive” event-planning firm, the two founded a nutrition-advocacy group that they called Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust.
Oldways fancies itself as a sort of culinary-archaeological nexus, promoting diets based (literally) on old ways. That those “old ways” contributed to limited life spans, vitamin deficiencies, and high infant mortality has never seemed to matter to their proponents. At a 1993 Oldways conference in Hawaii, a bunch of chefs decided to form their own special-interest subgroup in order to bring the Oldways message into America’s restaurants.
After six years of umbrella protection, CC emerged from its parent group in 1999 and now poses a genuine threat to the food choices and menu selections that we take for granted. Built on a politically correct platform of “sustainable” (organic-only) produce, the group’s agenda has grown to include boycotts of popular fish species, prohibitions on biotech-enhanced foods, the abolition of chemical pesticides, a worldwide reduction in meat consumption, militant demands for “local” ingredients, so-called “living wage” mandates for restaurant employees, and even dystopian “green taxes,” to be levied on cuisine that doesn’t meet the Chefs’ definition of “sustainable.”
All of this is based on the flimsiest of justifications, usually resting on the shifting sands of junk science and wrapped up in the alarmist messages of other activist groups with which CC has “collaborated.” These include Greenpeace, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet, the Worldwatch Institute, and Environmental Defense, just to name a few from the political far left.
The Chefs Collaborative’s own literature describes its work as a mission to “change the way people make their food choices.” Treating the general public less like customers than like children who need to be educated in “civilized” table habits, these chefs are self-anointed arbiters of “good food” and “bad food,” injecting activist politics into the simple act of eating. Chef Barbara Tropp (of San Francisco’s China Moon Café) saw the trend coming in 1994, when she reminded Eating Well magazine that “many of these chefs were [activists] taking over buildings in the ‘60s… It’s natural that their politics spills into the industry.” As with the politics of many a true believer, the rigid dogmas of today’s celebrity chefs are out of step with reality — in this case, with real-world tastes, modern agriculture, and even advances in food safety.
No genetic purity, no manure, no service
Celebrity chef Alice Waters has laid down the law for her own restaurant, Chez Panisse: “Flat out,” she says, “no genetic engineering.” The Chefs Collaborative generally echoes this sentiment, insisting that biotech foods have no place in the modern kitchen. This culinary dogma, however, flies in the face of the extensive review (8 to 10 years, in most cases) required before a genetically improved food product can be marketed in the United States. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has an extensive battery of examinations, inspections, and field tests. The EPA has its own protocol that must be satisfied, as does the USDA. Then there are exhaustive (and expensive) reviews conducted by the National Research Council, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Never mind all that, say CC spokespersons, who carp about food “purity” as though it were incompatible with science. Jane Henney, then the United States FDA Commissioner, addressed this concern in 1998 by explaining that Americans have already been eating biotech-enhanced foods for nearly 15 years with literally no evidence of added food safety risks. “Not one rash,” she said, firmly. “Not one cough; not one sore throat; not one headache.” Still, this group of over a thousand professionals maintains a steadfast hold on this scientifically illiterate position.
Not content with simply avoiding genetically improved foods, however, CC has plunged directly into the arena of anti-biotech activism. In 1998 the organization’s national leadership joined with Greenpeace in a campaign to deluge the FDA with consumer requests for mandatory biotech food labels. The following year, CC was a signatory to a similar petition from Mothers for Natural Law, a radical organization affiliated with the cultish empire of Indian mystic Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
The Chefs also had a hand in starting and promoting the “Keep Nature Natural” campaign. This effort, a product of organic food marketers and the “natural foods” industry, aggressively lobbies for tax breaks for organic farmers, while using junk science to spread fear of conventional and high-tech foods. It’s funded by organic food lobbyists on behalf of organic marketers like Eden, Nature’s Path, Wild Oats, and Whole Foods — and by Andrew Kimbrell’s misleadingly named Center for Food Safety.
Among the most vocal and dogmatic CC spokespersons on the biotech food issue, New York celebrity chef Peter Hoffman stands out. He has actually argued against the production of “Golden Rice,” a crop that could save literally millions of lives in the Third World. TIME magazine has said that “at least a million children who die every year because they are weakened by vitamin-A deficiency, and an additional 350,000 who go blind” could be saved by this innovative use of food technology. But Hoffman will have none of it, lambasting agricultural progress as unnecessary. “The Green Revolution was a dismal failure,” he insisted at a 2000 press conference. “We don’t need it now, we didn’t need it then.” The Nobel Prize committee heartily disagreed, awarding the Peace Prize to “Green Revolution” father Norman Borlaug in 1970.
It’s worth noting that CC has to contend with a few vocal dissenters within its profession. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal in March 2000, the legendary Julia Child called genetic food improvement “one of the greatest discoveries” of the twentieth century. She takes issue with the anti-biotech-food movement, saying that its adherents have “a very backwards-looking point of view.” The Los Angeles Times had similarly unflattering things to say about Bitter Harvest, a frightening tome about modern food technology by CC’s Ann Cooper, noting that the author doesn’t “let facts get in the way of a good doomsday scenario,” and calling the whole exercise a giant serving of “anxiety pie.”
The price you pay for eating organic
The Chefs Collaborative continues to promote organic-only eating in an attempt to permanently “change the way people make their food choices.” One recent newsletter claimed that “promoting organic farming methods is crucial for sustaining the planet.” As an organization, CC organizes restaurants into “cooperatives” that agree to buy produce from local farmers, only then “work[ing] on bringing them into the organic fold.”
Once organic produce reaches the table, of course, it is more likely to cause deadly E.coli infections than conventionally grown food. Dr. Robert Tauxe, then chief of the Foodborne Diseases branch of the Centers for Disease Control, explained why, in a 1997 article in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. “‘Organic’,” wrote Dr. Tauxe, “means your food was grown in animal manure.” This is the “ick” in “organic,” and it is especially prevalent among farmers who opt for the expensive organic certification that celebrity chefs crave.
Even in Great Britain, where organic agriculture is skyrocketing, public health officials agree that “organic” doesn’t mean “healthier.” Professor Hugh Pennington, who chaired the UK’s 1996 investigation into E.coli infections, said that “organic food… is not healthier than normal mass-produced food, and in many cases is far unhealthier. There are problems over fungi infecting organic food and indeed the risk of getting E.coli from the ‘natural’ cow manure is very real.”
Even Katherine DiMatteo, head of the U.S. Organic Trade Association, won’t claim that organic food has any nutritional or safety benefits. When asked straight-out by ABC’s John Stossel whether or not organic food is safer for consumers, she replied that safety isn’t what organic food is all about. So why on earth is it selling? And why are celebrity chefs helping it along?
By lining up against genetically improved foods, the Chefs Collaborative has allied itself with the organic and “natural” foods industry. It’s no coincidence that Chefs chairman Rick Bayless’ line of organic sauces and condiments is marketed by Whole Foods, the nation’s largest organic food chain. Whole Foods executives have also sat on CC’s “board of overseers,” and the company underwrites its outreach and media campaigns. Whole Foods — along with its varied competitors — cashes in whenever CC raises the level of hysteria over non-organic foods. And some of that cash finds its way back into the chefs’ aprons. In 1996 the Chefs Collaborative announced a fundraising partnership with Whole Foods that delivered at least $150,000.
At least it can be said that CC — and Oldways, its former parent group — are equal-opportunity profiteers. In 1997 Supermarket News described a marketing arrangement between Oldways and a Boston area “natural food” supermarket called Wild Harvest. Asked about her organization’s agenda, Oldways program manager Annie Copps replied: “We’re using primarily members of Chefs Collaborative to promote the use of produce that is clean, local and organic wherever possible, and to make the dishes as plant-based as possible, and using, of course, Wild Harvest products.”
Most smear tactics directed at biotech foods have their genesis in the communications offices of organic food marketers, and CC has become an active participant in this arrangement. If this sounds a little too conspiratorial, consider what one speaker said at a U.S. Organic Food Conference in 1999: “The potential to develop the organic food market would be limited if consumers are satisfied with food safety and the furor over genetic modification dies down.”
It’s not propaganda if you get course credit
Embedded deep within the Chefs Collaborative mentality is the idea of the chef as educator, telling consumers what they should and shouldn’t be eating. During an impassioned speech at the January 2001 annual CC retreat, chef Judy Wicks (of Philadelphia’s White Dog Café) summed up the organization’s outlook, saying that “restaurants are uniquely positioned to educate and activate consumers.” This is the same activist chef who has publicly conceded that the Chefs Collaborative “use[s] good food to lure innocent customers into social activism.”
No surprise, then, that the Chefs Collaborative has been taking its anti-biotech, anti-agribusiness, anti-meat, and anti-pesticide messages directly into elementary schools since 1994 (Oldways officially reclaimed the school program in June 2000). Through its “Adopt-a-School” program, CC gets its unrealistic ideas in front of the tiniest consumers while they’re still young. This way, explains Rick Bayless, “there’s a better chance they’ll be choosing good foods over not-so-healthy foods as they grow. And by ‘good,’ I mean foods that are grown, harvested and prepared in ways that don’t harm the planet or the person eating them.” Today’s professional chefs should know better than anyone that the conventional U.S. food supply is safer, more varied, less expensive, and more nutritious than ever before. It’s regrettable that Bayless seems intent on ignoring these facts in order to push a radical agenda to the most vulnerable audience imaginable.
Of course, a whiny nation demanding “sustainable” cuisine is no good unless you’ve also trained the next generation of chefs to toe the party line. Never fear — the Chefs Collaborative has that covered as well. CC “board of overseers” member Eve Felder is an associate dean at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), and Oldways co-founder Greg Drescher is the “Director of Education” at CIA’s Napa Valley campus. Drescher’s ideological baggage was packed in Fairfield, Iowa — home of the Maharishi University of Management. This college promotes the questionable teachings of Transcendental Meditation inventor Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose dietary edicts emphasize organic foods and whose medicinal tenets favor expensive organic herbal preparations. Greg Drescher, like many of today’s in-your-face organic high priests, draws inspiration from “The Maha” (as John Lennon used to call him). Few of Drescher’s converts, however, know exactly what it is they’re embracing.
Writing in a 2001 Chefs Collaborative newsletter, Eve Felder made no bones about the connection between CC and the CIA, asserting that “the principles of the Chefs Collaborative… are our principles.” Chefs Collaborative co-founder Ann Cooper has described herself during radio interviews as “a consultant to the Culinary Institute of America.” The CIA and CC have also co-hosted seminars showcasing anti-biotech issues in recent years, and featuring such session topics as “Organic companies vs. the Multi-National Global Networks,” “Plant-based cooking,” and “Chefs as Restaurateurs and Activists.” Invited speakers have included:
Surf
Chefs Collaborative was the first group to hop on board when Washington nonprofit SeaWeb announced its boycott of Atlantic swordfish (the “Give Swordfish a Break” debacle). According to some estimates, more than half of the restaurants SeaWeb listed as swordfish boycott enrollees were headed by Chefs Collaborative members. Never mind that the National Marine Fisheries Service said that “swordfish are not considered endangered,” and that the campaign would “end up having a detrimental effect on fishermen.” SeaWeb called the tune; the chefs danced.
And why not? SeaWeb is part of a tight-knit circle of aquatic mischief that runs on green fuel from the David & Lucille Packard Foundation (nearly $2.5 million so far). That same foundation made a $200,000 donation to Chefs Collaborative in November 2001, earmarked especially for “consumer education” on seafood issues. Other Packard Foundation donees include the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Seafood Choices Alliance, and Environmental Defense — all of whom have “cooperative” agreements in place that financially benefit the Chefs Collaborative.
The Chefs Collaborative also uses its influence to direct the flow of commerce to “approved” fish vendors. CC officers hold nine seats on an advisory board at EcoFish, a for-profit vendor of “sustainable” fish (the Packard Foundation also holds a seat). And when CC bigwigs Rick Moonen and Eric Ripert came out in support of a “moratorium” on Caspian Sea caviar (December 2000), few noticed that Whole Foods Markets was less than two months into promoting its own “domestic, farm-raised” caviar line.
Moonen and Ripert participated in the boycott at the request of Fenton Communications, a leftist Washington PR shop whose tactics have produced dozens of baseless food scares (including the phony 1989 Alar-on-apples fiasco). Fenton promoted the caviar boycott on behalf of a client — Whole Foods Markets.
Fenton Communications’ links to Chefs Collaborative began in 1999, when Environmental Defense (another Fenton client) wanted a culinary partner to promote its “dying oceans” agenda. With a $50,000 contribution from Environmental Defense, CC co-produced Seafood Solutions, a guide to cooking fish in an “environmentally responsible” manner. Not surprisingly, the October 2000 press conferences unveiling this book featured representatives from both groups as well as SeaWeb. And Fenton Communications handled all of the arrangements.
Turf
In addition to declaring dozens of fish species politically incorrect (Chilean sea bass is the latest), the Chefs Collaborative has a history of pushing a diet that’s as meatless as possible. When Greg Drescher and K. Dun Gifford founded the Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust (which later spawned the Chefs Collaborative), they were also in the event-planning business — organizing “health” and “nutrition” conferences for environmentalists and animal-rights devotees. A full year before CC was born, Drescher told the New York Times that he saw the animal rights agenda’s extremist public image as the biggest roadblock to widespread vegetarianism. “What’s being missed,” he said, “is an opportunity to support a strong position for reduced meat consumption from a nutrition and environmental perspective without the other baggage.”
To be sure, one plank in CC’s platform is the dramatic reduction in meat consumption. Gifford confided to Vegetarian Times readers in 1998 that the purpose behind Oldways’ attempts to tinker with the American diet “is to get people to eat more vegetarian meals.” True to form, where there’s a social objective, there’s a scare campaign to get the ball rolling. Chefs Collaborative overseer Ann Cooper told a National Public Radio audience in September 2000 that “it is not only possible but it is actually probably probable” that mad cow disease was present in the United States. “Many people,” she insisted, “think it’s already happening here.”
Of course, if you must eat meat, Chefs Collaborative will be happy to recommend a number of “certified organic,” “natural,” or “free range” options, all of which come with inflated price tags — if you have to ask how much it costs, goes the old adage, you can’t afford it. A Spring 2001 “Chefs Collaborative Communiqué” began with a horrific exposition on mad cow and foot-and-mouth diseases, followed by thinly-veiled sales pitches for specific brands of “earth-friendly” and “safer” meats. The “approved” vendors included names like Farm Verified Organics, Niman Ranch, and Conservation Beef — all of whom count on consumer fear to sell their products. The Summer 2001 CC newsletter continued the sermon, barely containing the group’s glee that “the meat and dairy industries… are under siege” by government regulators as a result of infectious disease concerns.
Another great example of a fear profiteer is Jim Goodman. Along with his wife, Goodman raises organic beef and sells it to “L’Etoile,” a Madison, Wisconsin restaurant (run by CC member Odessa Piper), among others. Goodman’s activist streak runs so deep that he was a co-plaintiff in a pair of 1999 lawsuits brought against the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health & Human Services by a trio of anti-consumer groups (the Humane Farming Association, the Center for Food Safety, and the Center for Media & Democracy). These legal actions attempted to establish in court what scientists were saying wouldn’t happen (and still hasn’t) in a scientific setting: a link between mad cow disease and garden-variety human Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). Goodman is a member of the Chefs Collaborative.
Brian Cass was getting out of his car at his home in England on a clear night in February 2001, when he was surrounded by three masked men wielding heavy, wooden objects. Some news reports describe them as baseball bats, others as pickaxe handles. Whatever their weapons, they started to beat the 53-year-old Cass on the head and body without any warning. In a few short moments, his hair and jacket were soaked through with blood.
A neighbor tried to intervene and help him, but was immobilized by a spray of CS gas, in the face, by one of Cass’s attackers. Months later, when the lead attacker was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison, Cass’ marketing director Andrew Gay was attacked on his doorstep with a chemical spray to his eyes, leaving him temporarily blinded and writhing in pain in front of his wife and young daughter.
British thirty-somethings Paul and Heather Saunders were entertaining friends one autumn night in 2000 when they heard two loud crashes from the direction of their front patio. They ran toward the noise to find that two large chunks of dried cement had been thrown through their plate-glass patio doors. The two vandals they saw running away paused for a moment, to pour paint stripper all over their guests’ car.
Nearly five months later, a strange package was delivered to the house, addressed to Heather. The bomb squad in their town found enough explosives inside to kill anyone who might have dared to open it.
Robert Harper was at home with his wife and their 2-year old son, in the “back bay” neighborhood of Boston, when a familiar noise arose from outside. A dozen protesters had gathered, shouting insults through a megaphone, telling his neighbors that he was a “murdering scum.” Harper had never killed anyone; he was, by all accounts, a mild-mannered insurance salesman. But this didn’t stop the assembled activists. They had been outside his apartment building day and night for the past two months, shouting incredible vulgarities at his family, and harassing them whenever they left to go somewhere.
They had put up “Wanted For Murder” posters of him all over his neighborhood. They told his neighbors that he “supports torture.” They poured gallons of red paint on his doorstep on Father’s Day. They re-routed his mail to a post office box without his knowledge. They posted his social security number, his and his wife’s license plate numbers, and details of their daily routine on the Internet.
The police had collectively thrown up their hands, citing the protesters’ free speech rights. But when they began to chant in unison — “What comes around goes around! Burn his house to the ground!” — the twelve were arrested and charged with stalking and making malicious threats. All but two were back on the streets in two days.
The animal rights group responsible for these savage attacks has not (yet) been accused of assaulting or killing any Americans. But its numbers are even greater here than in England, and many in law enforcement think it’s just a matter of time.
SHAC and HLS
Brian Cass, Heather Saunders, and Robert Harper were targeted because of their connections to Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a scientific research firm that, in its search for cures to diseases like cancer and AIDS, uses animals in its work. Cass is Huntingdon’s chief executive. The other two have never even set foot there; they were targeted because their employers dared to do business with HLS.
Before new medicines for diseases like AIDS, Parkinson’s, and various cancers can be given to human beings, common sense requires that the proverbial “guinea pigs” are given the medicines first (actually, rats make up about 90 percent of the test subjects). In addition, new surgical techniques and promising treatments for nerve disorders — Christopher Reeve’s paralysis, for instance — are routinely tested on animals, to make sure that the kinks are worked out before human trials begin.
Today’s animal rights zealots are not fond of this arrangement. Those who believe, as PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk once put it, that “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy,” loudly object to the sacrifice of a rat so that a boy might live longer. Newkirk, in fact, has put PETA on record saying: “Even if animal testing resulted in a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.”
PETA, of course, is an animal-rights general practitioner, equally condemning meat producers, dairy products, animal testing, rodeos, fur, leather, circuses, hunting, fishing, pet ownership… and the list goes on. But one group of violent specialists has waged such a war against medical research that both the mass media and the FBI are paying close attention.
It’s called SHAC, which stands for “Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty” (our pick for a more appropriate moniker: “Sadistic, Hysterical, Angry Criminals”). SHAC has decreed that Huntingdon Life Sciences “must be shut down for good.” And they’re not too particular about how that comes about. British Animal Liberation Front (ALF) leader Robin Webb told protesters at a December 2002 SHAC rally: “It doesn’t matter if it’s closed through economic pressure! It doesn’t matter if it’s closed because the employees are too scared to work there! And it doesn’t matter if it goes out with a bang either!” The rally was held within earshot of Huntingdon’s New Jersey employees.
SHAC has employed physical violence, large-scale vandalism, verbal and physical intimidation, financial extortion, burglary, grand theft, Internet piracy, mail fraud, and even identity theft — all in a bid to make HLS the first animal testing lab to throw in the towel and close its doors. That, says SHAC organizer Brenda Shoss, “is a door to shutting down all the rest of the labs.” At the Animal Rights 2002 convention, SHAC director Kevin Jonas vowed: “When we shut down HLS, we’ll move on to the next, the next, and the next.”
This siege mentality doesn’t sit well with law enforcement officers, who universally condemn SHAC’s goals and tactics. “There is no nice side to SHAC,” said Cambridgeshire (UK) Chief Inspector Michael Gipp in 2001. “This is a campaign based on fear and intimidation at every level.” FBI supervisory special agent William Voigt observed in a July 2002 AP story: “SHAC has quite an extensive history of violence.” And Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly, responding to the indictment of 12 SHAC activists for threatening Robert Harper and his family, told WHDH TV: “Those are crimes. That is criminal behavior. Are they acts of terrorism? Yes, they are.”
The renowned Southern Poverty Law Center has also taken notice. The SPLC’s Intelligence Report, widely known for monitoring domestic terrorism and reporting on the activities of “hate groups,” included SHAC in a Fall 2002 exposé alongside reliable standbys like neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. In a remarkable article entitle “From Push to Shove,” the SPLC described SHAC’s modus operandi as “frankly terroristic tactics similar to those of anti-abortion extremists.”
And the Dominos Will Fall
SHAC leader Lauren James described her group’s philosophy in a February 11, 2001 Associated Press story. “Our policy,” she said, “is that anybody with any connection at all with Huntingdon Life Sciences is a target.”
Here’s how it works: SHAC activists pursue the management (or even rank-and-file employees) of, say, a janitorial firm or a foodservice company that provides HLS with its cafeteria services. The hope is that the targets will be scared out of their minds when SHAC shows up in their neighborhood, outside their children’s school, or at their grocery store, armed with flyers declaring that they are “puppy killers.” The employees are then expected, naturally, to communicate their fear to their company’s executives, putting pressure on them to give up the Huntingdon account, no matter the cost. SHAC’s five favorite words are: “It’s just not worth it.”
The theory is that, eventually, HLS will find that it can’t do business without cafeteria food, or someone to mop the floors, provide insurance coverage for employees, trade its stock, make business loans, tend to its landscaping, or even cash its checks. Providers of all of these kinds of services — and more — are considered fair game for SHAC. “Anybody,” as James has said, “with any connection at all.”
Consider this tortured connection: on June 11, 2001, vandals smashed display windows and spray painted animal rights slogans on a Bed Bath & Beyond store in Salt Lake City. While the thugs claimed “credit” for the crime through the Animal Liberation Front, police concluded that SHAC was responsible. It seems that the store’s corporate office had unspecified “financial dealings” with a New Jersey investment company suspected of holding shares of HLS stock. Often, discerning the connection between HLS and a given SHAC victim can involve a “degrees-of-separation” exercise worthy of Kevin Bacon’s Hollywood career.
The business community has largely rolled over in the face of this kind of threat. The history of the SHAC campaign is one of repeated capitulation by bankers, insurance companies, stock traders, Internet service providers, and yes, even foodservice and janitorial companies. “Here’s the kicker,” writes Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam. “These tactics work.”
In June 2002, Huntingdon executive Richard Michaelson described SHAC in The Philadelphia Inquirer as “a campaign that essentially says ‘I am going to grab hold of your air hose and squeeze it until you die’.”
In the UK, Home Secretary Jack Straw vented his outrage in an April 2001 interview with the Associated Press. “We are simply not prepared,” Straw said, “to let a small minority of criminal extremists intimidate members of the scientific community and their families, and try to prevent essential medical research.” The FBI has gone one step further; in August 2002, a Boston FBI spokeswoman told the Globe that the Bureau officially considered SHAC a “domestic terrorist group.”
Domestic Terrorism
Until late 2000, hardly anyone in the United States had heard of SHAC, and with good reason: while Huntingdon Life Sciences did operate a laboratory in New Jersey, it had always been based in the UK. But then HLS’s loans came due, and Barclay’s Bank of London refused to renew the notes, saying that it “could not guarantee the safety” of its employees. Fewer and fewer stock brokers would agree to trade HLS shares for their customers — SHAC had gotten to them, too. As Charles Schwab’s traders dumped their existing HLS holdings, the share price plummeted. And 3,000 miles away, an American businessman stepped into the fray.
When Little Rock, Arkansas financier Warren Stephens bought a considerable stake in HLS, effectively bailing out the beleaguered company, SHAC regrouped in the United States. It made Philadelphia its new base of operations, and put a foursome of angry young Americans in charge. One, Kevin Jonas, had an undeniable history with the terrorist Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a group that the FBI already considered America’s most serious domestic terror threat. At the national “Animal Rights 2001” convention, SHAC underscored this relationship by sharing a table with the criminal ALF and its sister group, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).
In the wake of 9-11, neither ALF nor SHAC did anything to put their crime sprees on the back burner. Almost immediately, attacks began on American companies — including Warren Stephens’ investment firm. Within months, SHAC’s website was replete with boastful announcements that various distant stars in the Huntingdon Life Sciences universe had been cowed into submission. And attacks on Huntingdon’s own staffers continued: one American HLS vice president, SHAC claimed, “was visited several times, had several car windows broken, tires slashed, house spray painted with slogans. His wife is reportedly on the brink of a nervous breakdown.”
In the first two years since SHAC first started grabbing headlines in the USA, its gangsters have allegedly been responsible for at least 140 acts of vandalism or physical sabotage; malicious threats against at least 85 persons; harassment (by telephone, e-mail, or otherwise) of the employees of more than 30 American companies; and the illegal dissemination of personal information (including credit card and social security numbers) of at least 120 people.
New Day, New Crime, New Hat
There is, generally, great confusion about the relationship between SHAC and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). The latter is an underground, loose-knit criminal group that the FBI considers a “domestic terrorist” group. ALF and its sister group, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), have anonymously claimed responsibility for over $40 million in damage resulting from over 500 crimes during their 15-year U.S. crime spree.
SHAC officially rejects the notion that it is related (or identical) to ALF, but such denials make less sense with each passing year. Considering that three out of SHAC’s four main directors in the U.S. have ties to crimes claimed by ALF, and that the two keynote speakers at SHAC’s December 2002 protest event (Rodney Coronado and Robin Webb) are both convicted ALF criminals, it’s hard to imagine that there’s no real connection there.
Moreover, members of the ALF have issued claims of “responsibility” (however meaningless, considering their anonymity) for crimes committed against SHAC’s publicly named targets. This allows SHAC to claim, with a straight face, that it’s a “nonviolent” organization. At the same time, ALF and ELF spokespeople continue to cling to the myth that no human has been hurt or killed as a result of those groups’ “actions.”
Taking public credit for secret crimes is a voluntary exercise. If an Animal Liberation Front “action” results in serious injury or otherwise does not go as planned, the criminals involved tend to remain silent — or to issue their claim of “responsibility” in the name of another group. Group names like the “Animal Rights Militia” and the “Justice Department” have been conjured up out of thin air to avoid having to associate the ALF with actual bloodshed.
In much the same way, ALF conveniently “claims” crimes against Huntingdon Life Sciences (and against its customers and clients) that would be hard for an above-ground, more “respectable” group like SHAC to explain to an eager press. Also, the very existence of openly violent (if secretive) fringes within the animal rights movement serves to make above-ground groups like SHAC look relatively harmless by comparison. And that’s just the way they like it.
Still, it would be perfectly reasonable to conclude that SHAC is made up of the same anti-establishment hoodlums who send razor-blade booby-trapped letters to scientists (as the “Justice Department”); burn down research labs, blow up meat trucks, and steal thousands of fur-bearing animals (as the “ALF”); torch SUVs and destroy logging trucks (as the “ELF”); and make life-and-death threats against researchers (as “SHAC”).
The charade breaks down when these thugs are caught, as with Dave Blenkinsop, who eventually pleaded guilty to the savage beating of Huntingdon CEO Brian Cass. Blenkinsop was jailed shortly thereafter for bombing four poultry trucks in Great Britain. SHAC took “credit” for his baseball bat, and ALF for his gasoline can.
In that respect, it’s helpful to think of SHAC as a special-interest subset of the Animal Liberation Front — but one with the audacity to remove its ski mask and claim to be no danger to anyone at all. And, like the ALF, SHAC seems perfectly content to inflict pain and wreak havoc. “If SHAC activists seek to illuminate the condition of laboratory animals,” wrote the Boston Globe in an August 2002 editorial, “they have failed. Their own tactics reveal a disturbing willingness to inflict suffering.”
Committed to an “open-minded search for truth,” and armed with “unrivaled scientific expertise,” the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) “doesn’t say anything [it] can’t back up with solid evidence.” At least, that’s what its fund-raising letters say. The reality is quite different.
UCS embraces an environmental agenda that often stands at odds with the “rigorous scientific analysis” it claims to employ. A radical green wolf in sheep’s clothing, UCS tries to distinguish itself from the Greenpeaces of the world by convincing the media that its recommendations reflect a consensus among the scientific community. And that’s what makes it so dangerous. Whether it’s energy policy or agricultural issues, UCS’s “experts” are routinely given a free pass from newspaper reporters and television producers when they claim that mainstream science endorses their radical agenda.
Here’s how it works: UCS conducts an opinion poll of scientists or organizes a petition that scientists sign. Then it manipulates or misconstrues the results in order to pronounce that science has spoken. In 1986 UCS asked 549 of the American Physical Society’s 37,000 members if Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was “a step in the wrong direction for America’s national security policy.” Despite the biased wording of the push-poll question, only 54 percent disapproved of SDI. Even so, UCS declared that the poll proved “profound and pervasive skepticism toward SDI in the scientific community.”
More recently, UCS pulled a partisan, election-year stunt in 2004 aimed at the Bush Administration. The group rounded up 60 scientists to sign a statement complaining that “the administration is distorting and censoring scientific findings that contradict its policies; manipulating the underlying science to align results with predetermined political decisions.”
On issue after issue, UCS insists, the White House fails to embrace global scientific “consensus” — and that automatically means it has “politicized” science. But UCS itself is frequently guilty of that exact sin. For instance, it works overtime to scare Americans about a whole host of imagined environmental problems associated with genetically modified food. But every authoritative regulatory agency, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization, declares that biotech food crops are perfectly safe.
UCS routinely abuses and politicizes science. Its crusade against farm animals receiving antibiotics presents guesswork as scientifically rigorous analysis, and is calculated to scare the public about risks it admits are groundless. UCS helped initiate the vicious attacks on Danish scientist (and “Skeptical Environmentalist”) Bjorn Lomborg, only to be repudiated by the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology, and Industry. And in 2003, the group dressed up its “strong opposition to the US invasion of Iraq” as an exercise in science.
Like many environmental activist groups, UCS uses the twin motivators of cheer and fear. A giggly Gwenyth Paltrow and a catty Cameron Diaz headlined a series of short appeals about energy conservation that UCS produced. The two mega-stars crow that they turn the water off while brushing their teeth, switch off the light when they leave their bedrooms, and keep the thermostat at 65 degrees. “Its time for us to band together and really make every effort to conserve our natural resources,” chirps Diaz. That’s the sunny side.
But UCS is more adept at producing horror stories than chick flicks. They are fear-mongers of the first order — turning the sober science of health and environmental safety into high drama for public consumption. For example, UCS recently warned that by 2100 the U.S. might suffer 50-80 million more cases of malaria every year if the Senate fails to ratify the Kyoto treaty. Such racy statistics are based on clumsy modeling of worst-case scenarios, and assume — against all evidence of human behavior — that no countermeasures whatsoever would be employed. “Not considering factors such as local control measures or health services,” in their own words. Of course, you won’t find those caveats in the press release.
Genetically Modified Science
Among UCS’s many concerns, “the food you eat” is at the top of the list. More than a million dollars went to its food program in 2001. Genetically enhanced foods — dubbed “Frankenfoods” by opponents — have caused worldwide hysteria even though no reputable scientific institution can find anything to be afraid of. But that doesn’t stop UCS’s “experts” from playing cheerleader to these unfounded fears.
They warn that biotech foods could result in the “squandering of valuable pest susceptibility genes,” “enhancement of the environment for toxic fungi,” and the “creation of new or worse viruses.” They scream about “Poisoned wildlife” and “new allergens in the food supply.” Biotech foods, they claim, might “increase the levels of toxic substances within plants,” “reduce the effectiveness of antibiotics to fight disease,” “contaminate foods with high levels of toxic metals,” “intensify weedy properties” and cause the “rapid evolution of resistance to herbicides in weeds,” leading to “superweeds.”
Rigorous scientific analysis led UCS to this list of horrors, right? Wrong. That was merely a “‘brainstorming’ of potential harms.” So how likely are any of these to occur? “Risk assessments can be complicated,” UCS says, and pretty much leaves it at that. In other words, they have absolutely no idea.
In contrast, more reputable authorities have a very good grasp of the potential risks of genetically enhanced foods. The U.S. Environmental protection Agency says that genetically enhanced corn “does not pose risks to human health or to the environment.” The World Health Organization says that biotech foods “are not likely to present risks for human health” and observes that “no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population.” Even the European Union, which has gone out of its way to stifle food technology for political reasons, notes: “The use of more precise technology [in genetically enhanced crops] and the greater regulatory scrutiny probably make them even safer than conventional plants and foods.”
The Food and Environment Program at UCS is headed up by Margaret Mellon and her deputy Jane Rissler, both of whom hold Ph.Ds and have held positions at prestigious universities. So what do a couple of highly trained research scientists, armed with nothing but guesswork, ideology and a million dollar budget, do? They fight biotech food every step of the way.
Although UCS claims that it “does not support or oppose genetic engineering per se,” Mellon and Rissler in fact have never met a GM food they didn’t mistrust. That’s because they hold biotech foods to an impossibly high standard.
In 1999, UCS joined the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and the Defenders of Wildlife, in petitioning the EPA for strict regulation of corn modified to produce large amounts of the bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin. Bt is a naturally occurring insect poison that protects plants from pests like the European corn borer. UCS’s letter was part of a major scare campaign to convince the public that Bt corn posed a risk to the Monarch Butterfly.
Both the USDA and the EPA later concluded that Bt corn caused no harm to the Monarch. This reinforced the findings of federal regulators who had performed a comprehensive safety review of Bt corn before it was allowed into the marketplace. UCS remains unconvinced, even though the safest place for a Monarch larva to be is in a Bt cornfield. Rissler argued there was “insufficient data” to make such a conclusion.
Precautionary Nonsense
Of course, “sufficient” data can never exist for zealots like Rissler. She continued: “Do we assume the technology is safe… or do we prove it? The scientist in me wants to prove it’s safe.” It’s impossible to prove a negative, to absolutely demonstrate that there are no dangers whatsoever for any given product. The scientist in her knows that too, but she and her colleagues at UCS continue to be guided by the “Precautionary Principle.” This misguided maxim argues that, based on the fear that something harmful may possibly arise, we should opt for technological paralysis.
The Wall Street Journal editorialized in 2000 that The Precautionary Principle “is an environmentalist neologism, invoked to trump scientific evidence and move directly to banning things they don’t like.” It’s a big hit among anti-technology activists because it justifies their paranoia and serves to bludgeon technological progress.
Martin Teitel, who runs another misnamed activist group called the Council for Responsible Genetics, admitted as much in 2001. “Politically,” Teitel said, “it’s difficult for me to go around saying that I want to shut this science down, so it’s safer for me to say something like, ‘It needs to be done safely before releasing it.’” Requiring scientists to satisfy the Principle by proving a negative, Teitel added, means that “they don’t get to do it period.”
It should come as no surprise that UCS joined Teitel’s organization and other die-hard opponents of biotech foods in an activist coalition called the Genetic Engineering Action Network. While acknowledging that “we know of no generic harms associated with genetically engineered organisms,” UCS consistently opposes their introduction to the market on the basis of purely hypothetical risk.
Confronted with the real-world benefits of biotech foods, UCS simply changes the subject to its anti-corporate, socialist leanings. Rissler’s appearance on the PBS show Nova – on a program called “Harvest of Fear” — is a case in point. When the interviewer suggested that “genetically modified crops are arguably much less harmful to the environment” Rissler responded: “It depends on where you want to compromise. There’s another issue here with corporate control of the food supply.”
UCS’s knee-jerk reaction to biotech foods is matched only by its animus towards agribusiness. A 1994 press release condemning FDA approval of biotech foods complained that some of the data used by the oversight agency was provided by private enterprises.
In her zeal to decry increased food production from the corporate adoption of biotechnology, Mellon has argued that it’s “not clear that more milk or pork is good.” And UCS supports a radical vision of “sustainable agriculture.” That means no pesticides or herbicides; no fertilizer (other than E.coli-rich manure); and eating only “locally grown” produce. If it’s not clear under this plan where New York City would get its rice or how Chicago would scrounge up any bananas, there’s a reason for it. They wouldn’t.
Pigs, Chickens and Cows, Oh My!
Hogging It, a UCS report published in 2001, argues that the use of antibiotics in farm animals could result in human diseases that are resistant to conventional treatments. The report received a great deal of press attention, and UCS is not afraid to brag about it. “We developed the numbers that everyone uses when talking about… overuse of antibiotics,” trumpets a fund-raising letter. But how did they go about developing those numbers? “Rigorous scientific analysis”? Hardly. While the livestock industry actually calculates the amounts of antibiotics administered to farm animals using hard sales figures, UCS guesses at average drug dosages and then multiplies by the total number of animals. That’s “brainstorming.” Not science.
The real experts, like David Bell, coordinator of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s anti-microbial resistance programs, aren’t impressed by Hogging It. Interestingly, UCS admits the weakness of its evidence. The executive summary of Hogging It complains about a “gaping chasm” in the data. Nevertheless, the authors are proud to produce the “first transparent estimate” of livestock antibiotic use in America.
Estimate? That’s right. “The numbers everyone uses” are just estimates. Moreover, UCS measures antibiotic usage in total tonnage. But is that relevant in any way? UCS concedes that it’s not. The activist group wants the FDA to track antibiotic usage by “type,” since most antibiotics used in animals are unlike those used in humans.
Consumer Reports quotes Margaret Mellon saying, “We know nothing. We are flying blind.” No wonder the American Veterinary Medical Association and the Coalition for Animal Health also reject Hogging It’s findings. But none of that stops UCS from scaring the wits out of the public. Mellon warns of an “era where untreatable infectious diseases are regrettably commonplace.” That might be worth getting “Concerned” about, if only it were based on good science.
Unfortunately, political science masquerading as real science can have real-world consequences. In July 2003, identical bills introduced in the U.S. House and Senate threatened to ban the routine use of eight entire classes of antibiotics in livestock. Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW), a slick PR coalition of activist groups, was especially pleased with the news because its favorite statistic became the legislation’s main factual “finding.” Namely: “An estimated 70 percent of the antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs used in the United States are fed to farm animals.”
Guess who “estimated 70 percent” for KAW? The Union of Concerned Scientists, a long-time coalition member. UCS admits that this estimate was created from mere guesswork, saying on its own website that “data to answer [the following] questions are not available”:
For a group facing so many unanswered questions, answers seem to come remarkably easily. While freely admitting that no good science exists to determine the effect (if any) of livestock antibiotics on human health, UCS managed to convince members of Congress otherwise. At the same time, UCS activists protested outside fast-food restaurants, holding giant “pillburgers” (prop hamburgers stuffed with oversized drug capsules) and chanting “Hey hey — ho ho — Drugs in meat have got to go.”
