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Attack of the Killer Labels

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By: Jay Byrne

Words like Frankenfoods and genetic engineering scare consumers and deny them the facts about agricultural technology and food safety, the author writes.
Its official and now were stuck with it. Frankenfoods has made it to the

latest edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Does it matter? aries included, will this one trivial mention matter?

As students are returning to school this fall, purchasing new books, diction-

My children love to say sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Poppycock. Language matters. It defines how we approach and process issues influencing areas of our lives, both intellectually and emotionally. The use of powerfully negative words like Frankenfoods foods derived from biotech crops is a prime example. in media coverage and our language regarding the regulation and labeling of

The words chosen by the media and others in their coverage of biotechnol-

ogy in agriculture and the ways currently being debated over how to provide in how propaganda often trumps science and manipulates public opinion, even on such important issues as food production and food safety.

consumers informed choice in the labeling of foods are a striking case study

How did we get here? Despite claims by European green activists or U.K. supermarket retailers who first exploited the term for profit in the late 1990s, the word Frankenfoods did not originate in Europe. In June 1992, a Boston College professor and opponent of biotechnology wrote a letter-to-theeditor of The New York Times in response to an opinion piece supporting FDA oversight of biotechnology-produced foods.1 In the letter, Professor Paul Lewis coined the term Frankenfoods. Within two weeks, The New York Times-not the sensational and often baudy British tabloids-used the term in a front-page headline, and a recent news search reveals more than 6,000 media references to this phrase since The Times banner headline.2 Why did the venerable New York Times opt to place such a loaded term in a Page One
1 Lewis, Paul, Mutant Foods Create Risks We Cant Yet Guess, The New York Times, June 16, 1992. 2 ONeil, Molly, Geneticists Latest Discovery: Public Fear of Frankenfood, The New York Times, June 28, 1992.

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Attack of the Killer Labels

headline? Times food writer Molly ONeill told the Boston Globe simply, I love the term. Its got such wonderfully chilling connotations.3

Biotechnology vs. genetic engineering

Chilling indeed. A study by the London School of Economics found that the medias use of Frankenfood headlines and other metaphors for foods produced using agricultural biotechnology helped create and fuel public fears.4 Numerbiotechnology, yet other polls show these same consumers oppose genetic engineering of food.5 Clearly language choice matters.

ous published polls show a majority of consumers support foods derived from

The two phrases describe the same thing, but they are perceived quite differ-

ently, and that fact is not lost on interest groups that benefit from these fears. conventional and biotech-as opposed to organic-farming as nonorganic,

Activists and other industry groups with a vested financial interest have labeled chemical-laden and even toxin-laden. A 1999 Internet memo from an ora glimpse into the depth of manipulation behind anti-biotechnology propamedia often poorly trained in science.

ganic industry advertising executive directed to activists and journalists gives ganda. Moreover, it shows the success that such groups have had in co-opting a

GE Euphemisms and More-Accurate Alternative Power Words to Use: Control-

ling the Language, distributed by groups including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and various organic agriculture lobbying interests, provides a glossary of alternatives to the accepted, more accurate, science-based language descripists and journalists that biology and biotechnology are words we should nies and biotechnologists.

tions for biotechnology applications in agriculture. The author counseled activnever use... . Other terms to eschew: food scientists, biotechnology compa-

Make them use our words, writes Peter Michael Ligotti, architect of several In3

Muru, Mark, Wayward words, The Boston Globe, June 29, 1992.

Frankenfood headlines scare public, study shows, Reuters, July 16, 1999 5 IFIC, Support for Food Biotechnology Holds (71% support)..., IFIC Backgrounder, Sept. 23, 2002, http: www.ific.org & Majority oppose GM Foods (70% oppose), Farmers Guardian, Dec. 28, 2001.

Attack of the Killer Labels

ternet propaganda campaigns in marketing organic foods. Look how successful the terminator seed term was. At first, that was a term only used by activists. gesting an extension of those two great successes, adds Ligotti.6 And congratulations on the success of the term Frankenstein food. I am sug-

His glossary proposed alternative terms, including genetic engineering industry, genetically engineered foods, Frankenfood, test-tube food and mufirst biotech crops were approved for commercial use) compared with the first used by opinion leaders and the media: There was a 100-fold increase in the tated food. A search of articles from the first six months of 1993 (the year the six months of 2003 shows the success of those seeking to change the language medias use of the more inflammatory and emotional words such as genetic, ogy or bioengineered.

manipulation, and altered over the benign, but accurate terms biotechnol-

Another outspoken nonorganic food critic from India has sought, for example, to recast the Rockefeller Foundation Vitamin A enhanced rice project dubbed Golden Rice as Jaundiced Rice. The Golden Rice project is designed to help guage such as jaundiced rice is now creating confusion, particularly among could do the most good.7

alleviate blindness, malnutrition and related childhood mortality rates, yet landeveloping world stakeholders, where adoption and integration into local diets

Dr. Steven B. Katz, an associate professor of English at North Carolina State

University, studies the linkage between language and public perceptions of risk. The important role that language plays in the publics perception and reception of scientific data and risk assessment is often neglected by scientists, says Katz. He singles out issues that have been slowed or completely halted by public concerns driven by language-including biotechnology. Katz notes that such choices and faulty assumptions by scientists about the role of language, emotion and values in communicating with the media and public.8

public resistance has been traced to communication problems-flawed rhetorical

6 Ligotti, Peter, For Activists/Journalists - GE Power Words to Use: Controlling the Language, Ban GE e-mail listserv, May 17, 1999 7 Shiva, Vandana, Biodevastation 2000 Speech, Boston, MA, July 2000. 8 Katz, Steven B., Language and Persuasion: The Communication of Biotechnology with the Public NC State University Feb. 18, 2001,at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual

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Attack of the Killer Labels

No killer tomatoes
To be accurate, virtually all foods are genetically altered or manipulated. Foods from apples to wheat did not exist in their current form before man began to alter and cross their genetic makeup-including organic crops. In addition, thousands of crop varieties today, many used in organic agriculture, were developed through chemical and nuclear mutagenesis-haphazardly exposing seeds and This genetic mutation clearly altered the genetic structures of plants, yet replants to gene mutating radiation or chemicals to alter their genetic structures. quired none of the similar regulatory safety testing of the more precise biotechnology engineered breeding programs. Yet these foods make up a significant ganic food crops promoted as alternatives to the mislabeled Frankenfoods. portion of the breeding stock for the so-called natural, unadulterated and or-

Modern biotechnology tools are changing the way farmers grow crops making them pest- and disease-resistant or able to grow in harsher climates, but are altering the actual foods we eat less than most conventional and organic crossvarieties derived through random mutagenesis. Yet many journalists use lan-

breeding programs and with significant knowledge and precision lacking in crop guage and certain unscrupulous food companies use labels and advertising that ical makeup, nutrition or safety of the foods we eat. In fact, simple biotechnology breeding techniques-moving one or more well- known and researched set of beneficial genes into a plant-typically undergoes years of highly-regulated testing guidelines to ensure its safety prior to commercial release.

mislead us to believe there is a vast and potentially dangerous shift in the phys-

In a recently published book funded by the Rockefeller Foundation titled Food,

Inc. author Peter Pringle writes that biotech food products are not Frankenfoods, noting: The changes are not inherently unsafe, nor are the companies that produce them inherently evil. Pringle suggests that biotech opponent campaigns, awareness beyond its usefulness and turned it into scaremongering.9

many heavily funded by the multibillion dollar organic food industry, have raised

The truth about agricultural biotechnology is far more benign than the image
meeting. 9 Nestle, Marion, Eat Drink and be Wary, The Washington Post, July 6, 2003.

Attack of the Killer Labels

of a mutant killer tomato would indicate or a food label warning may contain GMOs. Time magazine reported, By over-reacting to fears fanned by well-fed

consumers in the industrialized world, food producers might uproot an industry they desperately need.10 The Wall Street Journal notes that the media and special interest groups are preying on overblown and growing irrational fears, like a period in which rational sources of it were in such short supply.11 food biotechnology. The Journal wrote: People who study fear have never seen

that could someday provide billions of people in the rest of the world with crops

Mary Shellys gothic horror story was written in 1816 as a cautionary tale of the potential dangers of scientists playing God but more so was an even greater admonition against public overreaction to science. The choice for consumers,

dictionary authors and responsible journalists should be clear: Get your infor-

mation and select your words carefully from the scientists-not the wordsmiths. Language counts. Labels will only have meaning if they are driven by facts, not fears.

Copyright 2003 PR Tactics. Reprinted with permission by the Public Relations Society of America. (www.prsa.org)

10 Whos afraid of Frankenfood? Time magazine, Nov. 22, 1999 11 Eig, Jonathan, Analyze this, as good times roll what are American worried about now, The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 9, 2000.