Why did it take Frankenstein ten years to bite the journalists?
Published 26 February 1999
Media
In the debate about genetically modified foods, I admit partiality. A couple of summers ago, holidaying in mid-Wales, we ran into Patrick Holden, the boss of the Soil Association, who took us to his hilltop farm, where the weeds are blasted with a flame-thrower, rather than pesticides, and the cows have story-book names, not numbers.
His pitch that organic farming would bring back jobs, life and economic sense to Britain's agri-deserts combined with the lusciousness of his carrots to make me a convert. Holden is among those who believe that organic farming and genetically modified plants cannot coexist, since organic strains will inevitably be cross-pollinated from genetically re- engineered crops - not to mention the wider environmental risks.
I thought at the time that here was dry tinder awaiting its spark, duly supplied many months later by an argument among scientists about the results of one experiment. In the inferno that followed, the story acquired official "campaign" status at the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Independent on Sunday. The Guardian ran a campaign ages ago. It is an issue that will not now go away.
The conventional wisdom that we are now all victims of hysterical misinformation does not bear scrutiny. I doubt that Rosie Boycott will want her page-one headline in the Express, "Mutant crops could kill you", framed for posterity. But for the most part, the coverage served the essential purpose of belatedly bringing an important issue to widespread attention. Certainly some of the language was provocative, but there was lots of information, most of it accurate, and science-writers were wheeled out to wag the finger at excesses on neighbouring pages.
But why has the issue taken off today rather than ten years ago, when Roger Highfield, then as now science writer on the Daily Telegraph, wrote a story about "Frankenstein farming", headlined "Dawn of the age of Bio-Angst" ? Since then, environmental campaigners have fly-posted the Frankenstein label tirelessly, but only in the current "crisis" has it been adopted without irony by newspapers.
There are a number of reasons: lingering mistrust following the BSE scandal and the conjuncture with other favoured themes, such as new Labour's alleged cronyism with big business and its weakness in the face of American interests. When new Labour decided to make itself the "party of business", it may have overlooked the point that business is far from popular in Britain. Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported the latest findings from a series of surveys by MORI, which puts public confidence in business at its lowest for 30 years.
The story was also helped by the availability of Lord Sainsbury as a human target and Monsanto as perfectly cast corporate villain. Having employed the most expensive lobbyists in London, Monsanto came up with the crassest public- relations offensive since McDonald's went to court against a couple of leaflet-distributing greenies.
How Monsanto must envy its rival Zeneca. The British firm had mostly kept its head down, only to emerge last week with its own triumphantly amateurish public-relations coup, which involved the Daily Telegraph photographing a group of white-coated scientists apparently munching genetically modified tomatoes - at first I thought they were clipping on their Comic Relief red noses.
The next day, the Independent informed us that Zeneca would be reported to the health and safety authorities because, in eating the tomatoes' seeds, the scientists risked releasing unauthorised genetically engineered organisms into the local sewage farm. If only these American lobbyists could understand that the way to the heart of the British public is through its bowels.
Incidentally, the buried scoop of the GM affair also involved McDonald's. The Mail 's health page did a ring-round and learnt that the Big M used "Frankenstein soya" to coat its fish, but planned to phase out all GM products "within four weeks". Wasn't it the hamburger chain's decision to ban British beef that consigned a generation of cows and politicians to the slaughterhouse?
But the most interesting question to emerge from the affair is why the Prime Minister misread it so badly, in spite of extensive briefing in recent months. The Sunday Telegraph concluded that he acted (in the paper's view, uncharacteristically) out of conviction. Tony Blair has another motive, however, foreshadowed in his recent attacks on the trivial national press. He wishes to distance himself from the fourth estate so that he can appeal to the people directly over the euro, as Bill Clinton did over Monica Lewinsky.
I can hardly complain about this, since I was among those who could not understand why new Labour needed such a clammy embrace with the Europhobic press in the first place. More worrying is the Downing Street view that Jack Straw's inept decision to injunct the Sunday Telegraph's leak of the Macpherson report on the Stephen Lawrence inquiry is part of the same campaign. I begin to wonder whether Monsanto and the Prime Minister's office might be using the same public relations firm.
The author is professor of journalism at Cardiff University
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