The best for you

The best for you

But we have more to learn. The stakeholder consultation process is the start of a systematic attempt by TNCs to redefine themselves as corporations operating for the common good, not for profit. To give two examples, the most ground-breaking adverts last came from Monsanto, in a £1 million advertising campaign on biotech. Using the names of environmental groups to legitimise the adverts, the company comes across as rational and reasonable and worried what YOU think. Not up for discussion is whether Monsanto will stop genetic modification, but how best to use it. The company is also using labelling as a way of making the technique acceptable. Its PR is very clever, but also "dishonest and untrue", according to the NGO, Genewatch, and "wrong, unproven, misleading and confusing", according to a 1999 ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority in Britain.

Monsanto also launched a Pan-European offensive called "Let the Harvest Begin" whereby they persuaded African leaders to endorse the "dream," to quote Monsanto, "of a tomorrow without hunger. To realise that dream, we must welcome the science that promises hope. Slowing the acceptance of biotechnology is a luxury the hungry world cannot afford."

The implication of the adverts is that if you question biotech now you run the risk of being accused of an imperialist luddite, someone trying to deny starving Africans access to food. In response, delegates from 24 African States to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, backed by 30 development, farming and environmental organisations have objected "strongly that the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly, nor economically beneficial to us."

It seems that Monsanto's PR exercise backfired quite spectacularly: in November last year, leaked public opinion research showed that the Monsanto advertising campaign "was for the most part, overwhelmed by the society-wide collapse of support for genetic engineering in foods". In February

1999, intense media interest in genetic engineering was intertwined with free-falling public confidence in GM foods. Bryan Appleyard, writing in the Sunday Times, said that Monsanto had been "established in many peoples' minds as the most sinister company in the world."

Writing in the Financial Times, Richard Tomkins wrote about Monsanto's "Own goal" arguing that "When the next book on great public relations disasters is written, it is a safe bet that it will be dominated by the story of Monsanto's woes over genetically modified foods in Europe". It is, said

Tomkins "the biggest business fiasco since the Royal Dutch /Shell became the target of public outrage over its plans to sink the Brent Spar oil platform".