Company Research on Genetically Modified Foods is Rigged

[nosmokes]

edit cause sometimes I can't even use spellcheck..

All those surprised, shame on you. As the old saw goes, screw me once shame on you, screw me twice, shame on me. This is what? The 1,249th screwing by the Agbiotech industry?
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original-foodconsumer

Company Research on Genetically Modified Foods is Rigged

By responsibletechnology.org
Nov 21, 2007 - 7:02:14 PM

In 2004, four advocates of genetically modified (GM) foods published a study in the British Food Journal that was sure to boost their cause <1> According to the peer-reviewed paper, when shoppers in a Canadian farm store were confronted with an informed and unbiased choice between GM corn and non-GM corn, most purchased the GM variety. This finding flew in the face of worldwide consumer resistance to GM foods, which had shut markets in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere. It also challenged studies that showed that the more information on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) consumers have, the less they trust them. <2> The study, which was funded by the biotech-industry front group, Council for Biotechnology Information and the industry’s trade association, the Crop Protection Institute of Canada (now Croplife Canada), was given the Journal’s prestigious Award for Excellence for the Most Outstanding Paper of 2004 and has been cited often by biotech advocates.

Stuart Laidlaw, a reporter from Canada’s Toronto Star, visited the farm store several times during the study and described the scenario in his book Secret Ingredients. Far from offering unbiased choices, key elements appeared rigged to favor GM corn purchases. The consumer education fact sheets were entirely pro-GMO, and Doug Powell, the lead researcher, enthusiastically demonstrated to Laidlaw how he could convince shoppers to buy the GM varieties. He confronted a farmer who had already purchased non-GM corn. After pitching his case for GMOs, Powell proudly had the farmer tell Laidlaw that he had changed his opinion and would buy GM corn in his next shopping trip.

Powell’s interference with shoppers’ “unbiased” choices was nothing compared to the effect of the signs placed over the corn bins. The sign above the non-GM corn read, “Would you eat wormy sweet corn?” It further listed the chemicals that were sprayed during the season. By contrast, the sign above the GM corn stated, “Here’s What Went into Producing Quality Sweet Corn.” It is no wonder that 60% of shoppers avoided the “wormy corn.” In fact, it may b e a testament to people’s distrust of GMOs that 40% still went for the “wormy” option.

Powell and his colleagues did not mention the controversial signage in their study. They claimed that the corn bins in the farm store were “fully labelled”—either “genetically engineered Bt sweet corn” or “Regular sweet-corn.”

When Laidlaw’s book came out, however, Powell’s “wormy” sign was featured in a photograph, <3> exposing what was later described by Cambridge University’s Dr. Richard Jennings as “flagrant fraud.” Jennings, who is a leading researcher on scientific ethics, says, “It was a sin of omission by failing to divulge information which quite clearly should have been disclosed.” <4>
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complete article here

[SpiralHawk]

1. Sounds like these researchers went to Republicon University

to "earn" their degrees.

[Mike03]

2. Important Post as usual, Nosmokes

Thanks once again for your efforts to alert people.

Wake up, folks.

Doesn't anymore care anymore about what they put in their mouths? They go to the trouble to shop for fruits and vegetables but they don't care if it's disease causing genetically engineered foods, and they don't bother to take the trouble to research the dozens of studies that have demonstrated these foods are hazardous.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

3. What a con

This is an amazing bit from the link:

Monsanto’s submission to Australian regulators on their high lysine GM corn provides several examples of optimistic assumptions used in place of science. The GM protein produced in the corn is also found in soil. The company claimed that since people consume small residues of soil on fruits and vegetables, the protein has a history of safe consumption. An independent calculation by the Centre for Integrated Research on Biosafety (INBI), however, reveals the weakness of this argument. Based on the amount of GM corn protein an average US citizen would consume (if all their corn were Monsanto’s variety), “for equivalent exposure” of the protein from soil “people would have to eat between 80-800 million (males) or 60-700 million (females) kilograms of soil each day, or nearly as much as 10,000kg/second 24 hours a day seven days a week.” INBI estimated that the normal exposure to the protein from soil residues was actually “about 30 billion-4 trillion times less than exposure through corn.” <10>

In addition, certain nutritional components of this GM variety (i.e. protein content, total dietary fiber, acid detergent fiber, and neutral detergent fiber) lie far outside the normal range for corn. Instead of comparing their corn to normal controls, which would reveal this disparity, Monsanto compared it to obscure corn varieties that were also substantially outside the normal range on precisely these values.

http://foodconsumer.org/7777/8888/T_echnologies_40/112107022007_Company_Research_on_Genetically_Modified_Foods_is_Rigged.shtml

How can anyone of integrity defend this boondoggle?