| Monsanto
Monitor: January 1999
FEATURE Surviving Monsanto:Emerging Industry PR Strategies The strong public response to GM foods and genetic engineering has forced industry and policy makers to rethink their communication strategies. Industry is in crisis and corporations are having to rally together to find ways in which to deal with the public's unwillingness to accept biotechnology as an inevitable innovation. The advice that Burson- Marsteller Government & Public Affairs Europe gave to EuropaBio (The European Association for Bioindustries) in January 1997 is obviously only beginning to sink in now: "Stay off the killing field: Public issues of environmental and human health risk are communications killing fields for bioindustries in Europe"[1] Associations such as the EFB (European Federation of Biotechnology) are working with industry and policy makers on public perception of genetic engineering (GE). The EFB's Task Group on Public Perceptions of Biotechnology organises meetings such as the recent Brussels conference on "Public Perception and Public Policy" (15-16/12/98). This conference provided industry and policy makers with an opportunity to plan out their future public relations strategies. The Monsanto Experience: A Lesson for Industry Monsanto was the first company to aggressively sell the 'concept' of biotechnology and its products to the European public. It is considered by other industry members, scientists and policy makers to be partly if not wholly responsible for negative public feeling against GM food. The company's 1997-8 European PR campaign backfired as consumers reacted strongly against the so-called 'benefits' to society and to the environment that Monsanto was trying to sell them. Exposure has been particularly strong in the UK although throughout Europe, suspicion of the genetechnologies and of the multinational corporations behind them is high. "They used the might of the conglomerate. They used bullying tactics, really. Used their might to bulldoze it through" (a journalist when asked about the 1998 UK Monsanto PR campaign) [2] As a result of this, Monsanto and other industry members are now finding themselves, together with policy makers, in the difficult position of having to 'reverse' negative public perception towards food biotechnology. "Our work in Britain is still trying to overcome the strong negative reaction to the way Monsanto introduced this issue though there is some growing recognition that Monsanto is handling this issue better" [2] If Monsanto's disastrous PR campaign has in many ways helped to expose the corporation as a profit and power hungry giant, a more subtle and more 'successful' media campaign by corporations who have learnt lessons from Monsanto will be more difficult to deal with. It is vital for environmental, consumer groups and citizens to be able to keep track of the new communication strategies being worked on by industry so as to expose the manipulation behind them.
Public Relations: A Convenient Solution to an Inconvenient Issue Industry in particular is framing communication (PR, marketing,…) as the root of the crisis facing genetic engineering perceptions. Although in itself it is proving hard to deal with, it is nonetheless an infinitely easier problem to solve than environmental and health concerns. Dealing with such concerns would be highly likely to lead to moratoria - extremely bad news both financially and competitively-speaking for the European genetech industry. It is much easier to decide that citizens are against biotechnology because they just don't know what it is. One recent example of this was a statement by Philippe Gay of Novartis Seeds at the EFB Brussels conference [3] that the recent Novartis Bt maize issue in France was merely a "communication problem". The French Conseil D'Etat's (France's highest court) decision against authorisation for the cultivation of Novartis's Bt maize was based on the fact that Novartis's dossier on the Bt maize was judged to be incomplete, especially concerning the antibiotic resistance properties of this crop [4]. Policy makers and politicians, whilst very sensitive to public opinion, are being led by the "competitiveness of Europe in the global markets" argument. They too need to believe that communication and the way in which it is presented to the public are the main barriers to be overcome. The EFB Task Group on Public Perceptions of Biotechnology (see article) and other such organisations play an important role here: whilst apparently organising conferences on public perception to find ways to help the public reach 'informed decisions', they are in fact providing industry, scientists and policy makers with the opportunity to co-operate on communication strategies that will lead Europe's consumers to believe that biotechnology is the way forward.
Industry Strategy and New Communication Tools Public Relations and marketing are being developed in 4 main areas: industry 'dialogue' initiatives; the transparency of Governmental Institutions; coalitions including direct action by scientists; and informing and educating the public to reach 'informed decisions'.
Policy makers see transparency as a strategic tool in re-establishing "trust". Whilst transparency is important, it is often used selectively and as a PR tool which enables the more important issues of public opinion on legislation to be sidelined. "The lay public does not have the knowledge to evaluate scientific and technical issues with regard to modern biotechnology. People realise that potential risks of biotechnology must be investigated and controlled by third parties: producers and authorities. As citizens can not evaluate the technology, they will evaluate the regulators. However, public surveys indicate that many citizens in Europe do not believe that biotechnology is regulated very well. Moreover, public institutions are not well trusted. This situation may affect the acceptance of the use of biotechnology in food production." [5] Dialogue is yet again seen as a handy PR tool whilst enabling potentially unwanted legislation to be avoided: "Parties with opposing opinions can choose between two general strategies in dealing with the contentious issues surrounding biotechnology - conflict and dialogue. [...] Eventually, the conflict may result in political decision, for example in new legislation. With the uncertain and ambivalent attitude of the general public and even politicians in the biotechnology area, it is often very difficult to predict the outcome of such conflict." [6]
The Swiss Referendum on genetic engineering, which took place on June 7, 1998, was a victory for industry, National Government and other genetic engineering proponents. At this referendum, a 2:1 majority voted not to ban genetic engineering in Switzerland. In strategic terms, the idea of coalition was found to be effective by the genetic engineering proponents: by having as many different people/groups as possible arguing for genetic engineering, the big corporations and politicians took a back seat as 'everyday' people went out into pubs, markets and shopping streets to give their views for genetic engineering. According to the EFB's briefing paper 8 on the Swiss Referendum, "Coalitions are essential for bringing about political change [...] It helped [..] to have a majority of medical, patient and farming organisations on their side, in addition to virtually all laboratory scientists as well as the government and its agencies" [7]. According to Professor Richard Braun, Vice-Chairman of the EFB Task Group on Public Perceptions of Biotechnology, one of the most important events in the build up to the referendum was the mobilisation of scientists, especially young ones, as an interface with the public: pro-biotech demonstrations as well as direct communication with the public were organised. It would appear therefore that this is seen by industry as a new strategic tool: local action that could directly include scientists, thus enabling a certain distance to be established between genetic engineering and multinational corporations. This would ensure an intense but apparently (to the public) informal communication campaign to be carried out by research scientists from academic institutions in whom the public have more trust than in industry or government. Whilst advertising techniques are not to be totally sidelined, the emphasis is to be placed on explaining genetic engineering and promoting dialogue.
'Informed decision' is a communication concept developed by industry and policy makers to suggest that citizens' current fears are unfounded and are simply negative reactions to inevitable change. Surveys such as the Eurobarometer 46.1 serve to back up this notion with questions aimed at showing how little the public know about genetic engineering. Programmes for 'educating and informing' the public are the 'tools' behind such a concept. [8] Biotechnology Teaching in Schools: the EIBE [3] The European Initiative for Biotechnology Education (EIBE) is a European Commission funded project that was set up in 1991 by CUBE (Concertation Unit for Biotech in Europe) and covers 17 EU and Eastern European countries. It works with biotechnology education initiatives and helps to develop them by training teachers, providing educational materials, etc. Its aims are to 'reflect current issues' in biotechnology. EIBE is a perfect example of the much repeated idea of 'informed decision' whereby young people are taught by their teachers, who themselves have the possibility of being trained by the EIBE, about biotechnology. "New areas of development and technologies like biotechnology arouse suspicion in the minds of many people because they do not really know what it is about" [9]It specifically targets 16 to 19 years olds, stating in the conference abstract, "The up-and-coming generation are however more amenable to change, and students of school and college age represent a target group that is potentially receptive to the development of an ability to understand the principles underpinning the new biotechnology and to assess the implications of current and future developments" [9] One may ask how it is possible for the European Commission -who sees biotechnology as an important innovative technology which will have important commercial implications for the EU- is able to be objective and to present teenagers with all the issues surrounding biotechnology. The idea of perceiving teenagers as a "target group" is worrying since 16-19 years olds represent a vulnerable age group still growing up and coming to terms with many htmlects of life. Being at school or college, they are still very much in the 'learning what you're told to' state of mind, and so being taught about biotechnology is likely to influence them rather than enable balanced decision making.
Science Centres and Museums across Europe [3] A Science, Industry and Technology initiative partially funded by the European Commission's DGXII to create travelling biotechnology exhibitions is underway with a 'Future Foods' exhibition travelling between London's Science Museum, Lisbon in Portugal and Lille in France. Another exhibition 'Gene Worlds' is organised for Spain and Greece. These are "hands on" exhibitions, another attempt at informing the public. They travel around European museums but have also been in shopping malls, so as to reach a wider audience than the museum public. Yet again, balanced information for a public with often limited scientific knowledge is managed and financed by groups who have themselves taken a position on biotechnology. Such communication tools are very powerful since they have the appearance of being educational whilst presenting a one-sided view that biotechnology is the way forward, and that the public must simply be taught the 'right' way of thinking. Access Excellence: Industry-Sponsored High School Teaching Education programmes have already been developed over the last few years in the US. One example of this is Access Excellence, a programme funded by Genentech, a medical biotechnology company, which provides high school teachers with new scientific information and enables the exchange of teaching methods via the Web. For more information: Conclusion New industry PR tactics are becoming subtler and therefore harder to pin down. Corporations have understood that they must distance themselves from issues surrounding GM foods. Even more importantly, they have realised that health and environmental concerns need to be 'dropped' and therefore shown to be annex to genetic engineering. Convincing the public that everybody has been wrong about GE is the basic aim of their strategy. 'Dialogue', 'Informed Decision', 'Education' and a publicly activeheterogeneous pro-genetech group (scientists, farmers, medical workers, young people,…) are the new industry tools that have already proved themselves effective.
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