Bayer Monsanto GMO propaganda

The GMO industry has done everything in its power to defend its business model, including spending tens of millions on lobbying, colluding with an EPA official and even working to get its own officials into positions of power within the government (google “Michael Taylor and Monsanto” for more).

Their synthetic chemicals and lab-created seeds based model has taken huge hits in recent years however in large part due to documentaries like ‘Food, Inc.,’ ‘Food Matters,’ ‘GMO OMG’ and others that have taken aim at the unfulfilled, empty promises of the industry.

Now, the industry has its own documentary narrated by Neil DeGrase Tyson, and two key academics in the natural food movement are taking issue with how their own views were presented.

Nestle and Pollan Take Issue with Pro-GMO Film

In a new editorial published on the website EcoWatch.com, U.S. Right to Know Co-Director Stacy Malkan lays out the many concerns with the new documentary ‘Food Evolution,’ which is narrated by Tyson and purports itself as a more balanced look at genetically engineered food.

“All of (Tyson’s fans), and especially the young people who trust Tyson to lead with integrity in matters of science, deserve better than the twisted tale dished out by Food Evolution, the new documentary film about genetically modified foods (GMOs) that is driving its promotion on the coattails of Tyson’s narration and kicking up controversy for its biased approach…” she writes.

Tyson is of course well known as a personality and astrophysicist, and among fans of the organic food movement as the man who conflated traditional breeding with GMOs, stating that we’ve been “genetically modifying food for thousands of years”in a dismissive rant that makes no distinction between Monsanto’s lab creations and food that has been cross-bred in the field.

The documentary itself is a “textbook case of corporate propaganda,” Malkan states, noting that a trade group whose leadership hails from the agrochemical industry funded the documentary as part of a multi-year “messaging project.”

The biases of the film are clear according to NYU Professor and nutrition expert Marion Nestle, who wrote her own critical review of the film and asked the film’s directors for her short interview clip to be removed due the way her segment was presented and her views misrepresented.

“The director refuses. He believes his film is fair and balanced. I do not,” Nestle wrote. “I am often interviewed (see media) and hardly ever quoted incorrectly or out of context. This film is one of those rare exceptions.”

Michael Pollan, the best-selling author and filmmaker, said his experience and take on the film were “much the same” as Nestle’s, and that the filmmakers have misrepresented his views, Malkan wrote.

For more info on the biases of the film, check out Malkan’s full editorial by clicking on this link. A letter has also been signed by 45 academics calling the film a “piece of propaganda.”