While more than one quarter million opponents of H.R. 933 signed their names to a petition in an attempt to pre-empt President Obama from signing this continuing agricultural spending bill dubbed the "Monsanto Protection Act" into law, sign it he did. And I find it terribly incongruous that buried deep inside this new law is a provision that protects the Monsanto company-the world's largest seed company-from any future litigation, regardless of harmful effects discovered in their GMOs or GE seeds.
While food products containing the harmful genetically modified organisms (GMOs) -already banned in many countries-produced by Monsanto may not be found on the White House Menu-or in Michelle Obama's healthy garden-why then, and despite public demand for food safety, are U.S. consumers being subjected to a dual standard?
While you may not be current on food safety issues and concerns, or FDA mandates and legislation, the visual depiction of the Monsanto GMO story (shown in the NetBase social media intelligence analysis below) offers up fast, reliable social PR forensics that reveals a disturbing reduction in food safety controls aimed squarely at both Monsanto and the Obama White House.
This Monsanto-GMO blog is a "listening" exercise in social forensics that shows a picture is worth a thousand words.
In listening to a year's worth of data on the subject of GMOs, a single company-Monsanto-is filtered among the top 25 terms.
This isn't a new story, by far, but it's one that begs the question as to why such a health-conscious White House would bend so easily to Monsanto and its powerful GMO lobby-despite the surge in healthy living principles espoused by local/state initiatives and medical authorities, as well as recent mounting consumer outrage about food contamination (Nestle) and dangerous additives (Kraft). It also is the story of a contradictory, if not biased "listening strategy" by the first Administration in history to win a second term-and by a landslide-on the strength of a social campaign strategy steered by sophisticated Big Data scientists and analytics.
Still, with concern over Monsanto and the dangers of GMOs including elevated cancer risk, organ failure, crop contamination, and undisclosed GMO labeling top of mind in the public, President Obama attached his name to bill H.R. 933, signing it into law and protecting Monsanto from any GMO litigation-effectively reversing the Federal judiciary mandate requiring FDA scrutiny, testing and approval of GMOs and GE [genetically engineered] products-as well as giving Monsanto immunity from litigation, even if GMOs and GE seeds are eventually proven to be harmful. While the evidence is still inconclusive, there is enough science to raise serious doubt.
The public now has been left out in the cold and unprotected from the potential dangers of genetically engineered crops and food products and Monsanto's GMOs.
With public trust in government and business now at historic lows (according to a recent Pew study and Gallup Poll), the Big Data era of social media intelligence in which we now live has created a new consumer. According to J. Walter Smith of The Futures Groups, this consumer is equally "engaged" and "enraged," and one with a "seething" engagement globally with brands and institutions.
Listening to public sentiment about GMOs this past year showed us that public disapproval consistently remained at or below zero. Just last month our NetBase Insight Composer listening platform showed a -69 plunge, corroborated by data filtered for top themes (15% of GMO theme discussions focused on Monsanto), emotions, brands and attributes where Monsanto pops out front and center, even in GMO topic hashtags filters.
President Obama's signing H.R. 933 into law last week is an example of "selective listening." Blatant, even unprincipled, it is a selective listening example that invites public scrutiny. Regardless of entity-government or enterprise-a strategy in today's world of "surround sound" transparent social listening cannot, should not, must not be compromised by any standard that contains a selective listening switch.