Media Bias/Fact Check: Stonyfield GMO video—and response to critics—encourages censorship, misleads consumers

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Stonyfield Farms, a large organic dairy company sells and markets its products using many of the strategies outlined in the Academics Review report on organic marketing. One of their most recent advertisements has attracted a lot of attention from consumers, and also scientists and farmers. The video can be seen here. The question is, how does it stack up in terms of bias, and fact checking?

In the video, the kids are quoted describing GMOs as, “monstrous” and give an example saying, “They take a gene from a fish and put it in a tomato.” It’s worth noting that while a gene from a flounder that confers cold tolerance was trialed in a tomato variety to make them easier to grow in northern climates, it was never commercialized due to poor performance and concerns about consumer acceptance. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has commented on how exploitive and mischaracterizing this message in Stonyfield advertisement is. The video ends with a young girl saying ‘it’s better to get informed before you like, eat it’. But Stonyfield’s handling of the situation indicates that they don’t support the free flow of information around this subject at all.

Read full, original post: Stonyfield’s Misleading Ad Campaign and their Attempt to Silence Science-based Discussion

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