Why Big Tobacco Shills Are Pushing to Stop GMO Labeling in California

Here is how the Los Angeles Times described the firm last year:

MB Public Affairs is headed by Mark Bogetich, a gar­ru­lous oper­a­tive known to his friends as “Bogey,” who has helped a num­ber of Republican can­di­dates neu­tral­ize their oppo­nents. In recent years, MB Public Affairs has worked for Altria, once known as the Phillip Morris Cos. …

Bogetich has also been called “the go-to guy for [the Republican] party,” and “the only game in town.” The L.A. Times arti­cle explains how last year MB Public Affairs filed more than 50 pub­lic record act requests to dig up dirt on a small but effec­tive group called the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. No won­der, since the orga­ni­za­tion has scored such impor­tant vic­to­ries as a liv­ing wage for work­ers, which would threaten plenty of businesses.

But which ones? Who knows, because by hir­ing MB Public Affairs to do its dirty work, indus­try gets to keep its nose clean – a clas­sic Big Tobacco tac­tic. Well-known brands such as PepsiCo (which I wrote about last week) and Kraft don’t want to be asso­ci­ated with neg­a­tive cam­paign­ing, so they farm out the job to con­sult­ing firms. In this case, they went right to the top, or the bot­tom. Things are likely to get ugly.

Creating Front Groups for the Dirty Work

Another tac­tic honed by Big Tobacco is to form a front group, which appears to be made up of small busi­nesses and oth­ers designed to give the impres­sion of a grass­roots cam­paign, but in real­ity is funded by large cor­po­ra­tions. This tac­tic, known as an Astroturfing, is alive and well with “No on 37,” which describes itself as, “A broad coali­tion of fam­ily farm­ers, sci­en­tists, doc­tors, tax­pay­ers, small busi­nesses, labor, food com­pa­nies, biotech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies and grocers.

Small farm­ers and small busi­nesses? I don’t see any listed on the “Who We Are” page. I do see many not-so-small trade groups rep­re­sent­ing numer­ous not-so-small cor­po­ra­tions, some of them from out­side California, includ­ing CropLife America, which is a trade group for the biotech and pes­ti­cide industry.

Also, the “No on 37” cam­paign is rep­re­sented by the law firm, Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, which has a sor­did his­tory of stealth tac­tics such as Astroturfing. And no won­der, with for­mer Phillip Morris out­side coun­cil Tom Hiltachk as the campaign’s trea­surer. (His firm’s address is listed on the web­page for where to send dona­tions; can’t get much cozier with the No cam­paign than that.)

Hiltachk had this disin­gen­u­ous quote about the GMO label­ing ini­tia­tive back in February: “Farmers and food pro­duc­ers strongly oppose this costly, ill-conceived label­ing propo­si­tion.” There are those invis­i­ble farm­ers again.

No stranger to California pol­i­tics, Hiltachk’s firm rep­re­sents the California Republican Party and helped make Arnold Schwarzenegger gov­er­nor by orches­trat­ing the statewide recall cam­paign of for­mer Governor Gray Davis.

According to PolluterWatch, Tom Hiltachk and his firm are well known for cre­at­ing front groups that pro­mote or attack bal­lot ini­tia­tives at the behest of the firm’s wealthy cor­po­rate clients: “In the past Hiltachk has attacked anti-smoking ini­tia­tives while being paid by major tobacco corporations.”

And this scathing arti­cle at ThinkProgress from 2010 describes Hiltachk’s attempt to repeal California’s clean energy pol­icy and says his “under-the-radar tac­tics of shift­ing money around and using phony groups are noth­ing new.” Specifically:

During the eight­ies and nineties, Hiltachk and his law part­ners helped the tobacco indus­try, with fund­ing from Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, coor­di­nate a vari­ety of stealth front groups. While his law firm received over a mil­lion from tobacco inter­ests, Hiltachk helped orga­nize “Californians for Smokers’ Rights,” a sup­pos­edly “grass­roots” group that relied on tobacco indus­try con­sumer lists to mobi­lize oppo­si­tion to anti-smoking ini­tia­tives.

Another Big Tobacco front group Hiltachk’s firm man­aged was “Californians for Fair Business Policy,” which fought local efforts to enact smoke-free bans in California in the early 1990s.

This is going to be a busy elec­tion sea­son for Hiltachk, as he is also the mas­ter­mind behind the decep­tive union-busting Proposition 32, about which a local California paper writes: “if you liked Citizens United, you will love Prop 32.” As the New Yorker sums it up in an arti­cle describ­ing the firm’s shady oper­a­tions, “They spe­cial­ize in ini­tia­tives that are the oppo­site of what they sound like.”

Another group with Big Tobacco ori­gins now spread­ing lies about the GMO label­ing ini­tia­tive is the unsub­tle front group, “California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse,” whose exec­u­tive direc­tor recently warned us to “beware of trial lawyers lurk­ing in your food.” (It seems lawyers are scarier than alter­ing the genetic code of the food sup­ply.) According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s Sourcewatch, Philip Morris is a pri­mary fun­der of var­i­ous “Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse” groups, which under the guise of tort reform aim to make it harder to bring law­suits for prob­lems caused by haz­ardous products.

Doubt is Their Product

In sum, the food indus­try, to oppose a sim­ple label­ing law, is hir­ing lawyers and con­sul­tants with ties to the tobacco indus­try, to deploy stealth tac­tics such as cre­at­ing front groups, dig­ging up dirt on oppo­nents, and spread­ing out­right lies.

For decades the tobacco indus­try and its shills hid the truth by deploy­ing its most effec­tive weapon: man­u­fac­tur­ing doubt about the health haz­ards of smok­ing. How many mil­lions of Americans died as a result of Big Tobacco’s decep­tive and cyn­i­cal cam­paign? Why would we trust these same oper­a­tors now?

You can hardly blame indus­try for call­ing on such shady char­ac­ters. Big Food has seen the polling data show­ing that more than 90 per­cent of con­sumers want to see GMO foods labeled. When you don’t have the peo­ple or the truth on your side, all you have left is play­ing dirty.

Michele Simon

Michele is a pub­lic health lawyer who has been research­ing and writ­ing about the food indus­try and food pol­i­tics since 1996. Visit her site at www.EatDrinkPolitics.com/