Fox mating with the guard dog?

by Chakravarthi Raghavan

Geneva, 19 May -- The 'revolving door' problem in Washington -- officials, and retired or defeated Congressmen, Senators and aides joining corporations or becoming lobbyists (and vice versa), now appears to have spread to some NGOs.

This new twist to an old Washington problem has now come to light, and has become the subject of email exchanges and now an article by in the Corporate Crime Reporter by its editor Russel Mohibar.

The article, and some investigations by Beth Burrows of the Edmonds Institute (acting on a tipoff) have brought out that Patricia G. Kenworthy who was Director of Regulatory Affairs in Washington, DC for Monsanto Transnational Company was appointed by the National Environment Trust, a Washington-based NGO, to help develop their new initiative to fight agricultural biotechnology.

Kenworthy and her bosses at the NET participated in a high-level planning meeting of NGOs active in the field of environment and biotechnology. The planning meeting was for both fund-raising and campaign to bring about labelling of bio-tech products and processed goods for sale.

According to Beth Burrows of the Edmonds Institute, when she contacted other NGOs present at the meeting, some had no misgivings, while others expressed some concern and wariness about Kenworthy's participation.

Monsanto's is a big player in bio-tech products, including the bovine growth hormone, and the US President Bill Clinton Administration. A number of US Congressmen and Senators are also pushing Monsanto's interests in other countries in Europe and elsewhere). The US clout is sought to be used directly, and/or under threat of WTO processes -- raising disputes, winning rulings and imposing sanctions -- for opening up markets to the bio-engineered soy and other agricultural commodities and the processed goods with such bio-tech products.

Faced with the prospects of an open ban on imports and marketing on grounds of health and other "exceptions" to the WTO rules, the US is also pushing for non-interference with "free trade", but adoption of some kind of labelling and leaving the choice to consumers.

While this labelling concept is claimed to be generally acceptable to the US consumers and the NGOs, elsewhere in the world such an approach is being challenged and resisted.

In the case of the hormone-beef, the labelling is being rejected by the EC Commission, pending full investigations of the risks.

Even the labelling that the US is willing to 'tolerate', is a misleading one - as in the case of the dispute with the EC on hormone-beef, where the US is not willing to have it labelled as such, but only as beef of US origin.

The following is the article in Corporate Crime Reporter which is reproduced with the permission of Mr.Russel.

Anti-Biotech Activists, Funders, discuss possible campaign to label biotech foods. Former Monsanto chief lobbyist in the mix

There they sat last week -- the nation's leading anti-biotech activists -- pulled together by the John Merck Fund and other foundations to discuss funding a campaign to push for consumer labelling of biotech foods.

Consumer and environmental activism against the biotech industry has exploded in Europe, but has yet to catch fire here in the United States. Activists around the table were looking for big dollars to trigger some action stateside.

Among the environmental groups at the meeting was the National Environmental Trust (NET), represented by its executive director, Phil Clapp, its executive vice president, Tom Wathen, and NET's chief lobbyist, Patricia Kenworthy. Clapp has been pushing for a number of months for NET to get involved in the issue of biotech foods.

The activists immediately focused their discussion on Monsanto -- a subject Kenworthy knew something about.

From 1983 until 1991, Kenworthy worked in Monsanto's law department in St. Louis. And from 1992 until 1997, she was director of regulatory affairs for Monsanto in Washington, D.C.

Kenworthy says that going into the meeting, she wasn't planning to disclose to those present her 14 years of work for Monsanto.

"Phil, Tom and I were at this meeting," Kenworthy said. "I don't think that any of us expected that there was going to be so much reference in the conversation to Monsanto. I guess we should have realized that it would, since Monsanto was such a big player in all of this. But we just didn't think about it."

"When it came around to Phil's turn to introduce us, he decided that since the company's name had been mentioned two or three times, it really was appropriate to make sure that everybody in the room knew about my background," Kenworthy said.

The hardcore anti-Monsanto activists in the room were stunned and felt uneasy for the rest of the meeting. But no one confronted the issue head on.

Kenworthy agreed to discuss with Corporate Crime Reporter her work with Monsanto and her views on biotech foods. But she wants it known that these views are her own, and not those of NET, which has yet to weigh in on the issue of biotech foods.

Why would she leave Monsanto after so many years and sign on with NET?

"I had known Phil Clapp, who is the president of NET," she said. "He had started this organization. He had a job opening. He called me on the phone out of the blue and he asked me -- would I be interested in talking with him about a job. We talked over a period of a couple of months. I finally decided it was a good opportunity for me at the time to make a career change. And so I left Monsanto and came over here."

It couldn't have been that NET offered you more money?

"No, not by a long shot," she said with a laugh.

Did you leave on good terms with Monsanto?

"Yes, very good terms," she said.

Kenworthy says that during her entire time as Monsanto's director of regulatory affairs in Washington, she never once dealt with biotech or bovine growth hormone issues.

"When I was in St. Louis working in the law department, I certainly worked on those issues," she admits. "But when I got to the Washington office, I was working on strictly traditional chemical issues -- Superfund, clean water, clean air -- those kinds of things."

So, when you moved from Monsanto to NET, did you undergo a political transformation, did your fundamental beliefs change?

"No," she said. "I feel exactly the same. The issue that we are going to potentially deal with in this campaign -- if NET gets involved in it -- is labelling and consumer right to know. I have always believed, and I continue to believe, in the right of the consumer to know that a food product contains genetically modified organisms or genetically modified crops."

Wait a second, you believed that while you were at Monsanto?

"Yes," she said.

But that wasn't Monsanto's position, was it?

"Monsanto didn't have a position as a corporation," Kenworthy said. "It was the position of a lot of people who worked there. But Monsanto did not have a position as a corporation because it didn't need to. Nobody was demanding it."

Do you believe that genetically modified organisms should be prohibited?

"No, I can't say that I do," she says. "I can't say that I believe that they should be prohibited from the market across the board. There probably are some beneficial uses."

But Kenworthy is not a fan of Monsanto's controversial bovine growth hormone.

Or as she put "it would be a lot better if that product were not on the market."

"I was never a fan of that product even when I was with Monsanto," she said.

Well, after working for Monsanto for 14 years, do you own stock in the company?

"That is none of your business," she snaps. "I'm not going to answer that question. If you heard the answer -- it would be much less shocking than you expect -- but I'm not going to answer it. It is none of anybody's business."

Do you think that the fact that you worked for Monsanto for so long poses a problem for NET if it works on the biotech issue? "I wouldn't be even exploring the possibility if I thought it was going to be a problem," she said.

(ends article from Corporate Crime Reporter)

But Kenworthy's explanations, and the view that Monsanto didn't have a position as a corporation - on labelling and consumer right to know regarding genetically engineered food - is challenged by others.

In email exchanges, other activists note that Monsanto has spent tens of millions of dollars in public relations, lobbying, regulatory and legal action, including by filing lawsuits, to prevent both mandatory labelling of milk from rBGH-injected cows, and even to prevent 'voluntary' labelling of milk from cows not- treated with rBGH.

The Monsanto corporation has fought tooth and nail to oppose consumer right to know whether milk or crops are produced through genetic engineering processes.

But Monsanto appears to have won overwhelmingly in the US, thanks primarily to its friends and former employees in the Clinton/Gore administration.

Thanks mainly to the role of Vice-President Al Gore, the US Food and Drug Administration has acted consistently and repeatedly in Monsanto's interests to thwart consumer right to know, critics charge.

The view that Monsanto did not have a position on labelling as it did not need to and no one was demanding it was as false as public relations statements abroad that "Americans accept genetically engineered foods and have not demanded labelling."

Such statements are being used in biotech PR exercises and by lobbyists in Europe and Japan in the attempts to deny that it is their political clout with the administration that there is no labelling in the United States.

NGO critics say that Monsanto knew as early as December 1986 from a consumer survey conducted for the National Dairy Board (and immediately given to Monsanto and the other rBGH companies but kept from farmers and the public) that not only did consumers oppose buying milk from rBGH-treated cows, but they demanded labelling primarily to avoid rBGH.

Monsanto's entire regulatory, lobbying and PR strategy has been based on getting rBGH onto the market without labelling, because they knew early on that the overwhelming public opposition to rBGH and the demand for labelling meant that rBGH would fail in the market place. A plethora of surveys have shown that Americans want labelling of genetically engineered foods; the demand is certainly there, and Monsanto has fought long, hard and successfully to thwart it, critics say.

In the Clinton/Gore administration, the fox has been guarding the chickens, but now thanks to some misguided executives of Washington-based non-profit NGOs, the fox is also mating with the guard dog -- and some ugly puppies may come! (SUNS4440)

The above article first appeared in the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) of which Chakravarthi Raghavan is the Chief Editor.

[c] 1999, SUNS - All rights reserved. May not be reproduced, reprinted or posted to any system or service without specific permission from SUNS. This limitation includes incorporation into a database, distribution via Usenet News, bulletin board systems, mailing lists, print media or broadcast. For information about reproduction or multi-user subscriptions please contact < suns@igc.org >