Catherine Bennet examines a "deal with the devil," asking "Has Lord Peter Melchett been genetically modified? ... And what other explanation can there possibly be for the decision of Lord Melchett, quondam destroyer of GM crops, to join Burson-Marsteller...? Anyone who believes Lord Melchett's insistence that there is nothing contradictory about his appointment ...fails to appreciate Burson-Marsteller's fabulous coup in signing him up. ... As (B-M) suggests on its website, corporate social responsibility ('CSR') is something no forward-thinking company can afford to be without: 'Social responsibility has become as much of a corporate imperative as good customer service, high-quality management or healthy market share.' That is why it set up the corporate responsibility unit, whose principal task, as I understand it, is to help companies find ways of mollifying critics of their environmental or social practices."