Submitted by John Stauber on
The Denver Post reports that "livestock organizations are launching a $5.5 million media campaign to promote domestic demand for beef in the face of mad-cow concerns. A $4 million series of television ads will launch Monday. They were originally scheduled to start January 12, but the beef groups decided to delay the campaign for two weeks while news coverage of mad cow disease eased up. ...
Submitted by John Stauber on
In our book Trust Us, We're Experts! we describe the "third party technique" that PR experts use. Reassuring words come from the mouths of supposed objective scientific experts to convince the public that a crisis is really no problem at all. A current example would be the industry front group called the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.
Submitted by John Stauber on
Since the announcement that mad cow disease has been found in the US, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton have conducted hundreds of interviews based on their 1997 book Mad Cow USA. The US government and the livestock industry have launched a massive PR campaign to hide the fact that they are not taking the necessary steps to stop mad cow disease in the US. However, some excellent reporting is piercing their PR smokescreen.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when
the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax
Submitted by John Stauber on
Paul Holmes, long time journalist covering the PR industry for his own trade press publications, blasts the arrogance and stupidity of the US beef industry and its protectors in the government, over the emergence of mad cow disease in the US. Holmes writest that "more than a decade has passed since an epidemic of bovine spongiform
encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease, ravaged British beef
and dairy herds, so it's fair to say American cattlemen have had
every opportunity to study that outbreak and learn from it. Yet to
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"Meat-industry trade groups were scurrying during the recent holiday season to coordinate key messages and media lists as they responded to reports of mad cow disease rearing its head in the Western US," PR Week's John Frank writes. PR staffers at the American Meat Institute and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, working with PR giant Burson-Marsteller, handled a flood of media calls over the Christmas holiday.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has denied a petition from 73 labor, environment and farm groups calling for an immediate moratorium on land-based uses of sewage sludge - a practice that we exposed in our 1994 book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You.
Submitted by John Stauber on
Eric Schlosser, author of the hugely popular bestseller Fast Food Nation, notes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's PR point person on mad cow disease, Alisa Harrison, flacked for the beef industry. "Before joining the department, Ms.
Submitted by John Stauber on
The United States has spent millions of dollars on PR convincing Americans that mad cow could never happen here, and now the US Department of Agriculture is engaged in a crisis management plan that has federal and state officials, livestock industry flacks, scientists and other trusted experts assuring the public that this is no big deal.
Submitted by John Stauber on
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's 1997 book Mad
Cow USA warned that unless the US adopted the same strict regulations implemented in Britain, including a ban on feeding rendered slaughterhouse waste as animal feed, mad cow disease would eventually emerge in the US. The US failed to act and late Tuesday the Secretary of Agriculture
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