Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
In our book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, we reported on the U.S. government's disastrous PR campaign to build public support in Nevada for a high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. Now two workers at the Yucca Mountain Project to dispose of high-level nuclear waste say they were fired or transferred after raising concerns about the project's safety.
Submitted by John Stauber on
Wisconsin's huge deer herd is infected with chronic wasting disease (CWD), a deadly dementia that is a mad cow-type disease in deer, filling their brains with swiss cheese-like holes and plaque. The best available scientific evidence indicates that CWD, like British mad cow disease, could infect and kill humans. Rather than learn from Britain's mistakes and take a precautionary approach, Wisconsin has launched a PR and advertising campaign to belittle human health concerns and promote hunting.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
PR Watch has posted previous reports on the biotech food industry's use of the Internet to fake independent criticism of anti-GM groups. Now George Monbiot, who has also reported on deceptive biotech practices, takes a look at recent efforts to use hunger in Africa as a marketing hook for genetically modified foods.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"The Forest Products Industry National Labor Management Committee, a group that says it wants to 'balance economic and environmental concerns' when it comes to managing America's timber, paid Ogilvy PR Worldwide $100,000 during the first-half of this year to make its case in Washington, D.C.," O'Dwyer's PR Daily writes. The group lobbied against EPA regulations on new industrial emissions. "The Committee members include the American Forest & Paper Assn., and forest industry groups in California, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Louisiana and the Rockies. It also counts the International Assn.
Submitted by John Stauber on
As we explain in our book Mad Cow USA, billions of pounds of rendered by-product from slaughterhouse waste are fed to livestock each year in the US. This is the practice that spread 'mad cow disease' in British cattle, a disease that has now spread to humans and is killing a growing number each year. The US has its own versions of mad cow-type diseases including chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"What are they thinking? GM's 'Introducing the Saturn VUE' ad, which ran in Newsweek magazine, compares their new SUV to endangered arctic species," the public interest group CorpWatch writes. "Never mind that SUVs produce carbon emissions that contribute to the global warming that's melting polar ice floes like the one pictured in their ad. And never mind that General Motors vehicles alone account for about 1.65% of the world's carbon emissions -- a significant amount for a single company.
Submitted by John Stauber on
Food industry front group Consumer Freedom, run by tobacco lobbyist Rick Berman, is doing its best to confuse the public and the press about chronic wasting disease (CWD), a mad cow-type disease spreading across North America. Berman's lobby group has been savaging us for writing our 1997 book Mad Cow USA and for continuing to investigate and comment on this issue.
Submitted by John Stauber on
Five years after car industry and other lobbyists killed US ratification of the Kyoto treaty, a minimal effort to limit climate change, the General Motors corporation is selling its 11-miles-per-gallon Hummer. The company can barely keep up with surging American demand for the $50,000 behemoth, a version of a US military vehicle popularized during the first Iraq War. According to Dr. Clotaire Rapaille, marketing guru to the auto industry, "People told me, 'I can protect my family.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"The Wisconsin Medical Society on Thursday warned hunters that no test can tell them whether the venison from their deer is safe to eat," reports Ron Seely. Nevertheless, state officials are urging hunters to go all-out in harvesting (and consuming) deer in the hope that a special hunt will kill enough to halt the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD). Like mad cow disease, CWD disease is a fatal brain illness caused by an infectious, malformed protein called a prion.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"We're watching the total failure of any adequate preventive policy at the state or federal level," PR Watch's John Stauber told Salon.com's Fran Smith. "Stauber believes the government's response to CWD is disturbingly similar to Britain's failure to take quick action to stem mad cow," Smith writes.
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