Restaurant chain accused of undermining public trust in science
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.8118
This media report isn’t about physics, but it’s most definitely about science and society. Last month Chipotle, with more than 1800 restaurants, announced it was eliminating genetically engineered ingredients on purported grounds that science might yet somehow prove genetically modified organisms (GMOs) unsafe. An informal, unscientific sampling of media reaction shows a range of attentiveness not only to actual facts in reporting this basic story, but to the implications for journalists’ obligations concerning facts.
An opening paragraph from the New York Times‘s news report illustrates a sort of puffball credulousness that’s easy to find in the coverage, though by no means universally. Note that the quoted Chipotle official plainly insinuates, but doesn’t actually claim, that GMOs fit in a list of traits considered undesirable in food:
“This is another step toward the visions we have of changing the way people think about and eat fast food,” said Steve Ells, founder and co-chief executive of Chipotle. “Just because food is served fast doesn’t mean it has to be made with cheap raw ingredients, highly processed with preservatives and fillers and stabilizers and artificial colors and flavors.”
A remark from the USA Today editorial “GMO food bans pander to ignorance” sums up what’s really going on: “Despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, most Americans believe that food altered by genetically modified organisms—GMOs—is harmful. Based on the misinformation, companies are beginning to ban food that contains GMOs.”
The Washington Post‘s Tanya Lewis recently reminded readers about the technical basics by reporting information from Gregory Jaffe, director of biotechnology at the Center for Science in the Public Interest:
Genetically modifying an organism involves inserting genes from one species into the DNA of another, in order to produce desirable traits, such as being resistant to pests.
Eight genetically modified crops are grown widely in the United States: corn, soybeans, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beets, zucchini, squash and papaya. In fact, more than 90 percent of the country’s total acreage of corn, soybeans, cotton and sugar beets comes from seeds that have at least one genetically engineered trait, Jaffe said.
And foods containing GMOs are tough to avoid because genetically modified crops are found in processed foods such as high-fructose corn syrup, canola oil and soybean oil, he said.
In a 14 May column , the Post‘s Michael Gerson, formerly chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush, summarized scientific understanding:
There is no credible evidence that ingesting a plant that has been swiftly genetically modified in a lab has a different health outcome than ingesting a plant that has been slowly genetically modified through selective breeding. The National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the World Health Organization have concluded that GMOs are safe to eat. This scientific consensus is at least as strong as the one on human-caused climate change.
The Post in particular has been tough this year on GMO opponents, with editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt joining those who implicate not a Republican war on science, but a Democrat one. Hiatt declared in a February column that
the biggest gap between public opinion and scientific consensus in the United States is not in the realm of vaccines, global warming or evolution but regarding the safety of genetically modified (GM) foods. And the science deniers on this topic are more likely to be Democratic than Republican, with college-educated Americans almost evenly split.
This political accusation isn’t new. In 2012, for example, a piece appeared in Slate under the headline “GMO opponents are the climate skeptics of the left.
In March a Post editorial called the “GM-food debate . . . a classic example of activists overstating risk based on fear of what might be unknown and on a distrust of corporations.” The editors included a reminder, commonly heard elsewhere as well, of the stakes planetwide:
This isn’t just a matter of saving consumers from a little unnecessary expense or anxiety. If GM food becomes an economic nonstarter for growers and food companies, the world’s poorest will pay the highest price. GM crops that flourish in challenging environments without the aid of expensive pesticides or equipment can play an important role in alleviating hunger and food stress in the developing world.
In April, after the Chipotle announcement, a Post editorial declared, “Thus has a leading food company added its imprimatur to a global propaganda campaign that is not only contrary to the best scientific knowledge but also potentially harmful to vulnerable populations around the world.” At the end, the editors added, “Our point is that no one should confuse any of these companies’ behavior with real corporate responsibility. That would require companies to push back against the orchestrated fear of GMOs instead of validating it.”
Corporate responsibility? The Post‘s Gerson energetically condemned Chipotle in that 14 May column, which ended by calling the embrace of “pseudoscience as the centerpiece of an advertising and branding effort . . . an act of corporate irresponsibility.” Gerson sees the Chipotle announcement as a “milestone in the history of fast-food scruples (and of advertising) [that] is also a noteworthy cultural development: the systematic incorporation of anti-scientific attitudes into corporate branding strategies.” He draws a comparison to anti-vaxxers: “A certain kind of trendy parent believes that everything natural is preferable, forgetting that natural levels of mortality from childhood diseases are high. It is the same ideological impulse—the belief that nature is pure and artifice is unwholesome—that causes corporate leaders to spout pseudoscientific nonsense about GMOs.”
Near the end, Gerson levels a list of charges:
Chipotle, Whole Foods and those who follow their examples are doing real social harm. They are polluting public discourse on scientific matters. They are legitimizing an approach to science that elevates Internet medical diagnosis, social media technological consensus and discredited studies in obscure journals. They are contributing to a political atmosphere in which people pick their scientific views to fit their ideologies, predispositions and obsessions. And they are undermining public trust in legitimate scientific authority, which undermines the possibility of rational public policy on a range of issues.
Strong disapproval of Chipotle has also appeared elsewhere. A New York Magazine headline accused the company of “promoting opportunistic anti-science hysteria. An op-ed that appeared at the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere emphasized the view that Chipotle’s announcement “is rooted either in ignorance or in crass profit-seeking at the expense of science.”
Similar judgments appeared in editorials at the Charlotte Observer , the Raleigh News & Observer , Bloomberg , and the Chicago Tribune .
But some of the reporting took place under a neutral equivalence presumption. A Wall Street Journal article , for example, framed the development as coming amid “growing US consumer questions” about GMOs, and presented those questions in terms of rough equivalence with the science of the matter:
The Food and Drug Administration has approved a number of genetically modified crops, which proponents, including many science groups, argue are safe. Critics claim they cause a variety of environmental ills and could be harmful to human health. The skepticism is part of a wider backlash in recent years among consumers seeking simpler, more natural ingredients.
The WSJ noted that “Founder and co-Chief Executive Steve Ells has said Chipotle is making the move to avoid GMOs until the science around the technology is more definitive.” Similar framing appeared in news articles at the Denver Post , US News and World Report , the Los Angeles Times , the Chicago Tribune and even Ars Technica , though that publication noted that it has has reported in the past that “there’s no scientific evidence that genetically modified crops are capable of causing any harm upon human consumption, and plenty of indications say they are safe.”
Concerning perceived equivalence, USA Today went so far as to run an op-ed from Ronnie Cummins, international director of the Organic Consumers Association. Contrary to USA Today‘s editorial stance, Cummins wrote: “Chipotle has made a sound business decision, which has forced the biotech industry to stoop to a new low: vilifying businesses. Sadly, the mainstream media appear all too happy (manipulated?) to go along with the attack.”
Some organizations—including Reuters , the New York Daily News , and the Guardian —presented the announcement as positive and sensible. Gerson cited a Fortune article lauding Chipotle’s “savvy move” to impress younger generations by catering to their beliefs about what’s healthy to eat. An article in Canada reported that although Chipotle gets accused of shrugging off scientists’ views, its new move has also found support, “notably in some business publications.” Salon called Chipotle an “aggressively enlightened chain.”
Enlightened? Don’t tell the Wall Street Journal‘s Holman W. Jenkins Jr. His column suggested that “because such advertising depends on the eagerness of the customer to be fooled,” what might be needed is “an education system that lowers the general level of idiocy in the population.”
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.