US organic dairy brand Stonyfield Farm has come in for some sharp criticism for using school age children in a branded video about GMOs.
The 25 second video entitled ‘Kids define it – GMO’ features elementary school children talking on camera about why they don’t like or trust GM foods. “That sounds monstrous,” announces one. “They take a gene from a fish and put it into a tomato,” adds another. In final scene a child explains “I think it’s better if we get informed before we, like, eat it … it’s important to know what’s in your food”. The video closes with the statement “Stonyfield Organic – stirring it up for 35 years!”
In a post that accompanies the video, Stonyfield writes: “You’ve probably heard the letters ‘GMO’ before and wondered ‘what IS that?’. As the leading organic kids yogurt, Stonyfield Organic wants families to know exactly what’s in their food. In fact, when we asked some cool kids what a few of these food terms meant, they were as confused and concerned as the rest of us.”
While the video has received hundreds of likes it has also attracted sharp criticism from parts of the science community and also some of Stonyfield’s own customers.
Writing on the website of the consumer non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest, biotech specialist Gregory Jaffe labelled Stonyfield “shameful and exploitative” … “ for using children to spread anti-science fearmongering messages”. Some social media commenters accused Stonyfield of “silencing” criticism of the company. One of its customers said on facebook that she preferred her yoghurt “without the propaganda”.
Responding to the criticism in a Facebook post (now removed) the company wrote: “You’ve probably seen that we stirred up quite a bit of conversation in the last few days around the topic of GMOs, with some suggesting that our community’s valid concerns about GMOs are anti-science’ and ‘ill-informed’ … It’s hard to weed out who is just a troll and who is genuine on social media, but we do acknowledge that some of the comments are from people with reasonable and well-intended questions”.
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Accused of censoring debate #SilencedByStonyfield