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 âKids define it â GMOâ features elementary school children talking on camera about why they donât like or trust GM foods. âThat sounds monstrous,â announces one. âThey take a gene from a fish and put it into a tomato,â adds another. In final scene a child explains âI think itâs better if we get informed before we, like, eat it ⊠itâs important to know whatâs in your foodâ. The video closes with the statement âStonyfield Organic â stirring it up for 35 years!â
In a post that accompanies the video, Stonyfield writes: âYouâve probably heard the letters ‘GMO’ before and wondered ‘what IS that?’. Â As the leading organic kids yogurt, Stonyfield Organic wants families to know exactly whatâs 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.â
While the video has received hundreds of likes it has also attracted sharp criticism from parts of the science community and also some of Stonyfieldâs own customers.
Writing on the website of the consumer non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest, biotech specialist Gregory Jaffe labelled Stonyfield âshameful and exploitativeâ ⊠â for using children to spread anti-science fearmongering messagesâ. Some social media commenters accused Stonyfield of âsilencingâ criticism of the company. One of its customers said on facebook that she preferred her yoghurt âwithout the propagandaâ.
Responding to the criticism in a Facebook post (now removed) the company wrote: âYouâve 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 communityâs valid concerns about GMOs are anti-scienceâ and âill-informedâ ⊠Itâs 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 questionsâ.
.
Accused of censoring debate #SilencedByStonyfield