to: ‘press@soilassociation.org’
Dear Sir, Madam,
I am a freelance journalist based in Europe (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) interested in finding out more about your opinions about on commercial cloning issues. I read your press release dated 11 July and thought it was excellent. In my opinion that day there was a coup détat ongoing in science land to bar the public from finding out what was going on with regard to cloning in the EU. Comparing a BBC report and one on your Consumers Association site was clearly a strong signal at least.
I am writing an article on the subject, in which I compare the situation in the US to the one here in Europe. My initial findings are that the US public is way more aware of these type of issues due to the milk debate that’s raged on there since the FDA allowed injecting cows with recombinant bovine somatotropin and now also appears to condone meat of cloned cows to enter the food chain unlabeled.
What I do not understand is that scientists have been so effective in ‘calming down’ the general public without journalists noticing this.
Yet I have immense difficulty finding organisations that are speaking out against cloning or making the public aware of what is going on and begin to blame this on the effectiveness of the operation. I am employing every tactic in the school book to see if people really are asleep, including crowd sourcing. Do you happen to have any ideas on what consumer groups are doing in Europe to protest? Or who else might have a strong No lobby in Brussels?
I have written one article on the subject (http://www.globalpolitician.com/articleshow.asp?ID=3249&cid=1&sid=24) and my next article focuses on consumer awareness differences in the US and Europe. Any input highly appreciated.
Kind regards,
Angelique van Engelen