Industry Attacks on Dissent: From Rachel Carson to Oprah

In March 1996, the British government announced that 10 people had died after eating beef from cattle sick with "mad cow disease." A month later, talk-show host Oprah Winfrey discussed the topic on national television.

While interviewing guest Howard Lyman of the Humane Society about his belief that American cattle might be at risk for the disease, Winfrey told her audience, "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger." A group of Texas cattle ranchers sued Winfrey and Lyman for libeling cattle. Four years and over $1 million later, the two were vindicated in court.

Winfrey and Lyman were sued under the Texas False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Act. Food disparagement laws are a new tool in an old bag of tricks used by corporations to protect their own economic interests at the expense of public discussion. Silencing public debate with frivolous, time-consuming and costly lawsuits has become so commonplace that the technique has its own name: strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPP suits.

Winfrey and Lyman won in lower federal court because the judge ruled that cattle were not "perishable food products." The cattlemen pursued the matter in appellate court. A three-judge panel eventually ruled against the Texas ranchers. But the SLAPP suit achieved its objective by forcing Winfrey and Lyman to spend an enormous amount of time and money defending themselves-and by serving as a warning to the rest of us that saying what we believe to be true may cost us more than we can bear.

Lawsuits, and the threat of lawsuits, are not the only means industry uses to stifle dissent. Industry routinely buys the science that suits its needs (tobacco is a good example) and according to Sheldon Rampton, editor of the newsletter PR Watch, spends at least $10 billion every year on "public relations."

Industry's use of half-truths and intimidation to defend its toxic assault on life is nothing new. But until 40 years ago, when Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" was published, one could argue that we -- the people -- didn't know what was going on. "Silent Spring" woke up the nation, creating a national consciousness about the health and environmental consequences of pesticide use. Industry woke up too. Bruce Johnson, a Seattle lawyer, told the New York Times in 1999, "If [food disparagement laws] had been in place in the 1960s, Rachel Carson might not have found a publisher willing to print 'Silent Spring'."

Trying to Silence Silent Spring

Before World War I, about half of the industrial products in the U.S. were made from renewable resources, such as plant-, wood- and animal-based materials. In the 1920s and 1930s, oil and chemical companies like Union Carbide, Shell and Dow expanded their interest in petrochemical manufacturing. The petrochemical industry, strengthened immensely by World War II, replaced renewable materials with synthetic organic compounds made from the byproducts of oil and natural gas: for instance, synthetic rubber replaced natural rubber, chemical detergents replaced animal-based soaps and polyester replaced cotton. In the 1950s and 1960s, the thriving plastics industry accelerated the shift even more. Today, 92 percent of the materials used for U.S. products and production processes are nonrenewable.

In many cases, the processes used to manufacture synthetic products created toxic wastes, and often the products themselves -- either intact or when dissipated into the environment -- were harmful to life. Among the most lethal of these products were synthetic pesticides. Before 1940, most pesticides were made from plants; a few were made from toxic metals like arsenic and mercury. But the synthetic chemicals created for chemical warfare during World War II were found to be highly effective weed and insect killers. So in 1945, with strong government backing, these poisons entered commercial markets. Within 10 years, synthetic pesticides had captured 90 percent of the agricultural pest-control market.