I was just debating this with a firiend and decided it was really worthy of a “Great Debate.” I recently received an update from US Pirg concerning Kraft and its use of GE ingredients. The link is: http://pirg.org/ge/GE.asp?id2=5270&id3=ge& for their background info. My friend’s issue was with the phrase “I want Kraft to be a leader in corporate responsibility …” in the suggested phone script. He said that any assumption or request for corporate behavior motivated by the best interest of consumers detracted from the real power of the campaign. Namely the power of consumers to affect the company profit margins.
Any thoughts on whether mention of corporate ideals renders a public interest campaign ineffective?
Corporations aren’t the enemy automatically, or even usually. Gotta consider all aspects of the matter.
I thought the term was “GM (genetically-modified) foods” in Britain, or “genetically-engineered foods” in North America, though. “GE” is already well-established as an acronym for something else.
Yeah, that surprised me about using GE, unless GE is now also owned by Philip Morris.
Actually, that’s a whole discussion right there. With Kraft being a part of the Philip Morris conglomerate, does their relationship to tobacco mean anything? I don’t know and I don’t really have any opinion on it.
As for the OP, I’m not quite sure what’s going on. Corporations have to listen to customers, or eventually the customers will be pissed enough to retaliate.
Elvis: Apparently “genetically modified food” turns up roughly twice as many hits as “genetically engineered food”, but there are website hits for “genetically engineered modified food” which are using the terms interchangeably.
Genetically engineered vs. genetically modified follows the rule that the number of letters always increases (although in this case not by much). I wonder also if this sort of thing isn’t a game to determine how current you are on the subject. If you say “genetically modified”, you obviously are outside the loop.
