Anti-GM warrior Melchett joins PR firm that advised Monsanto

John Vidal
Tuesday January 8, 2002
The Guardian

Lord Melchett, the former head of Greenpeace UK who was arrested two years ago after leading an attack on a genetically modified crop, startled former colleagues yesterday by announcing he had taken a job at a PR company which has represented Monsanto and the European biotech industry.
In a move that has provoked scorn from anti-GM activists, the former Labour minister and farmer, who is on the board of Greenpeace International, is to become a consultant for Burson-Marsteller, the world's largest corporate communications company. He will be paid an undisclosed annual retainer and has a brief to talk to whoever he likes.

Burson-Marsteller is the company that governments with poor human rights records and corporations in trouble with environmentalists have turned to when in crisis.

The world's biggest PR company was employed by the Nigerian government to discredit reports of genocide during the Biafran war, the Argentinian junta after the disappearance of 35,000 civilians, and the Indonesian government after the massacres in East Timor. It also worked to improve the image of the late Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu and the Saudi royal family.

Its corporate clients have included the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, which suffered a partial meltdown in 1979, Union Carbide after the Bhopal gas leak killed up to 15,000 people in India, BP after the sinking of the Torrey Canyon oil tanker in 1967 and the British government after BSE emerged.

In the past few years it has acted for big tobacco companies and the European biotechnology industry to challenge the green lobby and counter Greenpeace arguments on GM food.

Yesterday Lord Melchett said he would be an adviser in Burson-Marsteller's corporate social responsibility unit, and would work only with the companies he chose to.

"I will be more selective than when I worked at Greenpeace," he said.

"My values have not changed at all and if I think a company should close down I shall tell them. I shall tell them the truth."

Stephen Tisdale, the director of Greenpeace UK, said he did not foresee any conflict of interest. "Anyone who knows Peter will know that he hasn't changed his agenda at all," he said. "He sees Burson-Marsteller as a conduit to some very influential companies who would not normally talk to environmentalists. In some ways Greenpeace held him back, and he has become more radical after leaving last year."

An internal document from Greenpeace to its staff suggested that Lord Melchett would not have to compromise his beliefs: "Peter's advice to companies will be 'go organic, do the right thing', rather than help bad companies avoid the likes of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

"Peter will only take on the briefs that he chooses, there is no question of him working for BAT [British American Tobacco] or the Burmese junta."

But others said he was effectively now on Monsanto's and other corporations' payrolls. "How can you have a man who is on the board of Greenpeace International and a policy adviser to the Soil Association taking money from the GM industry and companies with some of the worst records imaginable?" said Kate Jones, a former anti-GM campaigner.

Other well known environmentalists who have left high-profile campaigning to work for people who might be considered their opponents include Tom Burke, a former Friends of the Earth director now with the mining company Rio Tinto, and Jonathon Porritt, another former head of Friends of the Earth who now works for the government. They say they can effect change better from within the corporate fold, but have been widely criticised and accused of selling out.

Lord Melchett, whose grandfather helped to found ICI, joins at Burson-Marsteller Richard Aylard, a former head of the Soil Association, and Gavin Grant, a former head of communications for the Body Shop.

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Comment and analysis
29.08.2001: Johnjoe McFadden : Feeding prejudice
21.08.2001: George Monbiot: Biotech firms are turning to coercion
21.06.2001: Naomi Klein: when choice becomes just a memory

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