In 2016, the American honey industry faced a crisis: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had found high levels of #glyphosate, an herbicide linked to #cancer, in honey samples from Iowa. The FDA detected the weed-killing chemical at up to 653 parts per billion (ppb) in honey – more than 13 times the limit allowed in the European Union. Consumer groups filed at least two lawsuits against the honey industry. Internal emails shed light on what happened next. The National Honey Board (NHB), a honey industry-funded agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, did what many businesses under fire have done: They hired a crisis management public relations firm, in this case to downplay the risks of glyphosate in honey. The PR firm, Porter Novelli, later worked with the NHB to deflect concerns about honey containing herbicide glyphosate and insecticide #neonicotinoids.
Porter Novelli also won an “issues management” award that year for managing Bayer’s Bee Care Program. Critics describe the Bee Care program as a Big #Tobacco-style PR strategy that diverts attention away from the leading role Bayer’s pesticides play in harming bees, while portraying Bayer as a champion for solving the problem. Their main tactic, as the New York Times reported, is pointing a finger at a “different culprit” in the bee crisis: #Varroa mites. While the mites are a problem for bees, beekeepers have historically been able to manage that problem, and studies show that #neonicotinoids are weakening bees and making them more susceptible to threats like the mites.
The pesticide industry’s “greatest public relations coup,” according to Lee Fang’sinvestigation in The Intercept, “has been the push to reframe the debate around bee decline to focus on the threat of Varroa mites.”