With the launch of Organic Style magazine, Rodale Press has given organic food marketers a new way to demonize traditional food choices and capture a greater American market share. This new glossy magazine is using the black-marketing threat of mad cow disease in order to drive business to the supposedly “safer” alternatives offered by Rodale (which holds a considerable stake in the organic foods industry), and its advertisers.
The inaugural issue of Organic Style includes a feature article about mad cow disease, which quotes the same cast of activist characters that we told you about in our groundbreaking report Mad Cow: A New American Scare Campaign (including Thomas Pringle, his protégé Michael Greger, and Public Citizen’s Peter Lurie). The article’s author plugs organic foods whenever possible, insisting that “your safest strategy for all cuts [of beef] is to buy organic.”
Can’t find Organic Style on your local newsstand? Never fear: Rodale has set up a web site for the magazine, complete with mad-cow fear-mongering, a claim that pesticides (a big organic no-no) might cause mad cow disease, and links to Michael Greger’s “mad cow” web page at the Organic Consumers Association. Rodale’s bottom line is right out of the Nanny Culture’s black marketing handbook: “[T]housands of Europeans, and perhaps even Americans, may already unknowingly harbor the disease. Your best protection may be organic beef.”
