Back in November of last year Harvard School of Public Health released a study that showed that canned soup raises BPA levels. Recently, Byron Kennard, who goes by The Confounded Environmentalist on Huffington Post, but who is also an pioneering environmental maverick and the Executive Director of The Center for Small Business and the Environment (where I am an advisor), wrote a hilarious satirical piece on “how corporate money perverts the use of science in public policy.”
Here’s the set up:
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
TO: Edward P. Crisp, President, Crisp’s All-Natural Soups, Inc. (CANS)FROM: Kay Street, Director, Government Relations, Producers Institute for Safe Soup (PISS)
RE: Harvard School of Public Health study that found human urine containing dangerous levels of bisphenol A (BPA)
What follows is a satire so acutely realized that it almost seems real. Talk of economic activity:
Our research shows that the delivery of BPA to human urinary tracts actually represents over $3.23 billion in economic activity in the U.S.A. alone. Approximately 29,459 good paying jobs are created by the manufacture and sale of the chemical…
Scientific Analysis:
This insistence on conclusive evidence gives those of us in industry all the wiggle room we need for endless disputation over whether the science is right or wrong, honest or dishonest, sufficient or insufficient, and so on. We can tie up the FDA in knots for decades.
And so on. The memo ring so true that it would be totally funny if it weren’t tinged with truth. It is the almost truths about environmental politics that give this piece its punch. I cried myself silly.
You can read the entire piece on The Huffington Post.
Photo: CSBE
