The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a radical anti-commerce lobbying organization working under the veneer of “environmental protection.” Because it wants to depict business as exploitative, it’s compiled a database allegedly keeping track of subsidies the federal government has given out to corporate farms.

As a supporter of free enterprise, I too oppose farm subsidies, since genuine capitalism is about the government defending the individual’s rights to life, liberty, and property, and otherwise not interfering with the economy. This means no tax-funded handouts to business. That said, I’d endorse the EWG’s farm subsidy database if only it were credible -- but it isn't.

As the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) pointed out one of its Web sites, ActivistCash.com, the EWG’s database states that the Boise Cascade company, which harvests timber, is a recipient of the federal government’s farm subsidies from 1996 to 2000. What the EWG neglected to note was that, while federal farm subsidies go toward paying farmers to grow the likes of tobacco and wheat, they don’t pay for the growth of timber.

That type of distortion is common in the EWG’s media campaigns. Its most popular one is its long-running attempt to get ABC News correspondent John Stossel fired for exposing several widely believed falsehoods spread by environmental outfits like itself.

Qualified scientists repeatedly vouch for Stossel’s scientific accuracy.

Even when he made a single logistical mistake in his organic food story, scientists noted that everything else he said in it, which the EWG detested, was true -- organic food is no safer or more nutritious than conventional food, and growing organic produce requires the development of more land than conventional produce.

Meanwhile, ActivistCash.com and bio-statistician Steven Milloy have exposed the EWG’s scientific illiteracy. In fact, “The Weekly Standard” reported that the EWG doesn’t have single scientist or doctor on its staff.

It’s actually run by public relations expert David Fenton and professional political “spin doctors.”

Resultantly, Marcia van Gemert, the retired chief of the Toxicology Branch of the EPA’s Office of Pesticides Programs, described the EWG as “politically, not toxicologically, driven.”

Of course, the CCF is not without its own ideological leanings. On one of its Web sites, it identifies itself as “a coalition of more than 30,000 restaurant and tavern operators working together to protect the public's right to a full menu of dining and entertainment choices. Are we biased? You bet.”

The reason for this is that anti-capitalists like the EWG’s “have been attacking our industry for more than two decades. We resent the junk science they use to make the attacks and the media condemnation that accompanies them.”

The CCF may be run by businesspeople, but it’s scientists who are harshest toward EWG.

When, in 1993, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) planned on holding a meeting about the actual health risks of agricultural pesticides, the EWG tried to exploit the hoopla by having its own press conference first, saying that the NAS would make the same claims about agricultural chemicals causing illness.

In so doing, the EWG successfully manipulated the media into falsely implying that its conclusions were endorsed by the NAS, which angered NAS member John Wargo -- a Yale associate professor of Environmental Policy and Risk Assessment.

He told the EWG, “Your decision to pre-empt the NAS report is a clear violation of the ethics of the academy in particular and scientific standards of behavior in general.” In public, he stated that the EWG’s report was “primarily a piece of advocacy ... not science.”

When the EWG launches one if its hyperbolic attacks on Stossel’s character, mainstream publications like the New York Times immediately assume that the EWG is right and Stossel is wrong (or worse). This reflects these periodicals’ presumptions of infallibility for any anti-capitalist group, since their worldviews are similar, while they quickly grasp for any flimsy excuse to rationalize their grudge against Stossel.

Yet the truth is that, while Stossel admits that he has always been giving his opinions, particularly back when Ralph-Nader-styled environmentalists once love him for agreeing with them, he has a long history of conscientiousness, which remains to this day. Meanwhile, the EWG continues its almost-decade-long tradition of being careless with facts.

Perhaps, someday more reporters will finally “do their homework” before believing every absurd accusation the EWG makes.

Stuart K. Hayashi is the president of the Reason Club of Honolulu and an undergraduate in Entrepreneurial Studies at Hawaii Pacific University, though his opinions do not necessarily reflect that of either institution. He can be reached at radical_individualist@hotmail.com and an index of his past editorials for HawaiiReporter.com can be seen at http://reason_club.tripod.com/stuart_editorials.html (If you would like to continue seeing Stuart Hayashi's editorials on this site, please let Hawaii Reporter know at info@hawaiireporter.com) Recommended Web sites:

The Center for Consumer Freedom’s Exposé on EWG can be found at: http://www.activistcash.com (go to the “Activist Groups” drop-down menu and select “Environmental Working Group”)

Bio-statistician Steven J. Milloy writes about the EWG’s other dishonest campaigns: http://www.junkscience.com/foxnews/fn081100.htm

Michael Fumento also refutes the EWG: http://www.consumeralert.org/fumento/child.htm http://www.fumento.com/ibdalar.html

The Media Research Center on Stossel and EWG: https://secure.mediaresearch.org/fmp/medianomics/2000/mn20000829.html

The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Pro-John-Stossel site: http://www.supportjohnstossel.com

Guest Commentary...