Recently Chicago and Connecticut enacted bans on bisphenol A (BPA), hinting at a trend that's making industry nervous. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week, and Washington Post today, manufacturers of cans containing bisphenol A and their customers like Coca-Cola are "trying to devise a public relations and lobbying strategy to block government bans" of the chemical. To anyone who has followed bisphenol A news or is at all news-aware, this isn't a news flash. But several papers got a hold of some meeting notes from a industry strategy session, which point to familiar tactics the industry has been using to frustrate legislative action on BPA. As the WP wrote:
"industry executives huddled for hours Thursday trying to figure out how to tamp down public concerns over the chemical bisphenol A, or BPA. The notes said the executives are particularly concerned about the views of young mothers, who often make purchasing decisions for households and who are most likely to be focused on health concerns."
According to the Post, the meeting a Washington DC's Cosmos Club discussed their public relations goals: research, "legislative and grassroots outreach [to mothers 21-35 years old and students]", and a "clear-cut plan to defend their industry." They needed a spokesperson for their cause, and wrote in the notes obtained by the newspapers that a pregnant woman would be "the Holy Grail".
According to the Post, ideas for defending the BPA industry could include "using fear tactics [e.g. Do you want to have access to baby food anymore?]", as well as "giving control back to customers", by explaining their "choice": more expensive frozen food packaging, or food in canned packaging.
According to the Journal Sentinal, the group worried that finding a scientist to act as a spokesman would be difficult because the scientists think they would be "tainted" by industry association. Really? (Do we think industry is being modest about their ability to recruit scientists to their causes?) In that case, the papers conclude, the industry would need to depend on marketing, not science, to get push their product. Not really the motherlode of insight, but interesting enough commentary on the BPA industry's remarkable consistency.
