WASHINGTON - Over 40 environmental, food safety, farming, responsible investment and other groups sent a letter Friday to the heads of American Public Television (APT) and Sacramento PBS station KVIE requesting that they pull from distribution a new series on farming in America being underwritten by Monsanto and other major industrial agriculture interests. Noting that Monsanto's involvement in this series violates APT's and public television's own conflict-of-interest guidelines, the groups called on APT and local PBS stations to withhold the "America's Heartland" series from distribution and broadcast "until underwriters for the series can be found whose business interests are not directly linked to the subject matter of (the) series." The groups also demanded that "any segment that discusses genetically engineered food or crops without also discussing in equal terms the many concerns the scientific, environmental and public health communities have about this technology" be permanently removed.

"Public television should not be a platform for Monsanto to promote its genetically engineered crops," said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of Center for Food Safety. "The sponsors of 'America's Heartland' are a rogues gallery of the biggest proponents of industrial agriculture and biotech crops that exist in this country today. This blatant conflict of interest should be enough to force American Public Television to refuse to have anything to do with this series."

Co-signers to the letter include Friends of the Earth, U.S. PIRG, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, The Campaign to Label GE Foods, Chefs Collaborative, Animal Welfare Institute, 500 Farms Alliance, Grassroots International, Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and many others.

The letter notes that given the subject matter and the list of sponsors - Monsanto, American Farm Bureau Federation, American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers Association, National Cotton Council, United Soybean Board and U.S. Grains Council - the series cannot pass APT's own tests for "determining the acceptability of proposed program funding arrangements," including: Editorial Control Test ("Has the underwriter exercised editorial control? Could it?"), Perception Test ("Might the public perceive that the underwriter has exercised editorial control?) or Commercialism Test ("Might the public conclude the program is on public television principally because it promotes the underwriter's products, services or other business interests?"). According to APT's tests, "The most important factor to be considered is the character and directness of the perceived connection between the program funder and the subject matter of the program."

As the groups wrote in their letter:

"This connection could hardly be clearer or more direct for the sponsors of 'America's Heartland.' For instance, Monsanto's primary goal for the past nine years has been to promote the distribution of its genetically engineered seeds and the sale of its popular and profitable herbicides. Monsanto's sponsorship of a series on farming could reasonably be expected to promote these products and their acceptance by the viewing public, particularly when it comes to highly-controversial genetically engineered crops, which are proclaimed in the promotional materials for 'America's Heartland' to be the 'next American revolution.'"

KVIE, the producer of "America's Heartland," revealed a strong bias in support of agricultural biotechnology in its earlier "California Heartland" segment called "Brave New Heartland" (episode #545), which was devoted almost entirely to a detailed presentation of the purported benefits of genetic engineering. In this episode, the dialogue of KVIE's narrators was clearly designed to promote genetic engineering and downplay the controversies surrounding it, and the numerous pro-biotech guests were given considerably more time to promote their unchallenged opinions than was given the two opponents of biotechnology.

"KVIE's program on biotech seems intended to give viewers the impression that their concerns about biotechnology are naïve and unfounded," added Kimbrell. "When, in fact, the National Academy of Sciences has stated clearly over the past five years that there can be substantial risks to human health and the environment from genetically engineered organisms."