BPA Scare Campaign Exposed - David Fenton, The Puppet Master

If you believe what you see and hear in the media, those fighting an unnecessary battle against bisphenol-A (BPA) are altruistic individuals concerned about health and safety. Concerned about their children and their environment. It's all rainbows and butterflies. After all, who wouldn't want to protect babies from being poisoned to death?

But there is an ugly truth behind the scenes that you will never hear about in the media. Greed, propaganda, political agendas, profits, lies and scams. And it all can be tied to one person and one powerful PR firm. David Fenton and Fenton Communications.

Anyone remember the huge Alar scam of February 1989 that turned out to be nothing but a scare campaign based on false information? Guess who was behind that? Hint: Starts with an "F" and ends in "enton."

Now, 21 years later, Fenton is using the same tactics and getting the same results, only with a different, harmless chemical...BPA. He is the puppet master and we moms are his puppets. He orchestrates the scare and we, being fearful for our children, unknowingly carry out his plan for him. He comes out a winner, and we are duped into wasting our time, money and energy fighting a battle that never needed to be fought in the first place.

This mom, for one, is not going to be a puppet any longer. It's time to expose the truth behind Fenton's manipulation and take back our power as moms. Over the years, there have been a number of articles on Fenton’s activities and clientele but nobody has yet been able to connect all the dots.

Just who is David Fenton? He is CEO of the influential Fenton Communications and he's been called the "Media Maestro of the Left" in John Gizzi’s report for the Capital Research Center. Clients have included Global Green USA, Greepeace, MoveOn.org, Presidents Climate Change, Environmental Working Group (EWG...now listed as a "partner" rather than a client), Climate Counts, Sierra Club, and a host of other radical political and environmental organizations.

So how do we get from Fenton’s long history of political advocacy to the use of fear mongering in the name of profiteering? Let’s start with Fenton Communications itself, which boasts on its website:

"Environmental Toxins: With partners including NRDC, Environmental Working Group and Healthcare Without Harm, we were among the first to raise alarm bells about the dangers of environmental toxins..."

As coincidence would have it, both the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) are leaders in the anti-BPA campaign. The NRDC was responsible for renewing the fight against BPA in California and filed a 327-page petition with the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment on July 15, 2009. That happens to be the exact same date that a different state regulatory body, the Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee, determined that BPA did not pose harm to humans and did not warrant being listed as a reproductive toxicant under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act.

As for the EWG, this group and one of its lead researchers, Frederick vom Saal, are long time warriors in the anti-BPA campaign, as noted in John Entine’s amazingly comprehensive AEI Outlook series piece from March 2010:

"EWG is most noted for its work in demonizing phthalates, which are relatively innocuous plastic softeners. EWG has not done any original research and does not have any scientists with targeted expertise in chemical additives to plastics. It regularly seeds the Internet with sensational and often-misleading interpretations of serious studies. For example, in November 2009, as the environmental community anxiously awaited the FDA's decision regarding BPA, EWG posted a report on the Huffington Post with the headline, 'BPA Wrecks Sex, Fouls Food--and Probably Worse.'"

With two hefty left-wing environmental groups as self-proclaimed “partners” of Fenton, enter the commercial component of the equation; BornFree, the company that just happens to specialize in products that do not contain BPA, the product the FDA says causes no harm but which is excoriated almost daily by the EWG and the NRDC.

Lo and behold, which public relations firm do you think BornFree retained? None other than Fenton Communications which promotes its work for BornFree on its company website. How successful was this effort?

"Today, BornFree is the leading corporate advocate for safe plastics in products for our kids. The company can barely keep up with sales, and national legislation has been introduced to ban BPA from children's products."

Now there’s nothing wrong with good old fashioned capitalism and making money for clients in the free market. But it’s wrong when the free market is manipulated and consumers are duped by junk science retailed to a willing media from individuals and organizations with a financial stake – a huge financial stake! – in the outcome of a regulatory process.

Show of hands – is there anybody who believes the nexus between Fenton, the NRDC, the EWG and BornFree is a happy coincidence?

Trial lawyers also make up Fenton's client base. Those lawyers can't win the hundreds of millions of dollars that they seek in lawsuits without the negative media coverage and the resulting consumer outrage that Fenton helps to generate for them.

I'll be discussing the role of trial lawyers, EWG, BornFree and other key players in the BPA battle more in-depth later in this series. You will be surprised how all roads lead back to Fenton and just how much the public has been misled, all in the name of financial profit.

If you've fallen victim to the scare tactics as I had, you'll have all the knowledge you need to cut the ties that bind you to the manipulative puppet master that is Fenton Communications.