Before we talk about the New MacDonald video, let's acknowledge the obvious: All organic-food marketing is comparative marketing. Explicitly or implicitly, organic marketing touts organic agriculture as superior to conventional agriculture.

It has to. The only reason to pay more for organic food is if you believe it's somehow better -- better for your health, better for the planet, better for whatever reason. Encouraging that belief is the organic marketer's job.

But is it the organic marketer's job to attack conventional agriculture? What if the attack blurs the line between legitimate criticism and misrepresentation? What if the attack is emotional rather than factual? Those are among the questions the New MacDonald video (http://tiny.cc/) raises anew.

New MacDonald paints a toxic picture of conventional agriculture. It depicts a troupe of children wearing straw hats and un-tucked shirts singing a takeoff on "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." As they sing and sway, other children prance across the stage, acting out the song. At one point the prancers wear hooded protective suits, gas masks and scuba-like tanks and spray billowing white puffs at tall plant stalks. The troupe sings:

"And on that farm he sprayed some crops

E-I-E-I-O.

With some GMOs here and a pesticide there

Here a spray, there a spray

Everywhere a spray spray"

Suddenly a small yellow plane gliding down a rope on pulleys bombs the stage with more spray. A white cloud envelops the world. The piano thunders a dissonant chord, then pauses. Children shriek and flee, waving their straw hats at the cloud as they evacuate.

Excerpt from:
Old, Old MacDonald Never Excited This Kind of Controversy