Over the Christmas holiday I watched Smirnoff Vodka television commercials touting a new non-GMO label for its vodka. First off, Smirnoff is Russian vodka and Russians are drunks and lying S*!s. Smirnoff vodka was developed by Vladimir Smirnoff after escaping Russia after the October Revolution. Vodka nearly destroyed Russia and maybe still will. Smirnoff vodka is actually owned and distributed today by a British company but that conflicts with my narrative. It is still Russian.

Let’s get to it.

The American people are very susceptible to disinformation campaigns spread by social media. The scope and intensity of the Russian election meddling spreading propaganda during and after the 2016 election has been revealed to have been nothing short of astounding. The deeper the social media platforms dug to find propaganda being spread though their systems, the more stunned and embarrassed they became by what they found. Even they had no idea of the depth of the fake news being disseminated by Russians to their customers and followers.

Did this have an impact on the 2016 election? Those that quickly concluded that Russian interference did not determine the election were not aware of the immensity and penetration of their social media campaign. Donald thinks that it may have impacted the election, which is why he is so sensitive to the suggestion. It will also be fascinating to find out how deep the collusion with Russia, between them and the Trump campaign was in the Mueller report.

What does Smirnoff Vodka have to do with all of this?

Iowa State University and the Cornell Alliance for Science concluded from their investigative research that Russia uses “information warfare” to portray GMOs negatively. “According to the researchers, Russia is trying to position itself as the ecologically clean alternative to the US agriculture industry, where some 90 percent of the farmers grow crops genetically modified to resist insects and drought and withstand herbicides during weed control.”

“It was discovered that Russia is acting as a central, if largely unknown, purveyor of anti-GMO information. As the research was started, the topic of Russian meddling in the U.S. election and reports of Russian troll farms were inescapable. Acting on a strange lark, they immediately realized they were on to something. Their analysis found that RT and Sputnik published more articles containing the word GMO than the five American news organizations combined. Not only were there more articles, the two outlets also overwhelmingly portrayed GMOs negatively in contrast to the more balanced approach of the U.S. outlets.”

“There was this weird thing where you would see the GMO issue purposely inserted into articles that had nothing to do with the topic. The article would be about something most people would find abhorrent, like child pornography, or at least controversial, like abortion, and then you’d get to the bottom of them and see a link about GMO’s. By then, the reader’s mind is already in this very negative place and so by extension, GMO’s must be negative too. As a whole, the GMO misinformation campaign coming from Russia fits the profile of the Russian information warfare strategy described in recent military reports.”

Smirnoff doesn’t say that GMOs are bad. They just claim that the corn they use was not GMO so by their power of suggestion GMO-corn must be bad. Why would they tell everyone that their vodka was GMO-free if GMOs were good?

When challenged about their new non-GMO vodka sales campaign, Smirnoff did admit that it was a marketing ploy… intending to take advantage of the stupidity of Americans. There has been no health risk discovered from GMO crops after decades of use but the average uninformed American doesn’t know that. Russians take advantage of this ignorance for profit. It must work to both help elect the president of their choice and to sell vodka or they would not be working it as hard as they do.

Now one might question how they can claim any vodka is healthy, GMO or otherwise. If one has decided to forgo any health risk from drinking vodka it is rather hard to conclude that that customer gives a darn whether the vodka is GMO or not. Smirnoff also declares their vodka to be gluten-free. Made from corn, there is no gluten so that too is a marketing ploy intended to snare ignorant Americans.

The American Council on Foods said that they asked the ATF and Trade Bureau how they were going to respond to the Smirnoff ads. “Treasury has plainly stated that ‘Given the inquiries we have received and interest at the state level, we are reviewing our policy on the use of bio-engineered food labeling statements or references on labels under our jurisdiction’ but until that is done, and it’s been four years, it is illegal to make it appear as if non-GMO is a health claim.”

The Trump administration (USDA) announced that food companies will have until 2022 to label GMOs. That would be a pro-farmer position but the most pro-farmer position would be to drop GMO food labeling altogether as nothing but a marketing ploy as that is all that it is. No sense in helping the Russians cloud American minds.

David Kruse is president of CommStock Investments Inc., author and producer of The CommStock Report, an ag commentary and market analysis available daily by radio and by subscription on DTN/FarmDayta and the Internet.