Press release frustration and Defra's continuing incompetence

I wonder how many journalists get frustrated at the mish-mash of information that is sometimes presented in press releases?

Scientists and accountants are two professions where there are often considerable problems converting prose that claims to be English into a language that everyone understands.

Yesterday I spent an afternoon trying to decipher the pearls of wisdom from Deloitte, one of the big four accountants. The release concerned a tax case brought against one of Scotland's leading distillers, William Grant and Sons, and the confectionery and pet food group Mars by HM Revenue and Customs.

Essentially the two businesses won on appeal to the House of Lords a significant landmark ruling on the way the taxman treats depreciation on the equipment used by a business to manufacture goods and the resulting stock of any product created by that process and which is left at the financial year-end.

The result was that taxman is essentially denied hundreds of millions of pounds that it intended capturing from British business. For the Scotch whisky industry, which annually uses about 400,000tonnes of malting barley, it means a tax saving of £30million.

All fairly simple? Most definitely not. The complex way in which the decision was communicated by Deloitte's PR people was truly atrocious. Understandable their words of were most definitely not, and it took several frustrating calls before the Double Dutch could be converted into English and into form that could be understood by the man in the street.

The problem encountered here is not new; it is one that I have struggled to resolve for many years with the scientific community, and their spin doctors who just can't communicate. Scientists love to speak scientists is the only logical conclusion.

Why is this so? PR people blame journalists for their lack of knowledge, and journalists blame PRs for not basically having the balls to stand up to their clients and say: "No this won't do; you need to say it another way."

I can only speculate how many press releases from a variety of sources simply end up in the bin because journalists know that to try and convert scientific mumbo jumbo into words that everyone can understand is going to take forever.

Just what is the point of a PR putting out a press release that even they don't have the faintest knowledge about what it is trying to say? The frank admission from the Deloitte PR agent yesterday was that he had difficulty comprehending the information. That speaks volumes.

This just shouldn't be, and it reflects a problem that the PR side of the business needs to address. It's all very well writing a press release, but the question you have to ask yourself is: Can it be understood? If it can't, then throw it in the bucket and start again.

Thankfully, there are some scientific institutions who can speak in English. Hats off to the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research in Wales.

Press officer Emma Shipman (she's not a member - we must sign her up) deserves hearty congratulations for her release which I have reprinted below and arrived just as I was tearing my hair out with Deloitte.

For those who struggle to communicate the delights of scientific research and development work, here is an outstanding example of how it should be done. Well done Emma; you've restored temporarily my faith in scientific PRs. Sadly I expect that will disappear in the not too distant future when the next pile of mumbo jumbo arrives.

Meanwhile, I see that Defra is at it again in sneaking out announcements. You probably won't have heard that the Government has decided to stop compulsory brucellosis testing in cattle. Why so? Well the communications "experts" at Defra appear to have decided that instead of telling the agricultural press about their decision to abandon testing after 55 years they would rather get the chief vets of England, Scotland and Wales to write a letter to the Veterinary Record. The problem with announcing things in this fashion is that the target audience is small, and the wider implications of the decision which will wipe off thousands of pounds of income from most vet practices can't be seen by the agricultural industry. How many farmers are aware their cattle will no longer be tested?

Still while on my hobby horse with Defra wasn't it strange that for some of us today the news on its decision on voluntary modulation rates came not from it, rather a press release from George Gunn at the Tenants Farmers Association. That's pretty appalling it has to be said, but then it came on the same day Defra's gross incompetence over single farm payments was roundly condemned by MPs. Will this Department ever be able to get things right?


Regards


Joe Watson
Chairman --- Guild of Agricultural Journalists of Great Britain

joe.watson@mac.com



Here's Emma's press release. I hope you enjoy it.



Goodbye oil, hello…grass?


The humble grass plant could soon be put to work to supply a range of chemicals used in plastics, coatings and cosmetics, according to a team of scientists based in Wales.

The scientists have just embarked on a £1 million project which will find ways of obtaining key chemicals from perennial ryegrass, a species grown widely as grazing for farm animals.

“With climate change high on the agenda, we think it’s essential to search for cheap and renewable sources of chemicals that have traditionally come from the oil industry,” said Dr Steve Fish of the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, Aberystwyth.

“Much of the previous work in this area has focused on fermenting starch from maize, but we think that ryegrass would be a better option for the UK, because it can be grown on land that’s unsuitable for other crops and so doesn’t tie up areas that are needed for food production,” Dr Fish said. Grassland currently accounts for around two thirds of the agricultural land area in the UK.

Throughout the project, grassland scientists at IGER will work closely with colleagues at the Centre for Advanced and Renewable Materials (CARM) at Bangor. CARM helps companies develop alternative material technologies that are based on renewable resources. A key aspects of this work is the ability to scale up technologies. Biomass pre-treatment, processing and modification will be undertaken using the facilities of the new Technology Transfer Centre located on Anglesey.

CARM Commercial Manger Dr Rob Elias sees the project as a major opportunity for Wales. Dr Elias said, “Working in collaboration with IGER has allowed us to develop some novel approaches and expand our capability. Using a biomass source tailored to meet our requirements gives us major benefits in terms of cost. By working together we can really help address some of the issues facing the replacement of petrochemical sources of materials”.

The researchers plan to focus on high sugar varieties of ryegrass, originally bred at IGER, as these will contain greater amounts of more easily accessible starting material. End-products sought by the team will include lactic acid and succinic acid, both of which have a number of important roles in the chemicals industry.

Lactic acid is used directly in foods, drinks and the textile industry, and also as a source of several other substances, including polylactide, a plastic used in food packaging and other applications. Succinic acid, another versatile material, is involved in the production of a range of materials from detergents to surface coatings. According to the team, the annual market for lactic acid is around £120 million worldwide (based on 2002/3 figures) and significant growth is expected in the future.

The scientists plan to use techniques such as enzyme treatments and fermentation by microbes to produce large quantities of these target chemicals. “In one sense, we will be building on existing technology—because lactic acid is produced from grass every time a farmer makes silage, but we’ll be exploring how to drive the fermentation to a more extreme endpoint to maximise production of lactic acid,” Dr Fish said.

“Greater use of renewable, plant-derived compounds by industry is an attractive goal and we believe our research will ease this transition by creating new cost-effective methods suitable for the UK,” Dr Fish said.


Note: Funding for the study has come jointly from the DTI and a range of industrial companies, including Frontier, Boots, Hyperlast, Fuchs and Industrial Co-polymers. Research will be carried out at IGER and the Centre for Advanced and Renewable Materials, Bangor, over a period of three years.

Contact:IGER Business Office Aberystwyth (01970 823002)