byrne, jay v-Fluence

<div><a href="https://twitter.com/bonuseventusag/status/344194491684638723">https://twitter.com/bonuseventusag/status/344194491684638723</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>bonus Eventusag</div><div>
</div><div>Twitter</div><div>https://twitter.com › bonuseventusag › status</div><div>Bonus Eventus · @BonusEventusAg · #hypocrisy how many #GMO-free #organic products R from nuke & chem mutagens? Same people claim #GMOs untested unsafe?</div><div>
</div><div>Dr. Oz Conclusion - How to avoid GMOs - Academics Review</div><div>bonuseventus.org</div><div>https://academics-review.bonuseventus.org › dr-oz-co...</div><div>Oz: “We're back discussing what you can do about genetically modified food today. We took a poll online at Dr. Oz dot com we found that overwhelming 91 percent ...</div><div>
</div><div>Eyewitness reports: Animals avoid GMOs - Academics Review</div><div>https://academics-review.bonuseventus.org › section-1</div><div>Animals don't discriminate against GM crops. See how this and other myths in Jeffrey Smith's book Genetic Roulette stack up against peer-reviewed science.</div><div>
</div><div>Jay Byrne: Meet the Man Behind the Monsanto PR Machine</div><div>
</div><div>U.S. Right to Know</div><div>https://usrtk.org › pesticides › jay-byrne-meet-the-man...</div><div>Feb 1, 2019 — Byrne's lobbying and PR operations for the GMO and pesticide industry ... Byrne urged the Bonus Eventus community to share content on these ...</div><div>=2 2019 stacy rtkMonsanto’s former Director of Corporate Communications Jay Byrne, president of the public relations firm <a href="https://www.v-fluence.com/about-us/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">v-Fluence</a>, is a key player in the <a href="https://usrtk.org/pesticides/jay-byrne-meet-the-man-behind-the-monsanto-pr-machine/#Greenpeaceattack" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">covert</a> propaganda and lobbying campaigns of the world’s largest agrichemical companies. <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/chemical/results/#q=Jay%20Byrne&col=%5B%22usrtk%22%5D&h=%7B%22hideDuplicates%22%3Afalse%2C%22hideFolders%22%3Afalse%2C%22hidePrivileged%22%3Afalse%2C%22hideConfidential%22%3Afalse%2C%22hideCopyright%22%3Afalse%7D&subsite=chemical&cache=true&count=71" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know</a>, posted in the UCSF Chemical Industry Documents <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/chemical/collections/usrtk-agrichemical-collection/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Archive</a>, reveal a range of deceptive tactics Byrne and other industry allies are using to promote and defend GMO foods and pesticides.The examples here showcase some of the ways companies are moving their messaging into the public arena from behind the cover of neutral-sounding front groups, government helpers and academics who appear to be independent as they work with corporations or their PR consultants.<h3 class="wp-block-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 1.3rem; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Clients: top agrichemical, agribusiness and drug companies</h3>Byrne’s <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Jay-Byrne-LinkedIn.pdf" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">client list</a> has included a range of the largest agribusiness and pharmaceutical companies and business groups, including the American Chemistry Council, Syngenta, AstraZeneca, Monsanto, Pfizer, the American Farm Bureau, National Corn Growers Association, Grocery Manufacturers Association, Rohm & Haas and the pesticide industry trade group CropLife.The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which promotes genetically engineered “Golden Rice,” is also a client. Byrne <a href="https://usrtk.org/pesticides/jay-byrne-meet-the-man-behind-the-monsanto-pr-machine/#AttackonGreenpeace" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">played a role in PR efforts to attack Greenpeace</a> and other critics of the GMO rice. See also the UCSF chemical industry documents library for many <a href="https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/chemical/results/#q=International%20Rice%20Research%20Institute&col=%5B%22usrtk%22%5D&h=%7B%22hideDuplicates%22%3Afalse%2C%22hideFolders%22%3Afalse%2C%22hidePrivileged%22%3Afalse%2C%22hideConfidential%22%3Afalse%2C%22hideCopyright%22%3Afalse%7D&subsite=chemical&cache=true&count=176" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow external" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">documents involving IRRI.</a><h3 class="wp-block-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 1.3rem; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Cooked up academic front group to attack Monsanto critics</h3>A key strategy of the agrichemical industry, as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/us/food-industry-enlisted-academics-in-gmo-lobbying-war-emails-show.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">New York Times reported</a>, is to deploy “white hat” professors to fight the industry’s PR and lobbying battles from behind the cover of the “gloss of impartiality and weight of authority that come with a professor’s pedigree.”In March 2010, Byrne and University of Illinois Professor <a href="https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/why-didnt-an-illinois-professor-have-to-disclose-gmo-funding/eb99bdd2-683d-4108-9528-de1375c3e9fb" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Bruce Chassy </a>discussed setting up a front group called “Academics Review” that could attract donations from corporations while appearing to be independent. Byrne compared the idea to the Center for Consumer Freedom (a front group run by infamous <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/10/12646/rick-berman-exposed-new-audio-detailing-tactics-against-environment" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">corporate propaganda front-man Rick Berman</a>), which “has cashed in on this to the extreme; and I think we have a much better concept.” Byrne described an “‘opportunities’ list with targets” they could go after. <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/uploadBruceChassy3.pdf" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Byrne wrote to Dr. Chassy</a>:<figure class="wp-block-image" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="349" src="https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/spai/q_glossy+w_911+to_webp+ret_img/https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Jay-Byrne-target-list.png" data-spai="1" alt="" class="wp-image-10176" srcset=" " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" data-spai-orig-obs="true" data-spai-lazy-loaded="true" data-spai-width="728.4" data-spai-height="247.912" style="box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; height: auto; max-width: 100%; border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid rgb(210, 210, 210);" /></figure>All those groups, people and topic areas “mean money for a range of well heeled corporations,” Byrne wrote. He said he and <a href="https://usrtk.org/our-investigations/val-giddings-top-operative-for-the-agrichemical-industry/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Val Giddings, PhD, a former vice president for the biotech trade group BIO</a>, could serve as “commercial vehicles” for the academics.In November 2010, <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Byrne-would-love-to-find-the-next-target.pdf" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Byrne wrote to Chassy</a> again, “It will be good to get the next phase of work on Academics Review going – we’ve got a relative slow first quarter coming up in 2011 if business remains the same.” Byrne offered to “schedule some pro bono search engine optimization time” for his team to counter a GMO critic’s online influence. Byrne concluded the email, “As always, would love to find the next topic (and sponsor) to broaden this while we are able.”In 2014, Academics Review released a <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-malkan/monsanto-fingerprints-fou_b_10757524.htmlhttps://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-malkan/monsanto-fingerprints-fou_b_10757524.html" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow external" aria-label="report attacking the organic industry (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">report attacking the organic industry </a>as a marketing scam; in its own marketing materials for the report, Academics Review claimed to be independent and did not disclose its agrichemical industry funding.For more information:<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 2rem; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.4rem; line-height: 1.7; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.1rem;"><a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-malkan/monsanto-fingerprints-fou_b_10757524.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Monsanto Fingerprints Found All Over Attack on Organic Food</a>, by Stacy Malkan, Huffington Post (6.30.2016)</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.1rem;"><a href="https://usrtk.org/gmo/academics-review-the-making-of-a-monsanto-front-group/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Academics Review: The Making of a Monsanto Front Group</a>, USRTK fact sheet</li></ul><h3 class="wp-block-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 1.3rem; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“US government-GLP-Byrne projects” to sway journalists</h3>Byrne’s lobbying and PR operations for the GMO and pesticide industry intersect at many points with the work of <a href="https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/jon-entine-the-chemical-industrys-master-messenger/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Jon Entine, another key figure</a> in agrichemical industry defense campaigns. Entine directs the Genetic Literacy Project, which he launched in 2011 when Monsanto was a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100516060411/http://www.esgmediametrics.com:80/clients.htm" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">client of his PR firm.</a> (Entine’s PR firm ESG MediaMetrics listed Monsanto as a client on its website in <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Monsanto-client-ESG-Media-Metrics-2010.png" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="2010 (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">2010</a>, <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Monsanto-ESG-Media-Metrics-Jon-Entine-2011.png" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="2011 (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">2011</a>, <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/ESG-Media-Metrics-Monsanto-client-2012.png" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">2012</a> and up to January <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Monsanto-client-ESG-Media-Metrics-2013.png" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="2013 (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">2013</a>, according to internet archives still available online.)In December 2013, <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/USDA-Entine-Byrne.pdf" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Entine wrote to Max T. Holtzman</a>, who was then acting deputy undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to propose collaborating on a series of what he described as “US government-GLP-Byrne projects” to promote GMOs. Entine wrote to Holtzman:<figure class="wp-block-image" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="205" src="https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/spai/q_glossy+w_911+to_webp+ret_img/https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Screen-Shot-2019-02-01-at-9.13.45-AM.png" data-spai="1" alt="" class="wp-image-10255" srcset=" " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" data-spai-orig-obs="true" data-spai-lazy-loaded="true" data-spai-width="728.4" data-spai-height="145.675" style="box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; height: auto; max-width: 100%; border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid rgb(210, 210, 210);" /></figure>Entine’s proposed “<a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/US-govt-GLP-Byrne-projects-Entine-proposed-to-Holtzman.png" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="US government-GLP-Byrne (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">US government-GLP-Byrne</a>” projects included a “Boot Camp and Response Swat Team” to prepare third-party academics for “potential legislative engagement on [GMO] labeling and related issues,” a “journalism conclave” to bolster media coverage about food security challenges and “provide coaching to younger journalists,” a global media outreach campaign to promote acceptance of biotechnology, and “multi-media content and placements from credible sources” reinforcing key themes “with segments and footage made available on U.S. government websites, GLP and other platforms.”Holtzman responded, “Thanks Jon. It was great meeting you as well. I think your outline below provides natural intersection points where usda/USG messaging and your efforts intersect well. I’d like to engage further and loop other folks here at usda not only from the technical/trade areas but from our communications shop as well.”<h3 class="wp-block-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 1.3rem; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Taxpayer-funded, Monsanto-aligned videos to promote GMOs</h3>A series of taxpayer-funded <a href="http://academicsreview.org/multi-media-gallery/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">videos</a> produced in 2012 to promote genetically engineered foods provide another example of how academics and universities push corporate-aligned messaging. Byrne’s PR firm v-Fluence helped create the videos that were “designed to appear a little low budget and amateurish,” according to an email from University of Illinois Professor Bruce Chassy.Dr. Chassy <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Byrne-Chassy-GMO-videos.pdf" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="wrote to Monsanto employees on April 27, 2012 (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">wrote to Monsanto employees on April 27, 2012</a>:<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><img decoding="async" src="https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/spai/q_glossy+w_728+to_webp+ret_img/https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Screen-Shot-2019-01-31-at-11.18.28-AM.png" data-spai="1" alt="" class="wp-image-10087" width="584" height="318" srcset=" " sizes="(max-width: 584px) 100vw, 584px" data-spai-orig-obs="true" data-spai-lazy-loaded="true" data-spai-width="582.4" data-spai-height="317.325" style="box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; height: auto; max-width: 100%; border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid rgb(210, 210, 210);" /></figure>Monsanto’s Eric Sachs responded:<figure class="wp-block-image" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="157" src="https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/spai/q_glossy+w_911+to_webp+ret_img/https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Screen-Shot-2019-01-31-at-11.20.23-AM.png" data-spai="1" alt="" class="wp-image-10088" srcset=" " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" data-spai-orig-obs="true" data-spai-lazy-loaded="true" data-spai-width="728.4" data-spai-height="111.93700000000001" style="box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; height: auto; max-width: 100%; border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid rgb(210, 210, 210);" /></figure><figure class="wp-block-image" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="119" src="https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/spai/q_glossy+w_911+to_webp+ret_img/https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Screen-Shot-2019-01-31-at-12.04.54-PM.png" data-spai="1" alt="" class="wp-image-10138" srcset=" " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" data-spai-orig-obs="true" data-spai-lazy-loaded="true" data-spai-width="728.4" data-spai-height="84.98750000000001" style="box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; height: auto; max-width: 100%; border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid rgb(210, 210, 210);" /></figure>Sachs offered to assist with messaging of future videos by sharing the results of focus group tests Monsanto was conducting. Dr. Chassy invited Sachs to offer suggestions for future video topics and asked him to send along the Monsanto focus group results.<h3 class="wp-block-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 1.3rem; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Training scientists and journalists to frame the debate about GMOs and pesticides</h3>In 2014 and 2015, Byrne helped Jon Entine organize the <a href="https://usrtk.org/gmo/academics-review-the-making-of-a-monsanto-front-group/#BLPbootcamps" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Biotech Literacy Project boot camps</a> funded by agrichemical companies and co-hosted by two industry front groups, <a href="https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/jon-entine-the-chemical-industrys-master-messenger/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Entine’s Genetic Literacy Project</a> and <a href="https://usrtk.org/gmo/academics-review-the-making-of-a-monsanto-front-group/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Bruce Chassy’s Academics Review</a>. Organizers misleadingly described the funding for the events as coming from a mix of academic, government and industry sources, but the <a href="https://progressive.org/magazine/how-the-biotech-industry-cultivates-positive-media/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">only traceable source of funding was the agrichemical industry</a>, according to reporting by Paul Thacker. The purpose of the boot camps, Thacker reported, was “to train scientists and journalists to frame the debate over GMOs and the toxicity of glyphosate.”Byrne was on the organizing team, along with Cami Ryan (who now works for Monsanto) and Bruce Chassy (who was receiving <a href="https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/why-didnt-an-illinois-professor-have-to-disclose-gmo-funding/eb99bdd2-683d-4108-9528-de1375c3e9fb" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">funds from Monsanto</a> that weren’t publicly disclosed), according to emails from <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Byrne-on-BLP-organizing-team.pdf" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Entine</a> and <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Byrne-BLP.pdf" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Ryan</a>.For more information:<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 2rem; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.4rem; line-height: 1.7; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.1rem;"><a href="https://progressive.org/magazine/how-the-biotech-industry-cultivates-positive-media/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Flacking for GMOs: How the Biotech Industry Cultivates Positive Media—and Discourages Criticism</a>, by Paul Thacker, The Progressive (7.21.17)</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.1rem;"><a href="https://usrtk.org/gmo/academics-review-the-making-of-a-monsanto-front-group/#BLPbootcamps" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Industry-funded Biotech Literacy Project Boot Camps (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Industry-funded Biotech Literacy Project Boot Camps</a>, USRTK fact sheet</li></ul><h3 class="wp-block-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 1.3rem; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Bonus Eventus: the agrichemical industry’s social media echo chamber</h3>A key service Byrne provides to agrichemical promotional efforts is his “Bonus Eventus community” that supplies academics and other industry allies with talking points and promotional opportunities. Internal <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/chemical/docs/#id=ygfm0226" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">documents (page 9)</a> describe Bonus Eventus as “a private social networking portal that serves as a communication cooperative for agriculture-minded scientists, policy makers and other stakeholders.” Members receive Byrne’s newsletter, plus access to his reference library of agribusiness topics, “stakeholder database” of influential people in the GMO debate, and trainings and support for social media engagement.Examples of the newsletter can be found in this <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/docs/#id=mxcm0226" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">cache of emails from Byrne to Peter Phillips</a>, a University of Saskatchewan professor who has been <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/university-of-saskatoon-professor-monsanto-1.4107475" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">criticized by colleagues</a> for his <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/u-of-s-professor-says-there-s-nothing-unusual-about-his-ties-to-monsanto-1.4100399" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">close ties to Monsanto</a>. In the Nov. 7, 2016 newsletter, Byrne urged Phillips and other recipients to share content about the “flaws and omissions” in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-falls-short.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">New York Times story</a> that reported on the failure of GMO crops to increase yields and reduce pesticides, and the “mounting questions” facing an international group of cancer scientists who reported glyphosate is a probably human carcinogen – messaging that aligned with Monsanto’s PR plan to <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/secret-documents-expose-monsantos-war-on-cancer-scientists/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow external" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">discredit the cancer research panel</a>. (See also our <a href="https://usrtk.org/our-investigations/corporate-influence-at-the-university-of-saskatchewan-professor-peter-phillips-and-his-secret-right-to-know-symposium/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">fact sheet on Peter Phillip’s</a> secret “right to know” symposium).<a id="AttackonGreenpeace" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; text-underline-offset: 0.1em;" />Byrne urged the Bonus Eventus community to share content on these themes from industry-connected writers, such as <a href="https://usrtk.org/food-for-thought/julie-kelly-cooks-up-propaganda-for-the-agrichemical-industry/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Julie Kelly</a>, <a href="https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/why-you-cant-trust-henry-miller-on-gmos/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Dr. Henry Miller</a>, <a href="https://usrtk.org/food-for-thought/kavin_senapathy_henry_miller/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Kavin Senapathy</a>, <a href="https://usrtk.org/gmo/sci-babe-yvette-dentremont/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">The Sci Babe</a> and <a href="https://usrtk.org/our-investigations/hank-campbells-maze-of-monsanto-loving-science-blogs/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Hank Campbell</a> of the <a href="https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/why-you-cant-trust-the-american-council-on-science-and-health/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">American Council on Science and Health</a>, a group Monsanto was <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ACSH-email.pdf" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">paying to help discredit</a> the cancer scientists. In 2017, Forbes deleted dozens of articles by Dr. Miller – including several he co-authored with <a href="https://www.hoover.org/profiles/julie-kelly" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Kelly</a>, <a href="https://www.hoover.org/profiles/kavin-senapathy" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Senapathy</a> and Byrne – after the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/business/monsantos-sway-over-research-is-seen-in-disclosed-emails.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">New York Times reported</a> that Dr. Miller had published an article in Forbes under his own name that had been ghostwritten by Monsanto.<h3 class="wp-block-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 1.3rem; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gatekeeper for attack on Greenpeace</h3>When a group of Nobel laureates called on Greenpeace to stop opposing genetically engineered rice, it looked like an independent effort. But behind the curtain of impressive credentials were the helping hands of two key players in the agrichemical industry’s PR lobby: Jay Byrne and a board member of the Genetic Literacy Project. Byrne <a href="https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/impact/i-was-barred-nobel-laureate-press-conference-pr-consultant-monsanto-ties" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">was posted at the door</a> at a 2016 National Press Club event promoting a group called <a href="http://supportprecisionagriculture.org/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Support Precision Agriculture</a>. The .com version of that website redirected for years to the Genetic Literacy Project, a front group that works <a href="https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/jon-entine-the-chemical-industrys-master-messenger/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">with Monsanto on PR projects</a> without disclosing those ties.So who paid for the anti-Greenpeace press event? Sir Richard Roberts, a biochemist who said he organized the Nobel laureate letter, explained the backstory <a href="http://supportprecisionagriculture.org/spafaq.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">in an FAQ on the website:</a> the “campaign has been pretty inexpensive so far,” he wrote, consisting mostly of his salary paid by his employer New England Biolabs and “out-of-pocket expenses” paid by Matt Winkler. Winkler, founder and chairman of the biotech company Asuragen, is also a funder and <a href="https://geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-board/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">board member</a> of Genetic Literacy Project, according to the group’s website. Roberts explained that Winkler “enlisted a friend, Val Giddings,” (the <a aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="https://usrtk.org/our-investigations/val-giddings-top-operative-for-the-agrichemical-industry/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">former biotech trade group VP</a>) who “suggested Jay Byrne” (Monsanto’s former communications director) who offered pro bono logistical support for the press event.Byrne and Giddings also helped orchestrate the industry-funded Academics Review, a front group they set up to appear independent while serving as a vehicle to attract corporate cash in exchange for attacking critics of ag-biotech products, according to <a href="https://usrtk.org/gmo/academics-review-the-making-of-a-monsanto-front-group/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know</a>. In the emails, Byrne named Greenpeace on the <a aria-label="“targets” Byrne was compiling for Monsanto (opens in a new tab)" href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/uploadBruceChassy3.pdf" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">“targets” list he was compiling for Monsanto</a>. Another of Byrne’s <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaybyrne/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">clients</a> is the International Rice Research Institute, the main industry group trying to commercialize GMO Golden Rice, which was the focus of the Greenpeace critique. Research by Glenn Davis Stone of Washington University in St. Louis has found that <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-016-9696-1" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">low yields and technical difficulties</a> have held up Golden Rice.In his FAQ, Dr. Roberts dismissed Dr. Stone’s independent research as “not an accurate representation of the state of affairs,” and instead pointed to industry-connected PR sources who will be familiar to readers of Byrne’s Bonus Eventus newsletter: <a aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="https://usrtk.org/food-for-thought/julie-kelly-cooks-up-propaganda-for-the-agrichemical-industry/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Julie Kelly</a>, <a aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/why-you-cant-trust-henry-miller-on-gmos/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Henry Miller</a> and <a aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="https://usrtk.org/gmo/academics-review-the-making-of-a-monsanto-front-group/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Academics Review</a>. The press event took place at a critical political moment, and generated a helpful <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/29/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance/?utm_term=.63a976223a4f" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">story</a> in the Washington Post, a week before Congress voted to prohibit states from labeling GMOs.[doc]<figure class="wp-block-image" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><figcaption class="wp-element-caption" style="box-sizing: border-box;">As of January 2019, the .com version of Support Precision Agriculture redirected to the Genetic Literacy Project. In his FAQ, Roberts said he has no relationship with GLP and claimed that “an unknown person” had purchased the similar domain in an “apparent attempt” to link it to GLP. He said this is an example that “the dirty tricks of the opposition are without limits.” (The redirect was deactivated sometime after this post went live.)</figcaption></figure>For more information:<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 2rem; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.4rem; line-height: 1.7; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.1rem;"><a href="https://www.oneworld.nl/lezen/klimaat/how-nobels4gmos-campaign-rife-biotech-industry-ties/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow external" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">How The #Nobels4gmos Campaign Is Rife With Biotech Industry Ties</a>, by Vincent Harmsen, One World (7.11.16)</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.1rem;"><a href="https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/107-nobel-laureate-attack-on-greenpeace-traced-back-to-biotech-pr-operators/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">107 Nobel Laureate attack on Greenpeace traced back to biotech PR operators</a>, by Jonathan Latham, PhD, Independent Science News (7.1.16)</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.1rem;"><a href="https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/impact/i-was-barred-nobel-laureate-press-conference-pr-consultant-monsanto-ties" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">I was barred from a Nobel Laureate press conference by a PR consultant with Monsanto ties</a>, by Tim Schwab, Food & Water Watch (7.6.16)</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.1rem;"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/greenpeace-to-nobel-laureates-its-not-our-fault-golden-rice-has-failed-1896697050.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Greenpeace to Nobel laureates: it’s not our fault Golden Rice has ‘failed as a solution, </a>’ by Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch (6.30.2016)</li></ul><h3 class="wp-block-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 1.3rem; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Weaponizing the web with fake people and websites</h3>Reporting for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2002/nov/19/gm.food" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">The Guardian in 2002</a>, George Monbiot described a covert tactic that agrichemical corporations and their PR operatives have been using for decades to promote and defend their products: creating fake personalities and fake websites to silence critics and influence online search results.Monbiot reported that “fake citizens” (people who did not actually exist) “had been bombarding internet listservers with messages denouncing the scientists and environmentalists who were critical of GM crops” – and the fake citizens had been traced back to Monsanto’s PR firm Bivings.Monbiot described Jay Byrne’s connection to Bivings:“At the end of last year, Jay Byrne, formerly [Monsanto’s] director of internet outreach, explained to a number of other firms the tactics he had used at Monsanto. He showed how, before he got to work, the top GM sites listed by an internet search engine were all critical of the technology. Following his intervention, the top sites were all supportive ones (four of them established by Monsanto’s PR firm Bivings). He told them to ‘think of the internet as a weapon on the table. Either you pick it up or your competitor does, but somebody is going to get killed.’ While he was working for Monsanto, Byrne told the internet newsletter Wow that he ‘spends his time and effort participating’ in web discussions about biotech. He singled out the site AgBioWorld, where he ‘ensures his company gets proper play’. AgBioWorld is the site on which [fake citizen] Smetacek launched her campaign.”For more information:<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 2rem; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.4rem; line-height: 1.7; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.1rem;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/may/29/research.highereducation" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">Corporate phantoms</a>, by George Monbiot, The Guardian (5.29.02)</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.1rem;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2002/nov/19/gm.food" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">The covert biotech war</a> , by George Monbiot, The Guardian (11.18.02)·</li></ul><h3 class="wp-block-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 1.3rem; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">More from Jay Byrne</h3>A <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/v-fluence-jay-byrne-presentation.pdf" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-decoration-thickness: 0.05em; text-decoration-color: rgb(32, 105, 187); text-underline-offset: 0.1em;">2013 Power Point presentation</a> showcases the role Byrne plays for his clients in the agrichemical industry. Here he explains his theories about eco-advocates, ranks their influence online and urges companies to pool their resources to confront them, in order to avoid “regulatory and market constraints.”pix]
=<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/monsanto-propaganda-newsweek-2528277875.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/monsanto-propaganda-newsweek-2528277875.html</a>Stacy Malkan"The campaign for <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/organic" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">organic</a> food is a deceitful, expensive scam," according to a Jan. 19 Newsweek <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/campaign-organic-food-deceitful-expensive-scam-785493" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">article</a> authored by Dr. Henry I. Miller of the Hoover Institution.If that name sounds familiar—Henry I. Miller—it may be because the New York Times recently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/business/monsantos-sway-over-research-is-seen-in-disclosed-emails.html?mcubz=1&r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">revealed a scandal</a> involving Miller: that he had been caught publishing an article ghostwritten by <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/monsanto" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Monsanto</a>under his own name in Forbes. The article, which largely mirrored a draft provided to him by Monsanto, attacked the scientists of the World Health Organization's cancer panel (IARC) for their <a href="https://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/2016/glyphosate_IARC2016.php" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">decision to list</a>Monsanto's top-selling chemical, <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/glyphosate" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">glyphosate</a>, as a probable human carcinogen.Reporting on an <a href="http://baumhedlundlaw.com/pdf/monsanto-documents/22-Internal-Email-Demonstrating-Monsanto-Ghostwriting-Article-Criticizing-IARC-for-Press.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">email exchange</a> released in litigation with Monsanto over <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/cancer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">cancer</a> concerns, the Times' Danny Hakim wrote:"Monsanto asked Mr. Miller if he would be interested in writing an article on the topic, and he said, 'I would be if I could start from a high-quality draft.'The article appeared under Mr. Miller's name, and with the assertion that 'opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.' The magazine did not mention any involvement by Monsanto in preparing the article …Forbes removed the story from its website on Wednesday and said that it ended its relationship with Mr. Miller amid the revelations."The opinion wire Project Syndicate followed suit, after first adding a disclaimer to Miller's commentaries noting that they would have been rejected if his collaboration with Monsanto had been known.Desperate to Disparage OrganicThe ghostwriting scandal has hardly slowed Miller down; he has continued to spin promotional content for the agrichemical industry from outlets such as Newsweek and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/gene-editing-is-here-and-desperate-patients-want-it-1507847260" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">The Wall Street Journal</a>, without disclosing to readers his relationship with Monsanto.[scary fingerprint nzwk grafic headline]

Yet the corporate collaboration seems clear; Miller's Newsweek hit on organic food has Monsanto's fingerprints in plain sight all over it.For starters, Miller uses <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pesticides" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">pesticide</a> industry sources to make unsubstantiated (and ludicrous) claims about organic agriculture—for example, that organic farming is "actually more harmful to the environment" than conventional agriculture, or that organic allies spent $2.5 billion in a year campaigning against <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/gmo-genetically-modified-organism/" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">genetically engineered foods</a> in North America.The source on the latter inaccurate claim is Jay Byrne, a former director of corporate communications for Monsanto (not identified as such in the Newsweek article), who now directs a PR firm called v-Fluence Interactive.Email exchanges reveal how Monsanto works with people like Jay Byrne—and with Byrne specifically—to push exactly this type of attack against Monsanto's foes while keeping corporate involvement a secret.According to emails obtained by my group <a href="https://usrtk.org/our-investigations/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">U.S. Right to Know</a>, Byrne played a key role in helping Monsanto set up a corporate front group called Academics Review that published a report attacking the organic industry as a marketing scam—the exact theme in Miller's Newsweek article.The concept of the front group—explained in <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-malkan/monsanto-fingerprints-fou_b_10757524.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">the emails I reported here</a>—was to create a credible-sounding platform from which academics could attack critics of the agrichemical industry, while secretly receiving funds from industry groups, and also claiming to be independent. Wink, wink, ha, ha."The key will be keeping Monsanto in the background so as not to harm the credibility of the information," <a href="https://www.usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Sachs-AR.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">wrote a Monsanto executive</a> involved in the plan.<img class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="JB5KGT1560016612" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="e0f0e" type="lazy-image" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzExNzU3Mi85ODB4LnBuZyIsImV4cGlyZXNfYXQiOjE1NjA2MzIzMzF9.sR92VxRxD-Uu0gEbSwzfvqWzUGl9gN8i-yfonhy90Kc/img.png" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; max-width: 100%;" />
Jay Byrne discusses plans to set up a corporate front group of academics with Monsanto's help.Byrne's role, <a href="https://www.usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/uploadBruceChassy3.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">according to the emails</a>, was to serve as a "commercial vehicle" to help obtain corporate funding. Byrne also said he was compiling an "opportunities" list of targets—critics of the agrichemical industry who could be "inoculated" from the academics' platform.
Several people on Byrne's "opportunities" list, or later attacked by Academics Review, were targets in Miller's Newsweek article, too.Miller's Newsweek piece also tried to discredit the work of New York Times' reporter Danny Hakim, without disclosing that it was Hakim who exposed Miller's Monsanto ghostwriting scandal.As with other recent <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-politics-of-infertility-and-cancer_us_5a1d9f5ae4b0e6631c44bbc4" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">attacks on the organic industry</a>, all fingers point back to the agrichemical corporations that will lose the most if consumer demand continues to rise for foods free of GMOs and pesticides.Monsanto's 'Independent Academic' Ruse...<div>
</div><div><div></div><div>Although Byrne <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Immoral_Maize:Extract_from_Don't_Worry,It's_Safe_to_Eat_by_Andrew_Rowell" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large; line-height: 22.1px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">appeared to be the campaign's chief architect,</a> its principal conduit was the lobby group AgBioWorld, overseen by the GM scientist CS Prakash.  The <a href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dr-seralini-please-release-data/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large; line-height: 22.1px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">"ipetition" </a>on Seralini contains no information as to who sponsored it, but its first signatory is CS Prakash. Prakash also seems to have set up <a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/global-scientific-community-urge-dr-seralini-to-release-data-from-studies-on-biotech-corn-with-rats" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large; line-height: 22.1px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">an earlier more primitive version of the petition</a>, which clearly identifies him as its sponsor.  Some time after GMWatch <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14235" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large; line-height: 22.1px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">flagged up </a>the likely role of Prakash and AgBioWorld in the ipetition, the organisation acknowledged its authorship <a href="http://presswire.einnews.com/247pr/309289" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large; line-height: 22.1px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">in a press release </a>which asserted that "the petitioning scientists are calling on the publishing journal editors to retract the Seralini study" if he failed to give in to their demand that he hand over all his data.  The AgBioWorld press release contained a quote by Bruce Chassy, who was also <a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/global-scientific-community-urge-dr-seralini-to-release-data-from-studies-on-biotech-corn-with-rats" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large; line-height: 22.1px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">the first signatory of the earlier Seralini petition</a>. Chassy was also<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/09/25/scientists-smell-a-rat-in-fraudulent-genetic-engineering-study/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large; line-height: 22.1px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> the co-author of the Forbes piece</a>accusing Seralini of fraud.  The article's other author was Henry Miller, a darling of the rightwing press who operates out of the Hoover Institution, among <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14255" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large; line-height: 22.1px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">other industry backed lobby groups</a>. Miller, like Chassy, has long been associated with Prakash's AgBioWorld. Miller recently co-authored <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/10/22/the-roots-of-the-anti-genetic-engineering-movement-follow-the-money/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large; line-height: 22.1px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">another vitriolic piece on GM for Forbes</a>, denouncing the "fear profiteers" of the anti-GM "protest industry". Miller's co-author on that occasion was none other than former Monsanto PR boss Jay Byrne of v-Fluence. Tellingly, Michael Pollan, the renowned New York Times food writer and professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, described the piece by Byrne and Miller as <a href="https://twitter.com/michaelpollan/status/260791206412423168" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: large; line-height: 22.1px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">a breathtaking example of "the Big Lie"</a>.</div><div></div></div><div>
<div><a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php?title=V-fluence&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="V-fluence (page does not exist)" style="line-height: 24px; text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">V-fluence</a> </div><div>...</div><div>The <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cffar.org/" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">website</a> of <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php?title=The_Center_for_Food%26_Agricultural_Research&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="The Center for Food & Agricultural Research (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">The Center for Food & Agricultural Research</a> (CFFAR) is not currently available, following adverse publicity, but can still be viewed in its <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://web.archive.org/web//http://www.cffar.org" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">archived form</a>. CFFAR presents itself as "a public policy and research coalition" concerned with food and agriculture but, although links to the site were to be found from the websites of US public libraries and university departments, there appears to be no evidence that this organisation ever existed.The real purpose of the site appears to have been to associate biotech industry critics with "violence" and "terror" via fabricated claims of violence and intimidation. It claims in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20020111190419/www.cffar.org/vandalwatch/names/part2.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">one article</a>, for example, that Greenpeace engaged in multiple attacks on farms in the UK during which it 'commandeered the farmers' tractors' and 'crashed through fences' in pursuit of farmers' families! One of the goals of the site appears to be to promote an internet-based campaign targeting those with links (particularly <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20011006072154/www.cffar.org/vandalwatch/campaign/index.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">funding links</a> ) to groups opposing the biotech industry, lobbying them to break their ties with these groups because of the "violence".Here's the CFFAR.org domain registration details:
<dl style="margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">Registrant: THEODOROV, MANUEL (CFFAR-DOM)</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">8391 Beverly Blvd #107</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">LOS ANGELES, CA 90048 US</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">Domain Name: CFFAR.ORG</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">THEODOROV, MANUEL (MTW94) etheodorou@EARTHLINK.NET</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">THEODOROV, MANUEL</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">8391 Beverly Blvd #107</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">LOS ANGELES, CA 90048</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">3239604489</dd></dl>The 'etheodorou' in the e-mail address is clearly different to the contact name. On the following <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.consumeralert.org/signatories.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">webpage</a>, the name "<a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Emmanuel_Theodorou&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Emmanuel Theodorou (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Emmanuel Theodorou</a>" is listed with other early signatories to a petition supporting agricultural biotechnology launched by Prof <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php/CS_Prakash" title="CS Prakash" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">CS Prakash</a>. Interestingly, Theodorou's name appears to have been omitted from the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.agbioworld.org/PHP/index_search.phtml?alpha=T" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">current version of the petition</a>.The following <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.agbioworld.org/PHP/index_search.phtml?alpha=T" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">information is provided</a> by Theodorou on the petition page:<dl style="margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">NAME: emmanuel theodorou</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">POSITION: director of associations</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">ORGANIZATION: bivings woodell, Inc.</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">DEPARTMENT: advocacy and outreach</dd></dl>Theodorou is known to have been part of the <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php/Monsanto" title="Monsanto" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Monsanto</a> team at Bivings.Bivings have also been linked to multiple attacks on biotech industry critics posted by a '<a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php/Mary_Murphy" title="Mary Murphy" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Mary Murphy</a>' 'mmrph@hotmail.com' on lists and message boards. Many of these attacks were posted on the <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php/AgBioView" title="AgBioView" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">AgBioView</a> list, often in coordination with attacks posted by 'Andura Smetacek'. Murphy also appears to have lobbied organisations critical of GM crops to change their stance, to judge by a mail sent to the American Chiropractic Association, which concluded, 'If you want to be taken seriously, you should not make ridiculous claims and you should show respect for the scientists who are developing this important technology.'The Murphy/Smetacek attacks were to culminate with the publication of an article in the journal Nature by researchers at UC Berkeley showing native maize strains in Mexico had been contaminated by GM maize. Within hours of publication an attack on the researchers was posted on AgBioView by 'Mary Murphy'. She wrote: 'It should be noted that the author of the Nature article, Ignacio H Chapela, is on the board of directors of the Pesticide Action Network North America, an activist group.' Murphy accused Chapela of being 'not exactly what you'd call an unbiased writer'. This was followed up by postings from 'Andura Smetacek' who claimed the research was a product of a conspiracy with 'fear-mongering activists'. Chapela's aim, apparently, was to attack 'biotechnology, free-trade, intellectual property rights and other politically motivated agenda items.' These inflammatory claims were used to launch a campaign of vilification of the researchers and their study on AgBioView and a campaign of pressure on the journal Nature which met with some success.Smetacek's postings have subsequently been traced back to Monsanto but in her earliest postings Smetacek frequently refers people to the website of the Center for Food and Agricultural Research (CFFAR), ie the site registered to Bivings' Theodorou. This suggests Smetacek, Murphy and CFFAR were all part of a coordinated offensive.On a <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.foxbghsuit.com/" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">website</a> run by two journalists involved in a protracted legal action against Fox TV over its suppression of a report on Monsanto's genetically engineered cattle drug rBGH, 'Murphy' posted a fake Associated Press article. Although Murphy uses 'her' usual hotmail address, other identifying details are shown in brackets <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.foxbghsuit.com/wwwboard/messages/1168.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">on the site</a> :
<dl style="margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">Posted by Mary Murphy (bw6.bivwood.com )</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">ACTIVISTS CHANGE STANCE ON GMOs AFTER SCIENTISTS GENETICALLY ALTER MARIJUANA (AP)</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">June 9, 2000</dd></dl>'bivwood.com' is a domain of The Bivings Group. The bracketed information on the bulletin board, generated from the poster's headers, thus connects Mary Murphy directly to Monsanto's internet PR company. We have also seen an e-mail from Mary Murphy posted via her usual address mmrph@hotmail.com which the headers show was also generated from bw6.bivwood.com .Between April and June 2002, the British publications <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit3.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">The Big Issue</a>, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit2.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">The Ecologist</a> and <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit4.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">The Guardian</a> published a series of articles alleging that <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php/AgBioView" title="AgBioView" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">AgBioView</a> was used as part of a corporate smear campaign against the researchers by Bivings.In a letter published in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,735781,00.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">The Guardian</a> on Wednesday 12 June 2002, Gary Bivings, the President of The Bivings Group, states that, 'The allegations made against the Bivings Group in two recent columns (<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit4.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">The fake persuaders</a>, May 14, and <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit7.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">Corporate phantoms</a> , May 29) are completely untrue.' <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Gary_Bivings&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Gary Bivings (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Gary Bivings</a> goes on to claim that, 'the Bivings Group has no knowledge of either <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php/Mary_Murphy" title="Mary Murphy" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Mary Murphy</a> or <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php/Andura_Smetacek" title="Andura Smetacek" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Andura Smetacek</a>'.However, before Gary Bivings' letter of denial had even been published, Bivings' head of online PR, <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Todd_Zeigler&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Todd Zeigler (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Todd Zeigler</a>, had confided to the BBC that one of the e-mails in question was sent by someone 'working for Bivings' or 'clients using our services'. The admission, made to BBC TV's news and current affairs programme, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://ngin.tripod.com/080602d.htm" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">Newsnight</a>, was included in their report on the Mexican maize scandal broadcast on 7th June 2002 (see the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://ngin.tripod.com/080602d.htm" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) 100% 50% no-repeat;">programme transcript</a>). By including the phrase 'clients using our services' in the admission, Zeigler might appear to be directly implicating the client most directly relevant to the e-mails in question - Monsanto. Subsequent analysis of the headers of early Smetacek mails have borne out the company's direct involvement.While searching the <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php/AgBioView" title="AgBioView" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">AgBioView</a> list archive, in early 2002 we got an error message showing that the archive was at the time held on a database on Bivings main apollo server:<dl style="margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">AgBioView E-mail Newsletter Archives Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Can't connect to MySQL server on 'apollo.bivings.com' (113) in functions.php on line 5</dd></dl>This suggests that Monsanto-Bivings were not just contributing significantly to the tone and direction of the AgBioView list in an undisclosed way through the use of aliases, but were making some of AgBioWorld's content available in a way that masked their involvement. A web design analysis that we commisioned showed that the agbioworld.org website shared striking technical similarities with a site known to have been designed by Bivings, suggesting the same designer had worked on both.Shortly before the publication of the first article on the Bivings-Monsanto campaign, the AgBioView archive became unavailable and a new archive, hosted by Sparklist, was started. No explanation has ever been given for the closing of the original archive. All Murphy and Smetacek posts stopped around the same time.Following the appearance of a <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=2&page=1&op=1" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">Guardian article</a> linking Monsanto directly to <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php/Andura_Smetacek" title="Andura Smetacek" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Andura Smetacek</a>, the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cffar.org/index_lander.php?Domain=cffar.org" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA/nAKks+JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">CFFAR.org</a> website became unavailable. The article also made reference to <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php/Jay_Byrne" title="Jay Byrne" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Jay Byrne</a>, Monsanto's former Chief Internet Strategist. Interestingly, in a presentation to fellow PR professionals on Monsanto's internet work, Byrne gave CFFAR as an example of the type of site that Monsanto worked to direct people to. Although Byrne no longer works for Monsanto, his PR company <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php?title=V-fluence&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="V-fluence (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">V-fluence</a> is based like Monsanto in St Louis and undertakes work for the company. It's Washington office is headed by <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Richard_Levine&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Richard Levine (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Richard Levine</a> who was previously part of the Monsanto team at Bivings where he worked side by side with<a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Emmanuel_Theodorou&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Emmanuel Theodorou (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Emmanuel Theodorou</a>.
powerbase<div>http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/science/item/164-smelling-a-corporate-ratTuesday, 11 December 2012 21:17<h2 class="itemTitle" style="margin: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 4px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; line-height: 35.2px; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 1px; display: inline-block; border-radius: 0px 3px 3px 0px; font-weight: normal; position: relative; z-index: 2; background: 0px 0px repeat-x rgb(255, 255, 255);">Smelling a corporate rat</h2>By <a rel="author" href="http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/jonathan-matthews" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.1s ease-in; background: transparent;">Jonathan Matthews</a><div class="itemIntroText" style="margin: 0px; padding: 4px 0px 12px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">new study suggesting a Monsanto GM maize and the company's Roundup herbicide may pose serious health risks has been widely attacked, not just by scientists and commentators but also by scientific bodies and regulators. Here, Jonathan Matthews of GMWatch looks at the role of industry-linked scientists and lobbyists in a campaign aimed at getting the paper retracted. You can also<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/116473155/Smelling-a-corporate-rat" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.1s ease-in; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">download this article as a PDF</a>. 
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">At the end of November Reuters ran the headline <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/11/30/us-science-gm-journal-idUKBRE8AT10920121130" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Science Journal Urged to Retract Monsanto GM Study</a> and New Scientist <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2012/11/retraction-gm-crop-cancer-study.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">also reported</a> the growing pressure for retraction. These articles marked the latest stage in a campaign that kicked off the moment the study was published in mid-September, when researchers led by Prof. Gilles-Eric Seralini at the University of Caen in France announced <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">their findings</a> of serious health problems in rats that had been fed a Monsanto maize genetically engineered to be resistant to the company's herbicide Roundup, as well as in rats just fed low doses of the herbicide itself. In both cases the rats fed with the GM maize and/or minute amounts of the herbicide in water were several times more likely to develop lethal tumours and suffer severe liver and kidney damage when compared to the controls.</div><div class="itemFullText" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; line-height: 22.1px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Science Media Centre spearheads the attack

Although the publication of the results of the long-term feeding trial in Food and Chemical Toxicology made front page news in France, it got a very different reception in the English-speaking world. This was thanks to the rapid rebuttal efforts of the London-based Science Media Centre (SMC), which almost as soon as the study was published began <a href="http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-gm-maize-causing-tumours-in-rats/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">spoon-feeding journalists with ready-made quotes from scientists</a> savaging the study. 

The SMC's director Fiona Fox was subsequently <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=421361" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">reported as saying</a> that she took pride in the fact that the SMC's "emphatic thumbs down had largely been acknowledged throughout UK newsrooms: apart from the Mail, only the Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times covered the story in their print editions – and both used quotes supplied by the Science Media Centre.” She added that several television news programmes had also rejected the story after reading the quotes 

The SMC's quotes were pumped out internationally via its clones, like <a href="http://www.smc.org.au/2012/09/rapid-reaction-long-term-toxicity-of-gm-maize-food-and-chemical-toxicology-experts-respond/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">the Australian Science Media Centre</a>, with like-minded local experts layered on the top. The quotes were also <a href="http://corporateeurope.org/news/study-monsantos-gm-maize-intensifies-concerns-about-efsas-reliability-monsanto-strikes-back-pr" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">circulated to the media by Monsanto and other GM lobby groups</a>. As a result, the quotes ended up in a lot of media coverage worldwide. One even <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/business/energy-environment/disputed-study-links-modified-corn-to-greater-health-risks.html" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">popped up in the New York Times</a> along with the scathing comments of Bruce M. Chassy, professor emeritus of food science at the University of Illinois. 

<strong style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Retraction campaign kicks in

Another key player in whipping up hostility to the paper was the American business magazine Forbes. In the ten days following the study's release, Forbes published no less than six separate attack pieces targeting not just the research but also the researchers. The first two pieces drew extensively on the quotes from the Science Media Centre and ran with them, but the Forbes piece that grabbed the most attention, particularly on social media, was one that kicked off with a headline that <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/09/25/scientists-smell-a-rat-in-fraudulent-genetic-engineering-study/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">labelled the paper a fraud</a>. The article went on to accuse Prof. Seralini not just of "gross scientific misconduct" but also of having "a long and sordid history" of "activism". The article concluded by bluntly telling the editors of Food and Chemical Toxicology that the only "honorable course of action for the journal would be to retract the paper immediately".

The retraction campaign was by then well under way. An <a href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dr-seralini-please-release-data/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">online petition </a>was up and running, demanding in the name of "the scientific community" that Seralini hand over all his raw data. The petition was aggressively promoted via social media, often with <a href="https://twitter.com/mark_lynas/status/250151291022626817" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">the implication that the researchers had something to hide</a>. The assertion that the study was "fraudulent" obviously played well into this campaign, which culminated in the Reuters and New Scientist pieces reporting the retraction calls. Both these articles reported on the petition, as well as containing lacerating comments from two UK scientists – <a href="http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-efsa-report-conclusion-that-seralini-study-conclusions-were-not-supported-by-data/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">comments once again provided by the Science Media Centre</a>. 

One of the published comments – from Prof. Maurice Moloney – said it was "appalling" that such a study should ever have been published in a respected journal. And a researcher from the UK's John Innes Centre demanded to know whether it was not "time for Food and Chemical Toxicology to retract the manuscript?" The only other scientist quoted claimed the publication of the paper was more than just "a dangerous case of failure of the peer-review system." It represented a threat to not just the credibility of the journal but "the scientific method overall". This apocalyptic claim was backed up by the news that hundreds of outraged scientists had signed the online petition.  

<strong style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Who's behind the retraction petition?

<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/28/study-gm-maize-cancer" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Writing in The Guardian </a>at the end of September, John Vidal described the attacks already raining down on Seralini and his team as "a triumph for the scientific and corporate establishment which has used similar tactics to crush other scientists". These included, Vidal said, "Arpad Pusztai of the Rowett Institute in Scotland, who was sacked after his research suggested GM potatoes damaged the stomach lining and immune system of rats, and David Quist and Ignacio Chapela", who studied the flow of genes from illegally planted GM maize to Mexican indigenous maize.

The vociferous attacks on Quist and Chapela resulted in the apparent retraction of their paper by the journal Nature, even though <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Immoral_Maize:Extract_from_Don't_Worry,It's_Safe_to_Eat_by_Andrew_Rowell" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">such a move was not supported by the majority of its reviewers </a>and subsequent research <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/02/24/2499950.htm" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">confirmed the paper’s main finding</a>. But, as the French journalist Benjamin Sourice <a href="http://gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14424" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">has pointed out</a>, the simplest way to definitively discredit a study and nullify its impact is to pressurise the journal that published it to retract it from its list of publications. 

In the case of Quist and Chapela, <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Immoral_Maize:Extract_from_Don't_Worry,It's_Safe_to_Eat_by_Andrew_Rowell" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">an investigation that I undertook with the journalist and author Andy Rowell of Spinwatch</a> revealed how the campaign of retraction had been carefully orchestrated from the start by Monsanto's PR people. It used proxies to whip up feeling against the lead author by branding Dr Chapela an "activist" rather than a scientist and by maintaining his findings were bogus and arrived at through collusion with environmental NGOs. Our research, which was <a href="http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit_index.html" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">widely reported in both print and broadcast media</a>, suggested that at the heart of that retraction campaign sat Monsanto's former chief internet strategist and director of corporate communications. <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Jay_Byrne" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Jay Byrne</a> had gone on to found his own internet PR company v-Fluence, based like Monsanto in the corporation's home town of St Louis. 

Although Byrne <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Immoral_Maize:Extract_from_Don't_Worry,It's_Safe_to_Eat_by_Andrew_Rowell" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">appeared to be the campaign's chief architect,</a> its principal conduit was the lobby group AgBioWorld, overseen by the GM scientist CS Prakash.  The <a href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dr-seralini-please-release-data/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">"ipetition" </a>on Seralini contains no information as to who sponsored it, but its first signatory is CS Prakash. Prakash also seems to have set up <a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/global-scientific-community-urge-dr-seralini-to-release-data-from-studies-on-biotech-corn-with-rats" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">an earlier more primitive version of the petition</a>, which clearly identifies him as its sponsor. 

Some time after GMWatch <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14235" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">flagged up </a>the likely role of Prakash and AgBioWorld in the ipetition, the organisation acknowledged its authorship <a href="http://presswire.einnews.com/247pr/309289" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">in a press release </a>which asserted that "the petitioning scientists are calling on the publishing journal editors to retract the Seralini study" if he failed to give in to their demand that he hand over all his data. 

The AgBioWorld press release contained a quote by Bruce Chassy, who was also <a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/global-scientific-community-urge-dr-seralini-to-release-data-from-studies-on-biotech-corn-with-rats" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">the first signatory of the earlier Seralini petition</a>. Chassy was also<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/09/25/scientists-smell-a-rat-in-fraudulent-genetic-engineering-study/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> the co-author of the Forbes piece</a>accusing Seralini of fraud. 

The article's other author was Henry Miller, a darling of the rightwing press who operates out of the Hoover Institution, among <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14255" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">other industry backed lobby groups</a>. Miller, like Chassy, has long been associated with Prakash's AgBioWorld. Miller recently co-authored<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/10/22/the-roots-of-the-anti-genetic-engineering-movement-follow-the-money/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">another vitriolic piece on GM for Forbes</a>, denouncing the "fear profiteers" of the anti-GM "protest industry". Miller's co-author on that occasion was none other than former Monsanto PR boss Jay Byrne of v-Fluence. Tellingly, Michael Pollan, the renowned New York Times food writer and professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, described the piece by Byrne and Miller as <a href="https://twitter.com/michaelpollan/status/260791206412423168" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">a breathtaking example of "the Big Lie"</a>.

Byrne hasn't published any media pieces on Seralini. But it is apparent from <a href="https://twitter.com/vJayByrne" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Byrne's Twitter account</a> that he was almost solely preoccupied with discrediting the Seralini study from the day of its publication for about the next month. Byrne describes himself on Twitter as v-Fluence CEO and  as "Contributing author, Let Them Eat Precaution", a book on GM edited by Jon Entine. Entine, as it happens, is the author of probably more articles to date attacking Seralini than any other commentator. 

<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Agribiz apologist

Entine's book emerged out of an <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/American_Enterprise_Institute" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">American Enterprise Institute </a>conference overseen by Entine at which Byrne was an invited speaker. And Byrne's v-Fluence turns up again in company with Entine at another AEI conference he oversaw – this one attacking corporate social responsibility (CSR). <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/44-2005/7898" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">According to Business Ethics</a>: "A second AEI conference featured AEI fellow Jon Entine – a long-time critic of SRI [socially responsible investing] – and Sarah Fuhrmann of v-Fluence Interactive Public Relations. Several v-Fluence employees are ex-public affairs staffers for Monsanto – where they honed skills fighting CSR initiatives that targeted genetically modified foods."

Entine hasn't just worked with Byrne and v-Fluence, but has also done paid work for Byrne's company. In a piece about Entine by the food and farming commentator Tom Philpott, <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-tyrone-hayes-jon-entine" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The Making of an Agribusiness Apologist</a>, Entine denies being a hired gun for Syngenta in his work defending pesticides and downplays the fact that his company (ESG MediaMetrics) lists Monsanto as a client. This is how he explains it: "Nine years ago, I did a $2000 research project for v-Fluence, a social media company formed by former Monsanto executives. That's the entirety of my Monsanto relationship." Presumably Entine <a href="http://www.esgmediametrics.com/clients.htm" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">lists Monsanto and not Jay Byrne's firm as his company's paymaster </a>because he recognises that what he does for v-Fluence he's really doing for Monsanto. 

Entine's <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2012/09/20/scientists-savage-study-purportedly-showing-health-dangers-of-monsantos-genetically-modified-corn/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">first attack</a> on Seralini came out on Forbes within 24 hours of the paper's publication. His <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2012/09/30/does-the-seralini-corn-study-fiasco-mark-a-turning-point-in-the-debate-over-gm-food/2/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">second piece </a>a few days later contained further attacks, not just on Seralini, whom he accused of steadfastly refusing to share his raw data, but on almost anyone who attempted to defend the study.  Entine also published <a href="http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2012/11/19/anti-gm-corn-study-reconsidered-seralini-finally-responds-to-torrent-of-criticism/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">a third more recent article</a> which focuses particularly on letters to Food and Chemical Toxicology requesting Seralini's paper be retracted. In this he notes, "More than two dozen scientists from around the world co-signed a stinging rebuke of the Seralini study, concluding: 'We appeal to you to subject the paper to rigorous re-review by appropriate experts and promptly retract it if it fails to meet widely held scientific standards of design and analysis, as we believe it fails to do.'"

<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512007922" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The letter </a>Entine is referring to was signed by, among others, CS Prakash, Henry Miller and Bruce Chassy. Several of the other signatories also have connections to AgBioWorld. Entine's <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/44-2005/5314" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">book on GM</a>, incidentally, also has contributions from CS Prakash and his AgBioWorld co-founder, Greg Conko of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. 

<strong style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Cancer-prone rat

Another signatory of this joint letter to Food and Chemical Toxicology is Prof. Anthony Trewavas. Trewavas was also one of the experts quoted by the SMC<a href="http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-gm-maize-causing-tumours-in-rats/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> in their media release</a>that had such an impact on the reporting of the Seralini study. 

In his SMC comments, which ended up being <a href="http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/clippings/professor-anthony-trewavas-comments-on-controversial-scientific-paper-on-gm-corn%285703ab8a-99b1-4eef-8f2a-e6da273c7fa4%29.html" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">quoted in well over 20 different publications</a>worldwide, Trewavas accuses the researchers of using a cancer-prone rat and claims: "[A] line [of rats] which is very susceptible to tumours can easily bias any result." This line of argument was also developed for the SMC by another expert, Maurice Moloney who says Sprague-Dawley rats frequently develop mammary tumours 

It is this cancer-prone rat claim, which Trewavas and Moloney first set running, that more than any other underpins the Chassy-Miller allegation of fraud. The suggestion is that the study was deliberately designed to generate tumours, i.e. that Seralini and his team intentionally chose the Sprague-Dawley rat for their research in order to produce exactly the result they wanted - cancer!

But although variants on this claim have been widely reported, there are a number of problems with it. Not only is this line of rats the same one that <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691504000547" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Monsanto used for the study</a> that underlies the regulatory approval of this GM maize (NK603), but Sprague-Dawley rats have also been used repeatedly in toxicology and carcinogenesis trials, <a href="http://www.ensser.org/democratising-science-decision-making/ensser-comments-on-seralini-study/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">including long-term ones</a>. They were even <a href="http://earthopensource.org/files/pdfs/Roundup-and-birth-defects/VOLUME3-1_GLYPHOSAT_04.PDF" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">used in industry’s own two-year research studies</a> submitted to regulators to support the regulatory approval of glyphosate – the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup, one of the two substances that Seralini's team were researching. 

And the fact that this strain of rat has <a href="http://www.ramazzini.it/ricerca/pdfUpload/Cancer%20Medicine%2049-64_2006.pdf" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">a 30%-plus tendency to “spontaneous” cancers across its lifetime actually means it a good model for humans</a>, who have a similar susceptibility to the disease. What's more, even allowing for the Sprague-Dawley rats having a tendency to spontaneous tumours, Seralini's team found the rats fed on either the GM maize or the herbicide suffered an increase in the number of tumours and they had an earlier onset when compared to those in the control group. The researchers also took account of the spontaneous tumour issue by comparing their results to the rates of similar types of tumour in other published studies using the same strain of rat.

This is not say that the Seralini study does not have its shortcomings. It's true that the study had fewer rats than are recommended for cancer studies, but Seralini did not set out to look for tumours. His study was a chronic toxicity one that unexpectedly found striking evidence of increased tumours in the treated rats. Given this finding, the onus should now be on Monsanto to fund a full-scale carcinogenicity study using larger groups of rats to prove that its products are safe – something it has so far failed to do.

Angelika Hilbeck of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) describes the "wrong rat" argument first put forward by Trewavas and Moloney as "absurd". <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14451" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Hilbeck says</a>, "Seralini chose the same strain of rat as Monsanto. Do we really think that a substance should be tested on an animal that is not sensitive to it? With these defamations they wanted to distract us from the fact that Seralini used the same methodology as Monsanto. Because if you take Seralini seriously as a researcher, you have to take seriously his study and the comparison with Monsanto's study. That would put into question Monsanto's study and hence the approval of GM maize." 

<strong style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Double standards used to condemn studies showing risk

In fact, many of the charges that have been made against the Seralini study could be levelled against the studies that have been used to approve GM crops, which are less detailed than Seralini's and typically shorter-term. This is why <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14288" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">a report by the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER)</a> concluded that a careful comparison of the Seralini rat feeding trial with Monsanto trials shows that if the Seralini experiments are considered insufficient to demonstrate harm, then those carried out by Monsanto cannot prove safety. This is because, whatever its limitations, Seralini's study was conducted to generally higher scientific standards than the studies underlying GM food approvals. 

ENSSER highlights the double standards whereby studies on GM crops like Seralini's that show adverse effects are subjected to obsessive yet often poorly justified criticism of their experimental and statistical methods, while those like Monsanto's that claim safety are taken at face value. In this way risk is assessed in an asymmetrical fashion so that the burden of proof is not on the biotech industry to provide adequate evidence of the safety of its products, but is on public researchers like Seralini to prove harm beyond any doubt.<a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14372" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Other experts</a> have echoed the charge of double standards, including around 140 French scientists who, <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14434" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">in a public statement published in Le Monde</a>, declared that it was contrary to scientific ethics to damn an experimental protocol when it gave results that were not wanted, while accepting it when it gave results that were.    

These double standards can also be seen in the ipetition demanding that Seralini hand over all of his raw data to his critics. Those championing the petition have no history of demanding from Monsanto full public disclosure of all the raw data underlying its studies supporting safety (the industry studies on glyphosate, for example, are <a href="http://www.omicsonline.org/2161-0525/2161-0525-S4-006.php?aid=7453" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">kept secret under 'commercial confidentiality' agreements between industry and regulators</a>). This is why Seralini has said he will undertake full disclosure when the same level of disclosure takes place for all the studies underlying GM food approvals, so that like can be compared with like. 

<strong style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Public science and private interests

One of the early UK signatories of the ipetition, as well as a co-signatory, like Prof. Trewavas, of the letter to Food and Chemical Toxicology from Prakash, Chassy and Miller, is <a href="http://powerbase.info/index.php/Chris_Leaver" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Prof. Chris Leaver</a>. Leaver, like Trewavas,  is a GM scientist. He is also a former advisor to the Science Media Centre and a former consultant to the GM/agrochemical giant Syngenta. Since 1984 Prof. Leaver has also been<a href="http://www.jic.ac.uk/corporate/about/organisation/gov-council.htm" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> on the Governing Council </a>of the UK's leading public plant biotechinstitute, <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/John_Innes_Centre" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">the John Innes Centre</a> – something else he has in common with Prof. Trewavas, who was also for several years on the JIC's Governing Council. 

The JIC has been a key player in the criticism of Seralini. This is apparent as soon as you look at the SMC's three media releases on the study. <a href="http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-gm-maize-causing-tumours-in-rats/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The first</a> quoted eight experts including a senior scientist at the JIC and a former member of its Governing Council (Trewavas). <a href="http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-efsa-initial-review-of-gm-maize/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The second </a>quoted just one expert, Cathie Martin of the JIC. <a href="http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-efsa-report-conclusion-that-seralini-study-conclusions-were-not-supported-by-data/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The third </a>quoted five experts, of which three, including Cathie Martin, were from the JIC.

What makes this predominance particularly revealing is that the scientists in question are not experts on toxicology or animal studies. Their expertise is in plant genetics and GM. What's more, the JIC and its Sainsbury Laboratory have had tens of millions of pounds in investment from GM giants like Syngenta. In fact, they are so dependent on the public acceptance of GM that a previous acting director of the JIC<a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/John_Innes_Centre" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> confided to his local paper </a>that any major slowdown or halt in the development of GM crops "would be very, very serious for us". 

These vested interests are personal as well as institutional. Cathie Martin, for instance, says in <a href="http://www.jic.ac.uk/profile/cathie-martin.asp" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">her JIC profile</a>, "I am inventor on seven patents and I recently co-founded a spin-out company (Norfolk Plant Sciences) with Professor Jonathan Jones FRS, to bring the benefits of plant biotechnology to Europe and the US." <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Jonathan_Jones" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Jones</a>, who is quoted along with Martin in one of the SMC releases, co-founded another biotech firm, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mendel_Biotechnology" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Mendel Biotechnology</a>, which has Monsanto as its "most important customer and collaborator". 

The failure of Jones, who is also an advisor to Mendel Biotechnology, to be more explicit about his industry links, has <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/18/gm-scientist-defends-monsanto-links" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">generated controversy</a>.  Yet journalists are given no indication of these kind of conflicts of interest by the SMC's releases, as <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14267" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">the journalist Joanna Blythman has noted</a>: "The SMC introduced these experts to the media solely by listing the universities and public institutions that employ them, failing to give the full flavour of their interests." And the problem goes much wider than the JIC, as <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14267" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Blythman notes with regard to the experts quoted in the SMC's first media release</a>: "seven out of eight are either evangelical advocates of GM food, or have received funding from, or worked with, prominent biotech corporations."

Take, for instance, the very first expert quoted by the SMC, Prof. Maurice Moloney. This year, the SMC has featured Moloney <a href="http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/?s=moloney&cat=" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">in no fewer than four different media releases on GM</a>. They typically identify him only as "Institute Director and Chief Executive, Rothamsted Research", which is an independent charitable agricultural research centre. What journalists aren't told is that Moloney is so enamoured of GM that <a href="http://www.spinwatch.org.uk/-articles-by-category-mainmenu-8/46-gm-industry/5505-science-one-whining-greenies-nil" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">he drives around in a Porsche with a GMO number plate</a>, and has a CV to match. He is the inventor on more than 300 patents and his GM research underpins one of Monsanto's main GM crops. He has also founded his own GM company in which the GM giant Dow AgroScience was an investor. The fact that Prof. Moloney's career and business interests have long been centered around GM is not something the SMC seems to think journalists need to know. 

<strong style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Letters to journal fail to disclose conflicts of interest

This pattern of significant but undisclosed conflicts of interest is relevant to not only the majority of the SMC's experts but also to many of Seralini's other critics, including those responsible for the twenty or so letters published by Food and Chemical Toxicology in response to Seralini's paper. Some of the letter writers are, in fact, exactly the same people that the SMC quotes. They are also often to be found amongst<a href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dr-seralini-please-release-data/signatures" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> the earliest signatories of the AgBioWorld ipetition</a>. Maurice Moloney, for example, not only turns up twice in the SMC's media rebuttals of Seralini, but comes in at no. 11 on the list of ipetition signatories, and <a href="http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/online/6048/gm-corn-and-cancer-s%C3%A9ralini-affair?page=0%2C2" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">he wrote a letter to the journal</a>. 

Another <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512007910" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">letter writer demanding retraction is Prof. Mark Tester</a>. Like Moloney and the JIC, Tester is a firm favourite with the SMC, <a href="http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/?s=mark%20tester&cat=" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">featuring in three of this year's SMC's media releases </a>and in many more over the years. He was already a favoured expert a decade ago when the SMC was<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2002/jun/07/bbc.medicalscience" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> accused of orchestrating a spin campaign</a> to discredit a BBC drama on GM crops. <a href="http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/mark.tester" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The University of Adelaide staff directory</a> broadens out Prof. Tester's academic profile in a way the SMC never has: "His commercial acumen is clear from his establishment of private companies and successful interactions with multinational companies such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Pioneer-DuPont." 

Many other letter writers also have undisclosed industry links. Take, for instance, Martina Newell-McGloughlin. <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512007922" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">She identifies herself </a>as the director of the International Biotechnology Program at the University of California/Davis, but fails to mention that <a href="http://www.citywatchla.com/4box-left/3879-damning-report-questions-monsanto-genetically-modified-corn-study" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">the Program is funded by the likes of Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Bayer</a>. Another letter writer and a colleague at UC Davis, Kent Bradford, <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/static/live/news/projects/biotech/c3_3.html" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">has consulted for Monsanto</a>. Lucia de Souza<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512008022" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> wrote to the journal </a>with Leila Macedo Oda on behalf of <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/ANBio" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">ANBio – the Brazilian Biosafety Association</a>, without mentioning that ANBio's funders include Monsanto, Bayer, and DuPont. 

Then there are the letter writers who fail to mention their previous employers, <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Sense_about_Science#Monsanto_scientist_named_on_early_draft_of_SAS_guide_to_GM" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">like Andrew Cockburn</a>, Monsanto's former director of scientific affairs (Europe and Africa); <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/L.Val_Giddings" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">L. Val Giddings</a>, former Vice President of the <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/BIO" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Biotechnology Industry Organisation</a>; and <a href="http://www.zoominfo.com/#!search/profile/person?personId=90497954&targetid=profile" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Sivramiah (Shanthu) Shantharam</a>, former Syngenta man and until recently head of the biotech industry's main lobby group in India.  

Even letter writers who at first glance seem like they must be entirely independent of the biotech industry can turn out to have links. Take, for instance, <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Erio_Barale-Thomas" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Erio Barale-Thomas</a>, one of the few toxicologists <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512007867" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">to criticize the Seralini paper in the journal</a>. Barale-Thomas, who says he writes on behalf of the Administrative Council of the French Society of Toxicological Pathology, takes Seralini to task for his failure to declare a conflict of interest in his paper, namely that Seralini is president of CRIIGEN, an independent research group with concerns about GM, which contributed funding to the research. Yet CRIIGEN's contribution to funding the study was declared in the paper, while Barale-Thomas does not disclose in his letter <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Erio_Barale-Thomas" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">his own biotech interests</a>. He is not only principal scientist at Janssen Biotech, but immediately prior to that he worked for the GM crop and agrochemical giant Bayer CropScience (1998-2003). 

Another French scientist among the letter writers is Prof. Marc Fellous, whose declared connections are academic posts in the sphere of human genetics. What he doesn't mention is that he heads up the <a href="http://gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14362" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">French Association of Plant Biotechnology</a>, which lobbies for GM crops and has been so aggressive in its attacks on Seralini that last year he successfully sued Fellous for defamation. 

<strong style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Science or ideology?

Another letter writer <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512007983" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">is the pathologist Sir Colin Berry</a>. Like Trewavas, <a href="http://www.scientific-alliance.org/scientific-advisory-forum" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Berry is an advisor to the Scientific Alliance</a>, an organization which campaigns on environmental issues, particularly climate change, energy policy and agriculture. It is pro-GM, pro-nuclear and sceptical about climate change. Its director, <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Martin_Livermore" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Martin Livermore</a>, runs an agri-food PR consultancy, prior to which he did PR for the GM giant DuPont. <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Scientific_Alliance" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The Alliance</a> was established by the lobby firm Foresight Communication with money from right-wing business interests. 

Trewavas is one of only a couple of scientists who not only signed onto the Prakash, Chassy, Miller letter but also sent <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512007958" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">their own letter of complaint to the journal</a>. Trewavas concludes it like this: "this paper and this journal have dealt the value of evidence-based knowledge a serious blow and it can only be rectified if the paper is withdrawn by the authors with an apology for misleading the public and the scientific community alike… Ideology and politics must be kept out of scientific study or we all suffer."

It is revealing that critics like Berry and Trewavas claim to champion an evidence-based approach while operating out of lobby groups that attack the scientific consensus on issues like climate change. <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Colin_Berry" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Berry</a>, incidentally, is also a shareholder in the company that owns the aggressively libertarian online magazine <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Spiked" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Spiked</a>, which also promotes climate scepticism.<a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Fiona_Fox" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Fiona Fox</a>, the director of the <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Science_Media_Centre" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Science Media Centre</a>, was a long-time affiliate of <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/LM_network" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">the anti-environmental LM network</a> that are behind Spiked. 

The network around AgBioWorld also contains people with similar attitudes on environmental issues. These include <a href="http://gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14330" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Henry Miller</a>, who co-wrote the article accusing Seralini of fraud, and AgBioWorld's co-founder <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Gregory_Conko" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Greg Conko</a> of the Exxon-funded<a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Competitive_Enterprise_Institute" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a>, which <a href="http://gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14330" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">specializes in</a> denialist "straight talk on global warming." 

Given this, it is ironic that AgBioWorld's Seralini petition was set up in the name of "the scientific community." Similarly, <a href="http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/online/6048/gm-corn-and-cancer-s%C3%A9ralini-affair?page=0%2C2" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Maurice Moloney says in his letter </a>to Food and Chemical Toxicology that he thinks he can speak "for the vast majority of the biological sciences community." But as we have seen, Moloney and many of the other letter writers link to a narrow and heavily commercialised sector of the biological sciences, albeit one with powerful backers. And some in this community have links to extremist lobby groups more concerned with ideology than evidence. 

<strong style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Peeling the GM onion

Identifying the real forces behind the front-men and carefully selected experts of "the scientific community" can be like peeling back the layers of an onion. Take Anthony Trewavas, the scientist who first helped get the cancer-prone rat claim into circulation. In 2001 Prof. Trewavas was named in the High Court in London as the source of a letter published in a Scottish newspaper that made libelous claims against GM critics (<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2001/oct/08/research.highereducation" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Greenpeace wins damages over professor's "unfounded" allegations</a>). Trewavas subsequently denied being the author of the libel letter published under his name, though he did admit circulating the material, which he said he had got from AgBioWorld. He said it had been written by a "lady in London" but "she" later turned out to be<a href="http://artsci.wustl.edu/_{anthro/bnc/readings/Monbiot%20The%20fake%20persuaders.htm}" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> a front for the same Monsanto PR people</a> who <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Immoral_Maize:Extract_from_Don't_Worry,It's_Safe_to_Eat_by_Andrew_Rowell" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">covertly directed the campaign</a> that resulted in Nature's apparent retraction of Chapela's GM maize paper. 

Trewavas, a long-time associate of Prakash and AgBioWorld, also <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14211" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">played a notable role</a> in that campaign. In that case, Trewavas <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14211" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">encouraged people to demand</a> Chapela be fired by the University of California, Berkeley, unless he handed over his maize samples for checking: "We should be asking Berkeley to request Chapela to release his samples so that they at least can be checked... Refusal to do so should then be used to request Berkeley to relinquish Chapella's [sic] position." Such calls to arms against Chapela were mostly posted on the AgBioWorld listserv. This use of the listserv eventually enabled Monsanto's <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Immoral_Maize:Extract_from_Don't_Worry,It's_Safe_to_Eat_by_Andrew_Rowell" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">covert orchestration</a> of the campaign to be exposed. 

<strong style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The attack dog in the night-time

Interestingly, as the attacks on Prof. Seralini and his paper spread across both mainstream and social media, AgBioWorld's listserv went missing. In the two months following the publication of Seralini's paper, <a href="http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php?caseid=archive" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">not a single bulletin went out on the listserv</a> that <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Immoral_Maize:Extract_from_Don't_Worry,It's_Safe_to_Eat_by_Andrew_Rowell" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">played such a pivotal role</a> in achieving retraction of the Mexican maize paper. 

AgBioWorld's sudden silence calls to mind a famous exchange in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes:

Detective: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Detective: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident." 

With Seralini, it's the curious silence of Monsanto's attack dog that suggests that this time the covert PR war is being conducted by other means.

If the silence of AgBioWorld's listserv is suggestive, so too is the attempt to silence<a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">GMWatch</a>. Within days of the publication of the Seralini paper, our website came under major DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. The contours of the attacks followed the peaks of the controversy, with the two biggest and most debilitating attacks coinciding with days on which the major rebuttals of Seralini's paper were published. <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The GMWatch website</a> had by then become a clearing house for rapid responses in English to the attacks on Seralini. We have no proof as to who was behind the attacks – that's hard to establish with DDOS. But oddly enough, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2002/may/29/research.highereducation" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">an article in the Guardian</a> about the retraction campaign against Quist and Chapela noted, "Just before the [Mexican maize] paper in Nature was publicly challenged, the server hosting the accounts used by its authors was disabled by a particularly effective attack which crippled their capacity to fight back." 

More than a decade later history seems to be repeating itself in the covert war over GM crops.

<span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Jonathan Matthews is the founder and director of <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(39, 89, 148); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">GMWatch</a> and has written numerous articles on <a href="http://www.spinwatch.org/-articles-by-category-mainmenu-8/46-gm-industry/157-genetically-modified-language-professor-bullsht-unspun" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(39, 89, 148); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">the politics and spin</a> around GM crops. He's a contributing author to <a href="http://www.spinwatch.org/test/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5161:thinker-faker-spinner-spy&catid=314:books&Itemid=120" style="color: rgb(39, 89, 148); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy</a><span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">,<span style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> eds Dinan and Miller (Pluto Press). Additional research: Claire Robinson, co-editor, GMWatch.<p style="color: rgb(50, 50, 50); margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">
<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Spinwatch plans to publish a separate piece looking at some of the study's European critics, including science academies and the European Food Safety Authority.</div>=</div><div>==</div></div></div></div></div>