1.AAAS Captured from the Top Down
2.California Prop 37: The Right to Know

EXTRACT: AAAS board members also forgot to mention that Monsanto has been a regular major sponsor of the group's annual gatherings. And yes, sponsorship has its privileges: At AAAS' 2010 annual meeting Robert T. Fraley (Monsanto's Chief Technology Officer and an AAAS fellow) delivered a half-hour keynote speech that was little more than a futuristic infomercial about how GMOs will soon feed the world and eliminate hunger.

No one was invited to rebut Fraley, not even a representative from the Union of Concerned Scientists who was present in the audience, but instead was shunted off to the side, where all he could do was hand out a few leaflets. We can see just what the AAAS means by "bridging science and society" – the theme of that 2010 gathering.

The AAAS Board and lobbyists for the corporations that support it often call for policy decisions to be "based on science," but science cannot make such decisions by itself, science can only provide data. Decisions like the one being put before California's voters are made on values and rights — in essence, the right to know what's in our food is a civil right. (item 2)
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1.AAAS Captured from the Top Down
Corporate Crime Reporter, November 1 2012
 http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/aaasprop3711012012/

Has one of the nation's premiere scientific organizations been captured by big corporations?

Michelle Simon of Grist Magazine says yes.
 http://grist.org/food/is-a-major-science-group-stumping-for-monsanto/

Stacy Malkan of the Yes on 37 Campaign says yes.

Charlie Cray of Greenpeace says yes. [see below]

But the scientific organization in question – the American Association for the Advancement of Science – says no.

The issue was put front and center when the board of directors AAAS dropped a bomb this week – just a week before Californians go to the polls to vote on a law – Prop 37 – that would require the labeling of genetically modified foods (GM foods).

The AAAS board issued a statement claiming that foods containing ingredients from genetically modified (GM) crops "pose no greater risk than the same foods made from crops modified by conventional plant breeding techniques" and that legally mandating labels on GM foods could therefore "mislead and falsely alarm consumers."

In response, Consumers Union senior staff scientist Michael Hansen told Grist Magazine that the AAAS statement was "filled with distortion and misleading statements."

"If mandatory labeling of GM foods would 'mislead and alarm consumers,' does the AAAS really believe that 60 other countries are misleading and alarming their consumers?" Hansen asked.

The AAAS statement claims that "respected scientific and medical organizations have concluded that biotech foods are safe, including: National Academy of Sciences, American Council on Science and Health, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, World Health Organization."

Malkan says that "none of these groups – except presumably ACSH – a notorious front group – has taken that position."

A spokesperson for the National Academy of Sciences told the Sacramento Bee that it "has not evaluated whether it's safe to eat genetically engineered food."
 http://www.sacbee.com/2012/10/31/4950605/safety-of-genetically-modified.html

Simon points out that the chair of the AAAS Board is Nina Fedoroff.
 http://www.aaas.org/aboutaaas/organization/board.shtml

Fedoroff is closely aligned with the corporate funded No on 37 campaign.
 http://www.noprop37.com/about/

She has signed onto a No on 37 campaign statement and is quoted as being "passionately opposed to labeling."

She served for five years on the scientific advisory board of Evogene, an Israeli-based biotech firm.

She served on the board of Sigma-Aldrich, a multinational biotech firm.

Fedoroff has been called “the U.S. ambassador for GE.”

AAAS spokeswoman Ginger Pinholster told Corporate Crime Reporter that Hansen, Cray, Malkan and Simon represent"advocacy groups with particular agendas" and that their criticisms are "unfair and without merit."

"I was in the room when the statement was passed by the AAAS board," Pinholster said. "We are not an advocacy group. We make our statements based on scientific evidence."

"I can tell you that our statement is not the work of nor was it influenced by any outside organization," Pinholster said.

AAAS might not be an advocacy group.

But the chair of the AAAS board surely is an advocate.

Who needs an outside organization to influence you when the chair of the board is the U.S. ambassador for GE?

Captured from the top down.
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2.California Prop 37: The Right to Know
Charlie Cray
Greenpeace, October 31 2012
 http://greenpeaceblogs.org/2012/10/31/california-prop-37-the-right-to-know/

With less than a week to go before California voters decide whether they want food that contains genetically engineered (GE) ingredients to be explicitly labeled as such, the board of the American Association for the Advance of Science (AAAS) has proclaimed from its prestigious perch that those who want Frankenfoods to be labeled are little more than emotional nuts who know nothing about science.

That the AAAS would enjoin this battle is hardly a surprise, given its longstanding ties to Monsanto and other companies with a direct interest in the outcome. But the group says that its real motivation for opposing mandatory labeling is because doing so would "mislead and falsely alarm consumers."

"Our concern is that ideology not trump science here," AAAS Chief Executive Alan Leshner told the LA Times. "We do regulation of foods to protect the public health." The argument is really ideology masked as science — part of a drastic corporate public relations offensive designed to narrow the issue of GE labeling down to a simple question of food safety.

By this reasoning consumers have no legitimate right to require that GE foods be labeled based on other criteria, including important environmental concerns (forget those stories about how Bt corn can kill Monarch butterflies) and their right NOT to feed their kids a corporate invention that has no proven additional nutritional value.

Those familiar with the history of earlier Monsanto products — including PCBs, Agent Orange (dioxin), and milk produced by injecting cows with bovine growth hormones (BGH) — have reason to suspect that the company's campaign against labeling is not based on objective evidence, but rather an attempt to rig public policy debates by hiding them behind the claim to "sound science."

An obvious weakness in the GE proponents' claims is the Kremlin-like control that the companies have over any scientific assessments of their products. As the editors of "Scientific American" have pointed out, the monopoly patent system governing genetically engineered food in particular has given companies like Monsanto unprecedented ability to restrict independent studies because the "scientists must ask corporations for permission before publishing independent research." "Science American"'s editors have called for an end to such restrictions, because they have effectively blocked the ability of independent scientists to conduct any study that might call into question the safety of GE food.
 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-seed-companies-control-gm-crop-research

It's therefore hardly surprising that Monsanto's friends at the AAAS want food safety to be the only legitimate issue — because with very little evidence of harm to consumers, they can claim that there’s no proof that GE food is unsafe.

This is how corporations and their shills in the scientific community attempt to ring-fence public policy debates like the GE labeling debate, and block other compelling arguments to justify labeling GMO foods.

But is the AAAS' board's position merely a favor to Monsanto? What motivates them to take such a position? It's hard to say for sure, but it's quite possible that there is an institutional bias that has a lot to do with its ties to various companies with a business interest in the patenting of life, though you wouldn't know that from reading their statement.

Scientists who wish to publish the results of their research in peer-reviewed journals are normally required to declare any potential conflicts of interest along with their results — a standard that AAAS board members such as board chair Nine Federoff (who has served on the board of Sigma-Aldrich, a "biotech specialty chemical provider") haven't held themselves to.

One wonders how the AAAS can accuse labeling proponents of an ideological bias, when they themselves conceal such ties, as well as any other personal stake in the outcome of Prop 37. If they believe that labeling will create an unfounded stigma that will "falsely alarm consumers" and undermine the GE food market, one wonders how much of an affect that might have on their personal investment portfolios.

AAAS board members also forgot to mention that Monsanto has been a regular major sponsor of the group's annual gatherings. And yes, sponsorship has its privileges: At AAAS' 2010 annual meeting Robert T. Fraley (Monsanto's Chief Technology Officer and an AAAS fellow) delivered a half-hour keynote speech that was little more than a futuristic infomercial about how GMOs will soon feed the world and eliminate hunger.
 http://boingboing.net/2010/02/21/highlights-from-the-2.html

No one was invited to rebut Fraley, not even a representative from the Union of Concerned Scientists who was present in the audience, but instead was shunted off to the side, where all he could do was hand out a few leaflets. We can see just what the AAAS means by "bridging science and society" – the theme of that 2010 gathering.

The AAAS Board and lobbyists for the corporations that support it often call for policy decisions to be "based on science," but science cannot make such decisions by itself, science can only provide data. Decisions like the one being put before California's voters are made on values and rights — in essence, the right to know what's in our food is a civil right. California voters should ask themselves what they value more when they go to the polls next week: the right to know what their families eat when they sit down to dinner, or the profits of the agribusinesses that custom design vegetables that have no significant additional nutritional benefit for consumers?

To learn more go to the Yes on 37 CA Right to Know Campaign's web site.
 http://www.carighttoknow.org/