Welcome to our latest LobbyWatch Review, with some stunning examples of the corporate capture of lawmakers (see FREEDOM TO HARM), regulators and experts. And we have all the latest on POISON PR – how the industry’s PR people are tracking and vilifying those with concerns about GMOs and pesticides (see POISON PR).
ASTROTURF
Funders of Monbiot-ally WePlanet profiting not just from world’s worst polluting corporations but those linked to war crimes
Quadrature Capital, the main funder of the GMO, fake meat, and nuclear power promoting lobby group WePlanet (formerly RePlanet), is at the centre of renewed controversy over a £4 million donation to the British Labour Party. What has caught people’s attention is not just the size of the donation, one of the biggest in British political history and Labour’s largest ever, but that it comes from a tax haven-registered hedge fund with hundreds of millions of pounds invested in fossil fuels and arms manufacturers. Among the latter are a range of arms, tech and logistics firms profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza by helping make Israeli fighter jets and bombs, including the F-35 fighter jets, which have been used in devastating airstrikes on a “humanitarian zone”. Over 90% of WePlanet’s funding derives from Quadrature. There’s more on George Monbiot’s involvement with WePlanet, and why this Mark Lynas-directed lobby group has been accused of smelling “like astroturf” here.
FREEDOM TO HARM
Gates gets licence to harm
The Kenyan government is seeking to grant the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation diplomatic immunity just weeks after farmer organizations and religious leaders across the African continent called on the Gates Foundation to pay reparations for the damage it has caused through its interventions in African agriculture. The granting of this special status has set alarm bells ringing in the country, and the Kenyan Law Society has caused its suspension for the moment with a challenge in the courts. Because Gates’ diplomatic immunity appears to broadly apply to all of its work in Kenya, Daniel Maingi, coordinator for the Kenya Food Rights Alliance, believes it also covers the work of Gates’ affiliates like the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) – and even the work they do with corporate partners, which has historically included Bayer, Syngenta, and Microsoft. “As we give Gates these privileges and immunities, Africa is going to be – not food sovereign, not seed sovereign – we’re going to be slaves and masters of the big corporations,” Maingi told Tim Schwab, author of the book The Bill Gates Problem.
Bayer says innovation requires freedom to harm
The CEO of Bayer – the German multinational that supplied heroin, Zyklon B, HIV-tainted Factor VIII, Baycol, Essure, and bee-killing neonicotinoids and which, with its Monsanto takeover, also took on liability for the likes of PCBs, Agent Orange, Roundup, and dicamba – says the company being held accountable in the courts for its products’ harm represents the biggest threat to innovation.
US Congress could take away protections from dangerous pesticides
More than 40 US states have taken measures to limit dangerous pesticides, like restricting spraying near schools or playgrounds. The House Farm Bill could eliminate all those rules in one fell swoop. A provision in the 2024 Farm Bill, promoted by Bayer, would override every state’s pesticide rules and replace them with far weaker federal rules. This proposed provision in the Farm Bill also shields pesticide producers from lawsuits relating to the effects of their products. That’s important because lawsuits are one of the main ways US citizens can hold big agricultural companies accountable. TAKE ACTION: The US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) is calling on US citizens to tell Congress to remove these pro-pesticide provisions from the Farm Bill.
Pesticide-related money surges into US state legislatures as companies seek to limit damage awards in court
In the US, as pesticide companies struggle to cap legal payouts to plaintiffs who claim they were injured by Roundup and other products, money from two political action committees (PACs) affiliated with major pesticide manufacturers has surged into state-level politics. In recent years, total contributions to state legislators have reached hundreds of thousands of dollars. By contrast, in 2016, the two leading agrochemical companies gave less than 5 percent of contributions to candidates at the state level. This year, however, state candidates received about 30 percent of contributions to candidates from PACs for employees of Bayer, headquartered in Leverkusen, Germany, and Corteva, based in Indianapolis.
Bayer’s Iowa campaign for freedom to harm moves forward
Bayer is also lobbying US state legislatures to shield it from future lawsuits and to annul at least some of the 50,000 claims that are currently active. The latest development in Bayer’s campaign comes in Iowa, a state with the second highest cancer rate in the US, where a House of Representatives subcommittee has recommended passage of HSB737, which would give pesticide companies immunity for citizens trying to file lawsuits against them for harm. Commenting on X, Robert F Kennedy Jr said, “This is the apogee for corporate socialism. It’s a license for chemical companies to poison Americans with no liability. It removes any incentive (f)or them to behave responsibly.”
Farm state attorneys general target California cancer labels on glyphosate
Nebraska’s attorney general is taking aim at California’s cancer labelling laws in a dispute over the weedkiller Roundup. Attorney General Mike Hilgers has announced he’s leading a multistate effort to standardise pesticide labels, preventing California’s Proposition 65 requiring warning labels on certain agricultural chemicals.
Bayer’s toxic trails
Bayer is one of the biggest pharmaceutical and agricultural companies in the world, employing over 100,000 people globally. In a new report, Corporate Europe Observatory examines the toxic trails left behind by Bayer throughout its long history, as well as its plans to stay afloat in a volatile future – from pushing glyphosate and new GMOs, to claiming its agricultural model is “climate smart”. The company’s modus operandi is to cosy up to different political regimes or carefully generate political pressure to push through its products and its monopoly model, using market power, size, financial assets and lobbying as key tools.
Toxic sludge firms want freedom to harm too
It’s not just Bayer and the pesticide makers. Toxic sludge firm Synagro, which has been poisoning farmland with polluted sewage sludge, wants legal immunity too. And there are senators happy to help them stop farmers suing to clean up their polluted fields. The New York Times reports on this in relation to PFAS, but forever chemicals are not the only reason the sewage sludge farmers spread on their fields is toxic. So-called “biosolids” can also contain high concentrations of a wide range of mutagenic and neurotoxic chemicals, as well as pathogens, thanks to the extraordinarily lax policy of the Environmental Protection Agency. The Bioscience Resource Project hosts a valuable resource page on sewage sludge.
CORPORATE CAPTURE – REGULATORS
Nigeria’s GMO regulators have become GMO promoters
Nigeria’s National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA), “tasked with safeguarding our nation’s health and environment, has instead become a promoter of genetically modified organisms (GMOs),” writes Mariann Bassey-Orovwuje – a lawyer and environmental, human and food rights advocate. The conflict of interest inherent in the National Biosafety Management Agency’s administration of biosafety in Nigeria is reflected in the National Biotechnology *Development* Agency sitting both on the board of the NBMA and having requested two GMO permits from the NBMA jointly with Monsanto. Bassey-Orovwuje also says that NBMA has consistently showcased active GMO promoters as allies in its promotional materials and at a press conference, even when they come from organisations it is meant to regulate. This promotional bias is reflected in NBMA’s decision making. NBMA approved Monsanto’s Bt cotton, which failed woefully in neighbouring Burkina Faso and had to be completely phased out. Today Nigerian farmers who grew the GMO Bt cotton that NBMA approved are experiencing poor harvests and damaged soils.
Canada’s pesticide and food safety regulators’ deep links with industry lobby
Six out of 11 key executives for Canada’s largest GMO and pesticides lobby group, CropLife Canada, previously held senior government positions with the country’s pesticide and food safety regulators for years, a new investigation has revealed. The findings, reported by Quebec-based environmental group Vigilance OGM, follow investigations by Canada’s National Observer (CNO) and Radio-Canada that exposed how pesticide producers and federal officials closely collaborated to protect industry interests. Among the key lobbyists highlighted in the report is Pierre Petelle, CropLife Canada’s President and CEO, who spent five years as a senior policy analyst with Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) – an agency accused of being so completely captured by industry that it has adopted its goals of promoting pesticides and GMOs at the expense of scientific and regulatory integrity and the public interest.
Health Canada probes claim that government officials helped pesticide company overturn a ban
Health Canada is investigating after Canada's National Observer revealed that government officials supported efforts by the pesticide industry to discredit a researcher’s findings and overturn a proposed ban on a class of pesticides harmful to bees, the environment and human health. Yasir Naqvi, parliamentary secretary to the health minister, said the ministry takes the allegations seriously and the department’s pest management regulator will examine the concerns raised. The researcher confirmed she has been summoned to a meeting with the senior directors general of Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA). She said, “None of this is in a timely manner. It has taken three years and a media story to get them to address it.”
Canada’s pesticide regulator was captured by industry from day one
More than 20 years ago, the inaugural report by Canada's newly-formed parliamentary committee on the environment slammed the country’s pesticide regulator for its lax pesticide laws and a too-cosy relationship with the pesticide industry. The report, released in 2000, critiqued the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), a quasi-independent body within Health Canada formed five years earlier to regulate and police pesticide use in Canada. “The PMRA is already a captive of the pesticide industry,” the committee noted in the report. The problem has not gone away, as shown in a recent investigation that found Canada’s regulators are predisposed to working with producers to keep pesticides in use, despite evidence the chemicals are causing harm.
We need to investigate links between chemical industry, governments
Canada’s regulators see industry and its trade secrets as more worthy of protection than the health of Canadians and their environment, says Dr Trevor Hancock, retired professor and senior scholar at the University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy.
US EPA thought industry-funded scientists could support its conclusion that a pesticide is not a cancer risk
The US’s National Toxicology Program (NTP) reported “clear evidence” that the agricultural fumigant 1,3-D causes cancer in both rats and mice. The finding led the US EPA to classify the chemical as “likely to be carcinogenic to humans” in the same year, 1985. So it wasn’t a surprise when UCLA researchers reported in 2003 that people who’d lived at least two decades in areas with the highest applications of 1,3-D faced a higher risk of dying from pancreatic cancer. Yet EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs’ Cancer Assessment Review Committee (CARC) concluded in 2019 that 1,3-D isn’t likely to cause cancer after all. In doing so, EPA rejected the human evidence, calling the UCLA study “low quality”. It also dismissed the NTP study and studies in lab animals that showed 1,3-D’s ability to damage DNA, a hallmark of cancer. Instead, EPA’s CARC relied on studies provided by Dow AgroSciences (now Corteva), a manufacturer of 1,3-D, and proposed a review of evidence linking the fumigant to cancer by SciPinion, a consulting firm hired by Dow, as an external peer reviewer of its work. The decision to entrust external review to a Dow contractor has drawn criticism, including from the agency’s watchdog, the Office of Inspector General (OIG).
Glyphosate approval challenged in European Court of Justice
On 11 December, Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe and its member organisations challenged the European Union’s approval of glyphosate before the European Court of Justice. The organisations presented a scientific and legal analysis to the European Court of Justice, highlighting serious shortcomings in the assessment of glyphosate in Europe, which they say was biased to suit industry interests. PAN Europe said, “The Commission and EU’s scientific agencies either systematically excluded critical scientific studies reporting adverse effects caused by glyphosate, using scientifically unsound arguments, or downplayed these effects… In doing so, they violated their own guidelines and international protocols. Their conclusion that glyphosate is safe is scientifically unfounded and results from a risk assessment that does not comply with key legal requirements. Therefore, the NGOs are requesting the Court’s intervention.” The groups say peer-reviewed evidence has been dismissed in favour of industry-funded studies downplaying evidence on genotoxicity, neurotoxicity, and environmental impacts.
POISON PR
US government paid PR firm to track and vilify critics of GMOs and pesticides
Covert PR operations involving the secret profiling of over 3,000 people and organisations considered “critics” of the pesticide industry recently made headlines around the world. The secret dossiers, including ones on GMWatch and its co-directors, are said to include private and personal, even intimate, information that lawyers say violate privacy laws in several countries and regions. They also include false, misleading and malicious claims, designed to damage the reputations of those targeted. This was uncovered during an investigation led by the non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports in collaboration with the world’s leading media. The main breakthrough came when the investigators managed to penetrate the private social network, known as Bonus Eventus, where the profiles were being shared. This enabled them to not only access the secret dossiers, but to identify the network’s members, who turned out to include government officials as well as people who hold or have held influential positions in expert groups at, for instance, the World Health Organization and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). In response to the news, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which defends independent journalism and fights propaganda and disinformation, has called for those involved in the profiling to be brought to justice.
The lowdown on the Poison PR operation
GMWatch has done a deep dive into the reporting on this issue by multiple news outlets, including in a series of highly informative but paywall-protected articles in Le Monde, that drew on court records, emails and other documents obtained by Lighthouse Reports. Our piece pulls together much of what is so far known about the secret profiles, who was behind them, who had access to them, and how the whole operation was funded. At the heart of the tracking and vilifying of industry critics is former Monsanto executive Jay Byrne and his PR firm v-Fluence, who have been involved in dirty tricks ops against GMO critics for decades. Among the hundreds of individuals from around the world they have been profiling, the main target has been scientists, but others deemed a threat to industry interests include journalists and food writers like Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, environmentalists like Vandana Shiva and Nnimmo Bassey, UN human rights experts, politicians, lawyers, and even musicians. Le Monde says that the scale and detail of the profiling is “unprecedented”. Some of the files on individuals contain information on their families, including in some cases not just spouses but the identities of their children and other relatives, aspects of their private lives, income and assets, including estimated house values, their home addresses, mobile phone numbers, criminal records, and even political opinions. That’s quite apart from the more malicious and misleading content. And this Poison PR operation was part-financed with hundreds of thousands of US taxpayer dollars.
European Parliament urged to call for immediate investigation into Poison PR
The Poison PR firm v-Fluence, founded and led by former Monsanto director Jay Byrne, was also hired by the US Department of Agriculture, together with another PR firm – the White House Writers Group – to assist them in torpedoing the EU’s Farm to Fork policy of aiming to cut pesticide use by 50% by 2030. Now multiple European civil society organisations have written to Members of the European Parliament calling for an immediate investigation into this clear-cut example of foreign interference in crucial EU policy, as well as into clear breaches of European privacy laws in the secret profiling of critics of GMOs and pesticides. They also direct the MEPs’ attention to other telling examples that “clearly point in the direction of manipulation of science and the political and societal debate by agrochemical companies”.
Poison PR firms saw Brexit as chance for US to push GMOs and pesticide-laden products into UK
Early on in the Poison PR project, not just v-Fluence but another PR firm was also involved in managing the project: the White House Writers Group (WHWG). And both WHWG and v-Fluence were hired by the first Trump administration (see item above) to help them torpedo the EU’s Farm to Fork policy’s ambition of radically cutting pesticide use. Now it has emerged that the White House Writers Group also worked with v-Fluence and the US government to turn Brexit into “a major opportunity for US agriculture and the nation as a whole” by lowering the UK’s environmental standards from EU levels, facilitating the entry of American GMOs and pesticide-contaminated products. And guess who they were working with on this? Owen Paterson, who had long lobbied for GMOs and later resigned as an MP after being at the centre of a major lobbying scandal.
Poison PR firm sued along with Syngenta by pesticide users
Jay Byrne and his firm v-Fluence are named as co-defendants in a lawsuit against the agrochemical giant Syngenta. They stand accused of helping the company suppress information about risks that the company’s paraquat weed killers could cause Parkinson’s disease and helping to “neutralize” Syngenta’s critics. The Guardian and the New Lede have the best coverage of this. The New Lede also has a Poison-PR related document library that includes the plaintiffs’ Statement of Claim for the lawsuit filed against Syngenta, Byrne and v-Fluence.
Bonus Eventus and Childless Cat Ladies
The anthropologist and environmental scientist Glenn Davis Stone, who specialises in food production and agriculture, has a typically witty and incisive piece on the Poison PR scandal. Here’s an extract: “Jay Byrne, a former Monsanto comms flack – turned media hitman. Jay fashions himself as a ‘public relations executive.’ This is technically true, although in the world of PR he’s like the enforcer on an NHL team – the toothless thug who can’t pass or score but lives to smash opponents into the boards. What’s amazing is how many of the people they smash into the boards are scientists or science writers – given that industry’s long-standing insistence that agrichemical and GMO controversies pit science against anti-science activists. Industry claims to be the scientists, the ones trying to feed the world with safe and effective modern agricultural technologies; the critics are the activists, ignorant dreamers, stooges for Big Organic, yoga teachers. They have been beating this drum for years, but the recent revelations about Bonus put it in a new light.” Stone follows this with a couple of particularly telling examples from the deep and ugly history of pesticide industry attacks on its critics.
Resources on Poison PR
At the end of our most in-depth article on Poison PR is a resource section with links to the main coverage of what v-Fluence and its associates has been up to, as well as its damaging impact in different parts of the world. This includes links to articles from British, French, US, Australian, Indian and African media outlets, as well as v-Fluence’s response to the coverage and the Poison PR library of related documents hosted by the New Lede. There are also links to video reports and interviews about the scandal.
CORPORATE CAPTURE – EXPERTS
Wageningen University said it regrets collaboration with pesticide lobby
Wageningen University & Research (WUR), a leading centre for biotech and agricultural research in the city of Wageningen in the Netherlands, has admitted in the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw that it regrets its paid collaboration with pesticide makers’ lobby CropLife Europe, which helped to destroy the EU Farm to Fork initiative and, in particular, its pesticide reduction policy. Nina Holland of Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) commented on X: “Important, but too late. Huge damage to environment, farmers’ health, is done.” For how WUR studies formed part of CropLife’s strategy see CEO’s report, A loud lobby for a silent spring. WUR researchers’ involvement in CropLife’s PR activities was also exposed in a Dutch TV programme. WUR researchers have been to the fore in lobbying for the deregulation of new GMOs.
Dutch approval of glyphosate was influenced by US expert who made big money working for Bayer
The Dutch approval of glyphosate was influenced by a controversial US expert who made big money working for Bayer and previously worked for the asbestos, diesel, and lead industries, an investigation by Dutch TV documentary makers ZEMBLA reports. “This is a man who has previously defended benzene and asbestos,” says Harvard professor of history of science Naomi Oreskes about Kenny Crump. “Those are established carcinogens.” Oreskes says, “It is not that difficult to find scientists who want to do your dirty work”. Crump worked for Bayer 2021-2023. He acted as an expert witness for the chemical company in an Australian lawsuit over glyphosate. With that work, Crump says he earned “five hundred dollars an hour” and a total of “hundreds of thousands of dollars”.
Controversial pesticide research returns to major entomology conference after exposé of corporate funding
In the last decade, as pesticide companies like Bayer and Syngenta gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Entomological Society of America (ESA), scholarly research on the harmful effects of neonicotinoid pesticides on bees vanished from the society’s annual conference. This year, the research returned, and several scholarly papers on the topic were presented at the organization’s meeting in Phoenix. The development came after US Right to Know (USRTK) documented the disappearance of that research from the conference, which is hosted by the largest organisation dedicated to entomology in the world. The ESA is far from the only professional body impacted by corporate capture. See, for instance, USRTK’s profile of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics – the world’s largest organisation of food and nutrition professionals.
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