The Puppetmasters of Academia (or What the NY Times Left out)

September 8, 2015 

by Jonathan Latham, PhD
http://www.independentsciencenews.org/science-media/the-puppetmasters-of-academia-ny-times-left-out/
“Reading the emails make(s) me want to throw up” tweeted the Food Babe after reading a lengthy series of them posted online by the NY Times on Sept 5th. The emails in question result from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and are posted in the side bars of a front-page article by Times reporter Eric Lipton (“Food Industry Enlisted Academics in G.M.O. Lobbying War, Emails Show”). The article is highly disturbing, but, as the Food Babe implied, the Times buried the real story. The real scoop was not the perfidy and deceit of a handful of individual professors. Buried in the emails is proof positive of active collusion between the agribusiness and chemical industries, numerous and often prominent academics, PR companies, and key administrators of land grant universities for the purpose of promoting GMOs and pesticides. In particular, nowhere does the Times note that one of the chief colluders was none other than the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
All this is omitted entirely, or buried in hard-to-notice side bars, which are anyway unavailable to print readers. So, here is the article Eric Lipton should have written.

First, The Lipton Story

The Lipton article seems, at first sight, to be impressive reporting. Lipton describes how Kevin Folta, Chair of the Dept. of Horticulture at the University of Florida secretly took expenses and $25,000 of unrestricted money from Monsanto to promote GMO crops. On behalf of the biotech industry, or via the PR firm Ketchum, Folta wrote on websites and attended public events, trainings, lobbying efforts and special missions.

Food Industry Enlisted Academics

Parts of this were already known, but Lipton digs up further damning evidence and quotes from Folta. They include an email to Monsanto that solidly contradicts Folta’s previous denials of a relationship with Monsanto and the biotech industry: “I am grateful for this opportunity and promise a solid return on the investment,” Folta wrote after receiving the $25,000 check, thereby showing both a clear understanding of his role and the purpose of the money. The article goes on to similarly expose Bruce Chassy (Prof Emeritus, University of Illinois) and David Shaw (Mississippi State University). It also discussses, presumably for “balance”, agronomist and GMO critic Charles Benbrook, then at Washington State University, who unlike the others openly acknowledged his funding.

What Lipton Missed

But readers of the emails can find facts that are much more damaging to perceptions of academic independence than that contained in the main article.  For one thing, the money Folta received is insignificant besides the tens of millions his university was taking from Syngenta (>$10million), Monsanto(>$1million), Pioneer (>$10million), and BASF (>$1million). Money that it’s hard to believe did not have a role in protecting Kevin Folta as he roamed zealously (and often offensively) over the internet, via his twitter account, blog, podcast, and OpEds, squelching dissent and ridiculing GMO critics wherever he went.
Also missing from the main Times article is a sense of the extensive and intricate networking of a small army of academics furthering the interests of Monsanto and other parts of the chemical, agribusiness and biotech industries. Folta rarely acted alone. His networks are filled with economists, molecular biologists, plant pathologists, development specialists, and agronomists, many of them much more celebrated than Kevin Folta, but all of them in a knowing loop with industry and the PR firms. Their job was acknowledged openly in emails (“We are all bad-ass shills for the truth. It’s a pleasure shilling with you.” Or, as Folta himself put it: “I’m glad to sign on to whatever you like, or write whatever you like.”). More generally, the group’s role was to initiate academic publications and other articles and to firefight legislative, media and scientific threats to the GMO and pesticide industries, all the while keeping their industry links hidden.
The academics identified by these emails as cooperating with industry and PR firms include:
Profs. Bruce Chassy (University of Illinois) and Alan McHughen (University of California, Riverside) who worked together to destroy the credibility of Russian scientist and GMO critic Irina Ermakova. They persuaded the journal Nature Biotechnology to interview Ermakova about her research and describe it. This interview was followed by a detailed critique of her research (about which none of the authors were expert). Ermakova was neither told of the critique nor given a chance to answer it. This whole elaborate subterfuge required her to be sent a dummy proof of the article she thought she was publishing in the journal.
Prof. Calestuous Juma (Harvard University) longtime advocate of GMOs for Africa.
Prof. Wayne Parrott (University of Georgia) a serial intervener in academic GMO debates.
Prof. Roger Beachy (Danforth Center, formerly USAID). Beachy is the principal living exponent of a classic biotech strategy: to respond rapidly to a report or publication critical of some aspect of the technology with a multi-author “rebuttal” [Disclaimer: the inaugural report of the Bioscience Resource Project (on the genome damage caused by genetic engineering) was met, even before formal publication, with both barrels from 23 professors, including Roger Beachy (Altpeter et al 2005)].(2)
Prof. Ron Herring (Cornell) who has helped to promote GMOs in India and fought to defuse the farmer suicide debate in India.
Prof. CS Prakash (Tuskegee University) is the convener of the influential listserv AgBioWorld. AgBioWorld was the all-important conduit for a petition signed by three thousand scientists calling for the retraction of a 2001 scientific paper showing GMO contamination of Mexican corn (Quist and Chapela 2001). As detailed in an article called The Fake Persuaders, the scientists who initiated the petition, and made inaccurate and inflammatory statements about the authors, were not real people. However, their emails could be traced back to servers belonging to Monsanto or Bivings, a PR company that was working with Monsanto at the time.
Prof. Nina Fedoroff (Penn State) is the most prominent of all of the scientists looped into all of the Times emails. Nina Fedoroff was the 2011-2012 President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The AAAS is the foremost scientific body in the US. During her Presidency, Fedoroff, who is also a contributor to the NY Times, used her position to coordinate and sign a letter on behalf of 60 prominent scientists. This letter was sent to EPA as part of an effort to defeat a pesticide regulatory effort. The real coordinator was Monsanto but Fedoroff participated in phone conferences and email exchanges with them (including with the prominent lobbyist Stanley Abramson) and gets credit in the emails for “moving the ball far down the field”. Yet Nina Fedoroff is not once named in the main article and nowhere at all is her position noted.
So the story that academia’s most vocal GMO defenders, and some of its most prominent scientists, are copied into these emails is missing. The focus on individuals like Folta occludes a demonstration, for the first time ever, of long-suspected and intricate coordination and cooperation among them.
Also looped in to various of the emails are supposedly independent individuals and organisations who speak in favour of biotechnology, self-reportedly out of personal passion. These include Dr Steve Savage, Karl Haro von Mogel of Biofortified, Mischa Popoff (of the Heartland Institute) and Jon Entine (then affiliated with George Mason University and now head of the Genetic Literacy Project and a Forbes Magazine columnist). All are revealed, by the emails but not the article, as biotech insiders.
Cooperation among academics is not a crime. But these emails show, as in the EPA letter example, that a company (usually Monsanto, but also Dow and Syngenta and a PR firm, often several of them, plus sometimes the biotech lobbyists BIO or CropLife America) were invariably looped in to these emails, and further, that initiatives usually began with one of these non-academic entities, and were shepherded by them. Only rarely is there even a suggestion from the emails that the various academics were out in front, though that was always the intended impression of the result.
But perhaps the biggest of all revelations within these emails is the connivance of senior university administrators, especially at Cornell University. The NY Times article focuses on the misdeeds of Mississippi State University Vice President David Shaw. But, looped into one email string, along with the PR firm Ketchum and Jon Entine are various Cornell email addresses and names. These are ignored by Lipton, but the email addresses belong to very senior members of the Cornell administration. They include Ronnie Coffman (Director of Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Science) and Sarah Evanega Davidson (now director of the Gates-funded Cornell Alliance for Science).
The Alliance for Science is a PR project and international training center for academics and others who want to work with the biotech industry to promote GMOs. It is funded ($5.6 million) by the Gates Foundation. Its upcoming program of speakers at Cornell for September include Tamar Haspel (Washington Post reporter), Amy Harmon (New York Times reporter) and Prof. Dan Kahan (Yale Law School). These speakers are the exact ones mentioned in a proposal worked out between Kevin Folta and Monsanto in a series of email exchanges intended to enhance biotech outreach. These email exchanges also propose setting up “Ask Me Anything” events to be held at universities around the country with Kevin Folta as of the panelists.
On Sept 10th the Cornell Alliance for Science is hosting an event in downtown Ithaca (home town of Cornell). It is called “Ask Me Anything About GMOs” and Kevin Folta is a panelist. Somehow or other Davidson’s Cornell Alliance for Science read Monsanto’s lips, perfectly.

Your right to know

Let me speculate at what is really going on behind the scenes of Lipton’s article.
Earlier this year, a newly-formed US group called US Right to Know (USRTK) set in motion Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests directed at 14 (now 43) prominent public university scientists it suspected of working with (and being paid by) the biotech industry and/or its PR intermediaries. Now, if these 43 academics had nothing to hide, this request would not have attracted much attention and hardly any emails would have been forthcoming. However, the USRTK FOIA requests triggered a huge outcry in various quarters about the “harassment” of public scientists. The outcry has led to OpEds in the LA Times and the controversial removal of scientific blog posts defending USRTK, and much else besides, as reputedly tens of thousands of emails (from these FOIA requests) have landed on the desks of USRTK.
What would a good PR company recommend to its clients in such a situation? In order to preempt the likely upcoming firestorm, it might recommend that various media outlets run ahead of USRTK to publish a version of events in which academic small-fry like Kevin Folta, Bruce Chassy and David Shaw (of Mississippi State) are the villains. Making them the fall guys lets others off the hook: high-profile scientists like Nina Fedoroff and Roger Beachy; the pro-biotech academic community in general; and prestigious Ivy League institutions like Cornell University.
These much bigger fish are who the NY Times should have harpooned. Since they did not, or perhaps would not, let us hope that USRTK will make better use of those emails, ideally by posting all of them online.

Footnotes

(1) Others Professors cc’d into emails include : Peter Davies (Cornell), Carl Pray (Rutgers), Tony Shelton (Cornell), Peter Phillips (University of Saskatchewan), Prabhu Pingali (Cornell), Elizabeth Earle (Cornell), Peter Hobbs (Cornell), Janice Thies (Cornell) and Ann Grodzins Gold (Syracuse), Martina Newell-McGloughlin (UC Davis).
(2) Later published as  A. K. Wilson, J. R. Latham and R. A. Steinbrecher (2006) Transformation-induced Mutations in Transgenic Plants: Analysis and Biosafety Implications. Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews  23: 209-237

References

Altpeter F. et al (2005) Particle bombardment and the genetic enhancement of crops: myths and realities. Molecular Breeding 15: 305–327.
David Quist and Ignacio H. Chapela (2001) Transgenic DNA introgressed into traditional maize landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico. Nature 414: 541-543

Big Food is Spending Millions to Lobby for Less Transparency

Shutterstock.

From GMO labeling to pesticides to the source of the meat you buy, a handful of companies are spending heavily to keep information off your food labels.

By Elizabeth Grossman on August 19, 2015
http://civileats.com/2015/08/19/big-food-is-spending-millions-to-lobby-for-less-transparency/

By all accounts, Americans want a more transparent food system. Recent polling suggests the majority of Americans favor labeling that tells them exactly how and where their food is produced. And yet, several bills are currently moving through Congress that could make it much harder to learn about the source of our food.
These bills would prevent state and local governments from requiring labeling of GMOs; remove country-of-origin labeling (COOL) requirements for most of the meat we buy; and make it harder to know where pesticides are used. The international trade agreements now being negotiated also include provisions that could make such information less available to consumers.
The food industry is spending an enormous amount of money to promote and lobby for this legislation. Food companies shelled out over $100 million in the first six months of 2015 alone.
Businesses and trade groups promoting these policies say putting more information on food labels will send the wrong message about food safety, add costs, and pose barriers to trade. And in some cases, they worry it will open U.S. food producers and other companies to punitive import-export taxes.
But good food advocates disagree. “This is basic transparency,” says Patty Lovera, assistant director of the advocacy group Food & Water Watch. “We’re not saying anything’s unsafe,” says Environmental Working Group (EWG) policy analyst Libby Foley. “We’re saying it’s about consumer choice.”
Here are the numbers the food industry doesn’t want you to see:
GMO Labeling
So far this year, food and beverage companies have spent $51.6 million on a series of lobbying efforts to defeat GMO labeling laws, including the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015 (H.R. 1599), which opponents have dubbed the “Deny Americans the Right to Know” or DARK Act. According to a recent analysis by EWG, nearly a quarter of this money—$12.6 million—comes from just six companies: Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Land O’Lakes, and PepsiCo.
Other big spenders in these efforts include the Grocery Manufacturers Association ($5.1 million); American Farm Bureau (nearly $1 million); and the National Restaurant Association ($2 million). Many state farm bureaus have also chipped in—among them, Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, and Oregon. Big name food producers, including Campbell Soup, Mars, Inc., Mondelez, Nestlé, OceanSpray, Safeway, and Unilever, are all spending significant amounts money on this issue as well.
In addition to direct lobbying of members of the House, Senate, and other federal policy-makers, some of the groups lobbying for H.R. 1599 have come together as the Coalition for Safe Affordable Food, running a consumer-oriented website, as well as television ads and a social media campaign. And the money tallied by EWG was spent specifically on federal lobbying so it doesn’t include the millions spent last fall to defeat state GMO labeling measures—like those in Colorado and Oregon or on the ongoing legal challenge to the GMO-labeling bill passed in Vermont.
H.R. 1599 passed the House on in July. No companion bill has yet been introduced in the Senate.
An additional $4.1 million has been spent so far this year by companies to promote genetically engineered salmon, with most of this coming from the Biotechnology Industry Association, which is also supporting H.R. 1599. There’s also plenty of lobbying going on to keep GE salmon out of Pacific coast waters, where salmon fishing is big business.
Meat Labeling
Many of the same companies and organizations spending heavily to block GMO labeling requirements have also been lobbying to repeal existing country of origin labeling (COOL) requirements for beef, chicken, and pork through the Country of Origin Labeling Amendments Act of 2015 (H.R. 2393).
Among them are the Grocery Manufacturers Association, Campbell Soup, Cargill, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, and Unilever. They are joined by others in the meat business, including Tyson Foods, Smithfield, Hormel, the National Pork Producers Association, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, as well as Walmart and the big-spending U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Together, the supporters of this bill have spent at least $54.2 million.*
Those spending money to repeal COOL argue that labeling meat with the country of origin would increase costs for producers and therefore for consumers—with the threat that tariffs could be levied against U.S. producers if the labeling is found in violations of World Trade Organization (WTO) provisions.
Canada and Mexico have argued that COOL labels hurts sales of their meat by signaling to U.S. consumers that the product is somehow less safe or desirable. While the Obama administration is defending the existing policy, meat and other food producers fear that if Canada and Mexico prevail, those countries would impose costly tariffs that would harm U.S. exports. H.R. 2393 passed the house in June, but its companion Senate bill, S. 1844 has not yet had a committee hearing.
And a heads up: Provisions in the TTP and TTIP could facilitate similar policies to those of the WTO—making it possible, not only for countries but also individual companies to file objections to labeling if it harms trade.
Pesticides
Yet another bill that would curtail access to agricultural information is the Sensible Environmental Protection Act of 2015 (S. 1500). It would eliminate permits now required to discharge pesticides into rivers, lakes, streams, and other bodies of water regulated under the Clean Water Act.
CropLife America—a trade association for agri-chemical producers and users—explains that the bill is designed to reverse a 2009 federal court decision that directed the EPA to require permits from pesticide applicators who spray over “navigable waters.” Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) has called S.1500 “a far-reaching bill that is dangerous to people” that would “would allow pesticides to be sprayed where kids are swimming, which would expose them to substances that are known to be toxic.”
Pesticide Action Network (PAN) says the bill would remove the EPA’s ability to monitor and take action on waterways contaminated by pesticides. This, said PAN spokesperson Paul Towers, would leave both the EPA and the public “in the dark” and put “the health of waterways and public health in jeopardy.”
Because the bill was just introduced in June, a good accounting of lobbying on its behalf is not yet available through Congressional disclosure filings. But when virtually the same bill was introduced in 2013, it garnered support from agribusinesses and agricultural organizations and trade associations including the American Farm Bureau, CropLife America, Agricultural Retailers Association, Missouri Farm Bureau, Monsanto, North Carolina Farm Bureau, National Council of Farmer Co-ops, and the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association. These groups spent more than $11 million lobbying for the bill during 2013 and 2014.
The fate of all these bills is uncertain given the limited time before Congress adjourns for the year. But given how contentious these issues have become—and what food producers and agribusinesses perceive as high financial stakes—it’s unlikely that they will disappear.
One note of optimism for transparency-in-food-production advocates, but disappointment for Idaho dairy groups, is the ruling earlier this month by the U.S. District Court in Idaho striking down the state’s so-called “ag-gag” law—formally the “Agricultural Security Act” that made illegal undercover documentation of farming operations. Citing First Amendment free speech protections, Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled the bill unconstitutional.
So where does this leave consumers? Right now, the only way to be sure the food you buy doesn’t contain genetically engineered foods is to seek out the USDA’s certified organic and Non-GMO Project‘s GMO-free label. As for meat and fish—if it is not cooked or prepared before it reaches store shelves, its country of origin is probably still labeled. But that could change. And if the new trade agreements go into effect, these and other labeling provisions could be open to challenge.
Meanwhile a sizable fortune is being spent trying to keep this information off food labels. “This has turned into a bigger fight than either side anticipated,” says EWG’s Foley. And that may be one point on which both sides can agree.

*This estimate is based on lobbying expenditures listed on disclosure forms filed with the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Secretary of the U.S. Senate and compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. It is only a partial accounting as this represents spending by 20 of the approximately 100 members of the COOL Reform Coalition that signed a June 8 letter to Congress voicing support for H.R. 2393. This is the same source—and method—that EWG used to estimate spending to oppose GMO labeling bills.