A major new investigation uncovers the US government-funded ‘private social network’ attacking pesticide critics. At the heart of the network is former Monsanto man Jay Byrne and his PR firm v-Fluence, who have been involved in dirty tricks ops against GMO critics for decades. Members of the network can access a wide range of personal information about hundreds of individuals from around the world deemed a threat to industry interests, including US food writers Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, and the Nigerian activist Nnimmo Bassey. Many profiles include personal details such as the names of family members, phone numbers, home addresses and even house values. The profiling is part of an effort – that was financed, in part, by US taxpayer dollars – to downplay pesticide dangers, discredit opponents and undermine international policymaking, according to court records, emails and other documents obtained by the non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports. The investigation shows that the USDA used taxpayer dollars to pay a firm collaborating with v-Fluence to undermine the EU's Farm to Fork strategy, which aimed to reduce pesticide use by 50% by 2030. The Guardian

 

 

Documents revealed in the investigation (above) include a Byrne email to a USAID pal, in which Byrne says, “NBTs ['new breeding techniques', new GM techniques] and gene editing are not getting the free pass under the radar that they hoped for”. This admission that the aim of the deregulation lobby is to give new GMOs a "free pass under the radar" should be noted by all policymakers.

GMWatch would agree (from our own perspective) with Byrne's preceding remark in the same email: “You cannot talk about managing ag biotech (including NBTs) and not address pesticide (mis)information as well”. We've always said GMOs and agrochemicals go together like Bonnie and Clyde.

Overall, it's jarring to read emails in which Bayer executives participate in email chatter with US government officials on how to “neutralise” messaging that Bayer sees as threatening its interests. GMWatch comment on documents published by The New Lede. See also our X thread here.

 

 

Following up on the MIT Technology Review story that GMWatch featured in yesterday's Digest about the two Nobel Prize winners wanting to cancel their own CRISPR patents in Europe, the German NGO Testbiotech has published their own short analysis of the development. Testbiotech, which filed an objection to one of the CRISPR patents, says that the European Patent Office "is expected to completely revoke the patents". Testbiotech

 

 

Everybody talks about "sustainability" these days – but what does that actually mean? As the concept of "sustainability" has inched up the political agenda, the way we define it has become distorted and compromised. Today many of our ideas about sustainability – sometimes even those espoused by environmentalists – are more about political expediency, corporate interests and market creation than rooted in sustaining life on Earth. A new report from A Bigger Conversation - Rethinking Sustainability – Life-centric Agriculture in a Techno-centric World – argues that, today, the concept of sustainability has become over-focussed on political expediency, corporate interests and market creation. The failure to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, alongside the increasing failure of the world to live within planetary boundaries, demonstrates how unsustainable and unfit for purpose a market/business/economy-centric approach (including “green growth”) to sustainability is. The report reviews the history of sustainable thinking and the missteps and short-termism that define a technocapitalist approach to sustainability and calls for a radical shift away from this path to a life-centric approach that is first and foremost grounded in sustaining life. A Bigger Conversation

 

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