We recently did a deep dive into the US government’s funding of Poison PR, in which we noted that tracking and vilifying critics of GMOs and pesticides was not all the PR firm at the centre of this scandal has been getting up to on behalf of the US government. It has also emerged that v-Fluence, the firm founded and led by former Monsanto director Jay Byrne, was 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 civil society organisations have written a letter to MEPs calling for an immediate investigation into this clear-cut example of foreign interference in crucial EU policy, as well as into what lawyers are saying are 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”. GMWatch

 

 

Adopted on May 24, 2024, after nearly 25 years of negotiations, the WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources, and Traditional Knowledge aims to regulate the use of natural and cultural resources through mandatory disclosure of origin in patent applications. While intended to ensure fair benefit-sharing, loopholes in the disclosure requirements allows circumvention, raising concerns about the potential legitimisation of biopiracy. Inf'OGM

 

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