same issue--mi also blocked direct auto sales -- against tesla who hoped to sell directly to consumers. tx, nj, arizona and maryland also
Features » January 21, 2015
How To Sell Off a City
Welcome to Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago, the privatized metropolis of the future.
Most privatization deals
fail every public policy test. There’s little record of successful
competition between concessionaires to deliver services more
efficiently.
GSV Advisors has a sister firm, GSV Capital, that holds ownership stakes in education technology companies like “Knewton,” which sells software that replaces the functions of flesh-and-blood teachers. Since joining the school board, Quazzo has invested her own money in companies that sell curricular materials to public schools in 11 states on a subscription basis.
In other words, a key decision-maker for Chicago’s public schools makes money when school boards decide to sell off the functions of public schools.
She’s not alone. For over a decade now, Chicago has been the epicenter of the fashionable trend of “privatization”—the transfer of the ownership or operation of resources that belong to all of us, like schools, roads and government services, to companies that use them to turn a profit. Chicago’s privatization mania began during Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration, which ran from 1989 to 2011. Under his successor, Rahm Emanuel, the trend has continued apace. For Rahm’s investment banker buddies, the trend has been a boon. For citizens? Not so much.
They say that the first person in any political argument who stoops to invoking Nazi Germany automatically loses. But you can look it up: According to a 2006 article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the English word “privatization” derives from a coinage, Reprivatisierung, formulated in the 1930s to describe the Third Reich’s policy of winning businessmen’s loyalty by handing over state property to them. In the American context, the idea also began on the Right (to be fair, entirely independent of the Nazis)—and promptly went nowhere for decades. In 1963, when Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater mused “I think we ought to sell the TVA”—referring to the Tennessee Valley Authority, the giant complex of New Deal dams that delivered electricity for the first time to vast swaths of the rural Southeast—it helped seal his campaign’s doom. Things only really took off after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s sale of U.K. state assets like British Petroleum and Rolls Royce in the 1980s made the idea fashionable among elites—including a rightward tending Democratic Party.
As president, Bill Clinton greatly expanded a privatization program begun under the first President Bush’s Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Hope VI” aimed to replace public-housing high-rises with mixed-income houses, duplexes and row houses built and managed by private firms.
Chicago led the way. In 1999, Mayor Richard M. Daley, a Democrat, announced his intention to tear down the public-housing high-rises his father, Mayor Richard J. Daley, had built in the 1950s and 1960s. For this “Plan for Transformation,” Chicago received the largest Hope VI grant of any city in the nation. There was a ration of idealism and intellectual energy behind it: Blighted neighborhoods would be renewed and their “culture of poverty” would be broken, all vouchsafed by the honorable desire of public-spirited entrepreneurs to make a profit. That is the promise of privatization in a nutshell: that the profit motive can serve not just those making the profits, but society as a whole, by bypassing inefficient government bureaucracies that thrive whether they deliver services effectively or not, and empower grubby, corrupt politicians and their pals to dip their hands in the pie of guaranteed government money.
As one of the movement’s fans explained in 1997, his experience with nascent attempts to pay private real estate developers to replace public housing was an “example of smart policy.”
“The developers were thinking in market terms and operating under the rules of the marketplace,” he said. “But at the same time, we had government supporting and subsidizing those efforts.”
The fan was Barack Obama, then a young state senator. Four years later, he cosponsored a bipartisan bill to increase subsidies for private developers and financiers to build or revamp low-income housing.
However, the rush to outsource responsibility for housing the poor became a textbook example of one peril of privatization: Companies frequently get paid whether they deliver the goods or not (one of the reasons investors like privatization deals). For example, in 2004, city inspectors found more than 1,800 code violations at Lawndale Restoration, the largest privately owned, publicly subsidized apartment project in Chicago. Guaranteed a steady revenue stream whether they did right by the tenants or not—from 1997 to 2003, the project generated $4.4 million in management fees and $14.6 million in salaries and wages—the developers were apparently satisfied to just let the place rot.
Meanwhile, the $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation drags on, six years past deadline and still 2,500 units from completion, while thousands of families languish on the Chicago Housing Authority’s waitlist. Be that as it may, the Chicago experience looks like a laboratory for a new White House pilot initiative, the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program (RAD), which is set to turn over some 60,000 units to private management next year. Lack of success never seems to be an impediment where privatization is concerned.
Chicago Inc.
Privatization plainly made sense to another witness to the Plan for Transformation: Rahm Emanuel, who served as a Chicago Housing Authority vice chairman from 1999 to 2001. After his time as a top aide in the Clinton White House, he made more than $18 million in two-and-a-half years as an investment banker, brought into the business by the man who just became Illinois’ new Republican governor, billionaire venture capitalist Bruce Rauner.And as mayor, Emanuel has proven himself practically an addict when it comes to brokering deals with his former investment banker comrades and the other business interests he keeps on speed dial. As the Chicago Reader’s Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke discovered when they filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the mayor’s private schedule, Emanuel almost never met with community leaders during his first year in office, but he met constantly with rich bankers like Rauner, BMO CEO William Downe and Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s biggest money management firm. These are his people.
When he took office as mayor, Emanuel inherited several major deals with corporations for city services. One is infamous: the parking meter deal between Morgan Stanley, Allianz Capital Partners and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority—the poster child for privatization deals gone wrong.
Mayor Daley’s 2008 deal to sell off Chicago’s parking meter franchise was negotiated in secret; City Council members got just two days to study the contract before signing off on it. Under the deal, rates promptly skyrocketed. And worse: Not only does the privately owned Chicago Parking Meters get the money whenever one of Chicago’s fine upstanding citizens pumps money into a meter; CPM gets paid even when they don’t. Each parking meter has been assigned a “fair market valuation.” When the city takes what is called a “reserved powers adverse action”—anything from removing a meter that impedes traffic flow to shutting down a street for a block party—CPM can demand a payment for the loss of that meter’s “fair” market value for the entire time it’s down.
What’s more, a 2009 estimate from the city Inspector General found that the city had sold the meters for about half of what they were worth. Then, in 2010, Forbes estimated that the city had in fact been underpaid by a factor of 10.
What, then, did the new mayor do? “He simultaneously badmouths the deal and defends it to the death,” explains public interest lawyer Thomas Geoghegan, who argued in an unsuccessful lawsuit that the contract was invalid because it unconstitutionally usurped the police powers of the city. On the one hand, Emanuel loudly boasted he’d renegotiated the deal to the public’s benefit. Parking became free on Sunday (but the hours people had to pay to park on weeknights were extended, vouchsafing CPM’s profits). Meanwhile, he was careful to say nothing bad about the multinational consortium, which continues to bilk his constituents. That would discourage other would-be concessionaires—like the ones with whom he negotiated a $154 million deal to operate digital billboards along Chicago’s expressways for a term of 20 years.
That’s in keeping with the cash-up-front, consequences-later logic of privatization deals. An extreme example is a 2004 deal that then-mayor Daley won’t even be alive to see the outcome of: the leasing of the Chicago Skyway for $1.8 billion to a consortium composed of Macquarie, a Sydney-based investment firm, and Cintra, a Spanish private infrastructure developer, for 99 years.
In 2007, Chicago’s chief financial officer, Dana Levenson, explained the rationale for the deal to Businessweek: “There is money to be had, and cities need money.” He pointed out that because of the $1.8 billion cash influx, Chicago was able to pay off its debt, commit $100 million to social programs like Meals on Wheels, and have enough left over to earn as much interest income as it used to make from tolls (which now went instead to the concessionaires in Sydney and Spain). Sounds nice—unless you happen to drive on the Skyway. On January 1, the price to drive its eight miles rose to $4.50, up from the two bucks it cost when the city ran it, making it the highest toll-per-mile roadway in the United States; if prices had reflected only inflation, it would cost $2.50. To investors, that’s the point. As Timothy J. Carson, vice-chair of the Pennsylvania Turnpike commission, noted years ago in fighting a deal to privatize that highway: “There’s no magic here. These [deals] are largely driven by one factor: the permitted toll increases.”
As for the Skyway, the hit is likely to get worse—and the claimed benefits will fade, too. Research by John B. Gilmour of William and Mary University indicates that the longer road privatization deals last, the more they reward investors but shortchange the public.
He ran a mathematical model based on the deal the state of Indiana inked in 2006 to lease the Indiana Toll Road, the “Main Street of the Midwest,” for a 75-year term. The delightful initial cash payout closed the state’s budget deficit, But, according to Gilmour’s midrange estimate, by the time that deal reaches the last third of its term, only 13 percent of revenue goes to the public.
Why would politicians negotiate 75-and 99-year contracts that systematically shortchange their constituencies the longer they last? Because the concessionaires are able to exploit the simple fact that no politician, even ones named “Daley,” last in office that long. Politicians reap immediate glory for closing deficits without raising taxes and funding popular programs, an irresistible temptation. Voters blame the corporations that operate the roads for the toll increases and revenue shortfalls, not the politicians who wrote or voted for the deals in the first place. Then, when the damage is done, IBDYBD—“I’ll be dead, you’ll be dead,” to repurpose the phrase that became popular among the cynical Masters of the Universe who structured the financial time-bombs like mortgage-backed securities that tanked the global economy in 2008. A short-term infusion of cash that forces the recipient more and more into hock the longer the arrangement lasts: “It’s like going to the payday loan store,” explains Tom Tresser, a Chicago-based anti-privatization activist.
What Rahm hath wrought
Other cities and states did their homework and rejected the privatization fad. In 2008, Pennsylvania turned back Democratic governor Ed Rendell’s dream of selling off the state’s famous turnpike for 75 years to a consortium of Citi Infrastructure Investors and the Spanish company Albertis Infraestructuras. The proposed deal would have raised tolls by about two-thirds within 10 years (to $36.40 to travel from one side of the state to the other), would have eventually made the state pay the consortium for lost traffic during emergency road-closures, and would have turned over transportation-planning decisions to far-off corporate bureaucrats. And after Atlanta leased its water system to United Water Inc. in 1997, leading to a series of water-main breaks and billing disputes, the city’s watershed commissioner said, “I don’t believe the city will ever look at privatizing essential services again.”Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago, though, presses ahead.
Page 1 of 2 Continued »
Rick Perlstein
Rick Perlstein is the author of The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (2014), Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008), a New York Times bestseller picked as one of the best nonfiction books of the year by over a dozen publications, and Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, winner of the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Award for history.
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Soon after taking office, Emanuel announced the Chicago Transit
Authority’s new Ventra “smart card” payment system for public
transportation. Cubic, the San Diego-based defense contractor that got
$454 million in taxpayer money to create it, had faced endemic
complaints in nearly every other city in which it had been introduced.
The system proved just as disastrous in Chicago: For months, card
failures forced bus drivers to simply wave passengers through. Or
customers were charged twice if their purses or backpacks brushed too
close to the reader upon exiting a bus. Federal government employees
found they could ride free by swiping their work IDs. The systematic
glitches are devastating to the argument that business is better than
government at delivering services.
Another wonky feature of the Ventra system is that it was designed to suck up the hard-earned money of millions of less-fortunate Chicagoans into bank coffers. The transit cards can double as debit cards, you see, promoted as a boon for Chicago’s un- and under-banked. But dig the customer fees hidden in the 1,000-page contract the city signed with Cubic: $1.50 every time customers withdraw cash from an ATM, $2.95 every time they add money to their online debit account with a personal credit card, $2 for every call with a service representative and an “account research fee” of $10 an hour for further inquiries, $2 for a paper copy of their account information, and, if you decide you’ve had enough, a $6 “balance refund fee.” This all makes mincemeat of the pro-privatization argument that “the marketplace” is more transparent than a government bureaucracy. The city might have been able to anticipate this before inking the deal had they paid attention to the fact that Money Network, the payment processing company partnering with Cubic, had received the lowest possible grade from the Better Business Bureau, and that another partner, MetaBank, was fined $5.2 million by federal regulators for a scheme to issue debit cards funded by tax refund loans at interest rates of up to 650 percent.
How did this all go down? Consider, as a clue, the case of one John Flynn. As the Chicago Tribune reported, Flynn was the Chicago Transit Authority’s vice president of technology from 2000 to 2008, then decamped for the private sector. During a four-year term at the Chicago division of Cubic, Flynn helped broker the $454 million Ventra deal. Then, last year, under Emanuel, he returned to the city’s employ.
Propagandists vaunt privatization as a brave new world beyond the icky quid pro quos of old-school municipal politics. Tell that to Deborah Quazzo—who might just laugh all the way to the bank. A year ago, when I first started researching this article, I sent Quazzo an email posing two simple questions: Given the work her firm does in education, did she anticipate recusing herself from school board decisions that presented a conflict of interest? And did she anticipate putting investments in a blind trust during her tenure? I never heard back. Then, this past December, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that companies in which she invested have reaped $2.9 million in business from Chicago Public Schools—compared to only $930,000 in the three-and-a-half years prior to her appointment.
She told the paper she saw no conflict of interest: “It’s my belief I need to invest in companies and philanthropic organizations who improve outcomes for children”—and that she wasn’t involved in the deals or aware that her companies’ take had tripled since she took office. Which would make her either a pretty inattentive school board member or a pretty inattentive executive: Some of her companies that had preexisting contracts with CPS cut their prices after Quazzo joined the school board so their bills would fall under the threshold that would require review by district bureaucrats. One of those bills came to precisely $24,999. The threshold for review? $25,000, naturally. Privatization is building a new Chicago machine in many respects more offensive than the machine of old.
The $14 billion Philadelphia-based facilities service conglomerate Aramark has a well-earned reputation for unsavory labor relations and shoddy business practices—for instance, the maggots discovered in food served in Aramark-run prison cafeterias in Michigan and Ohio. That didn’t keep the Chicago School Board from voting in March of 2014 to give Aramark a $260 million, three-year contract to handle custodial maintenance. Before the first month of the 2014 school year was out, however, a group of Chicago principals released a report describing filthy conditions in their schools since Aramark took over, including rodents, insects, mouse droppings and urine left in toilets for weeks. Conditions had been so bad just before the schools opened that parent and teacher volunteers had pitched in with cleaning.
What happened next? Within days of the report’s release, Aramark announced it was laying off 470 of its janitors, reducing the custodial labor force by almost 20 percent. In response to complaints that such layoffs help destroy the working class, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, an Emanuel appointee, all but boasted about one of the most problematic aspects of privatization: the way it allows public officials to evade accountability. The Chicago Sun-Times paraphrased her: “They are employed by private companies, so it’s not the district laying them off.”
Of course, another thing that elites like about privatization is that it lets them lay off public employees—especially unionized ones. In Chicago, privately run charter schools that replace traditional public schools are not covered by Chicago Teachers Union contracts, and most are not unionized. Before the Chicago Skyway was privatized, the toll-takers were full-time city employees with full benefits. Now many are part-time contractors without benefits. When a Japanese-owned technology company took over responsibility for the call center that handles water bill complaints, jobs were outsourced to part-timers. All told, since 2009, the city has cut 5,000 jobs, in addition to laying off 1,700 public-school employees. This is bad not just for the workers who lost their jobs and the labor movement generally, but could serve to drive down wages for all workers in the city.
Privatizers like Emanuel say they have no choice: The city is going broke. That alibi is threadbare. Shortly after his inauguration, Mayor Emanuel threatened 625 layoffs unless the city’s unions acceded to a set of work rule changes. In response, the city’s Coalition of Unionized Public Employees—which represents 6,400 workers—quickly released a study proposing to save the city $242 million. The plan: Adopt more efficient scheduling and contracting procedures, get rid of unneeded middle managers instead of front-line union workers—and, defying conventional wisdom, replace private contractors with city workers. According to two COUPE principals, Chicago Federation of Labor President Jorge Ramirez and business manager Lou Philips, they never got a direct response from City Hall. “We’re saying we can save you more than $200 million and they don’t even read it!” Ramirez told Emanuel biographer Kari Lydersen.
So things rest: Most privatization deals fail every public policy test. There’s little record of successful competition between concessionaires to deliver services more efficiently. The very logic is faulty, because most government services are what economists call a “natural monopoly”—which turns out to be what makes it so attractive to capitalists in the first place: “Infrastructure is ultra-low-risk because competition is limited by a host of forces that make it difficult to build, say, a rival toll road,” as Businessweek explained way back in 2007. “With captive customers, the cash flows are virtually guaranteed.” Meanwhile, transparency is plainly a joke; indeed, aldermen in hock to Mayor Emanuel have let languish an ordinance drafted by unions and progressive alderman demanding actual transparency. So, what’s really going on here?
It’s about money and power.
Consider, finally, the mystery of Emanuel’s “infrastructure trust.” The idea was announced with great fanfare in March 2012 as an innovative way to pour private money into public goods like airport expansion, street and water improvements, and an expanded commuter rail network. An “integrated, comprehensive approach” for “building a new Chicago,” Emanuel called it—with little risk to the public. The PowerPoint presentation alderman watched before voting 41 to 7 to approve the deal contained only five slides. The New York Times credulously reported the city’s estimate that the trust would create “30,000 jobs over the next three years.” How? Three years in, with not a single new job created, no one seems to have any idea.
Maybe they’re just working out the kinks. Chicago Public Schools certainly hasn’t given up on the idea. In late 2014, the school board and the City Council approved a $17 million agreement with several investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, to expand preschool using “social impact bonds.” The plan hinges on “success payments” that are triggered if children perform well on kindergarten readiness tests and third-grade literacy tests. The better kids do, the more investors get—up to double their money over the 16-year program, according to an analysis by the education magazine Catalyst Chicago. The deal, Catalyst explains, “relies on a complicated formula that poses little risk to investors … largely due to the proven track record of the project’s chosen preschool program.” Benefit to the public hardly seems the primary aim when you consider the expectation—built into the deal—that Chicago children will be using fewer special education services.
Chicago’s NBC affiliate, WMAQ, editorialized, “Once again, the city is about to enter into a complex, long-term financial transaction with millions of dollars at stake with almost no debate, little understanding of how the program works, and no third party to weigh in on the potential risk and rewards”—with children as collateral, to boot. Why? Follow the money. Rues Tom Tresser: “These are investment bankers at work cooking up business for their campaign contributors. … The banks and billionaires who are sitting on piles of cash are looking for some sweet deals, like Morgan Stanley’s getting $10 for every $1 they invested in our parking meters. They play. You pay.”
What’s next? Now that Emanuel is gliding to likely re-election in February, quite possibly a municipal constitutional apocalypse. The enabling legislation for his infrastructure trust includes the following language: “To the extent that any ordinance, resolution or order of the city is in conflict with the provisions of this ordinance, the provisions of this ordinance shall be controlling.” It sounds like a formula to turn the governing of the City by the Lake over to the bankers on a street called Wall. When Chicago voters go to the polls on February 24 to decide whether to keep Rahm Emanuel as their mayor or replace him with someone else, this is what that race should be all about.
Another wonky feature of the Ventra system is that it was designed to suck up the hard-earned money of millions of less-fortunate Chicagoans into bank coffers. The transit cards can double as debit cards, you see, promoted as a boon for Chicago’s un- and under-banked. But dig the customer fees hidden in the 1,000-page contract the city signed with Cubic: $1.50 every time customers withdraw cash from an ATM, $2.95 every time they add money to their online debit account with a personal credit card, $2 for every call with a service representative and an “account research fee” of $10 an hour for further inquiries, $2 for a paper copy of their account information, and, if you decide you’ve had enough, a $6 “balance refund fee.” This all makes mincemeat of the pro-privatization argument that “the marketplace” is more transparent than a government bureaucracy. The city might have been able to anticipate this before inking the deal had they paid attention to the fact that Money Network, the payment processing company partnering with Cubic, had received the lowest possible grade from the Better Business Bureau, and that another partner, MetaBank, was fined $5.2 million by federal regulators for a scheme to issue debit cards funded by tax refund loans at interest rates of up to 650 percent.
How did this all go down? Consider, as a clue, the case of one John Flynn. As the Chicago Tribune reported, Flynn was the Chicago Transit Authority’s vice president of technology from 2000 to 2008, then decamped for the private sector. During a four-year term at the Chicago division of Cubic, Flynn helped broker the $454 million Ventra deal. Then, last year, under Emanuel, he returned to the city’s employ.
Propagandists vaunt privatization as a brave new world beyond the icky quid pro quos of old-school municipal politics. Tell that to Deborah Quazzo—who might just laugh all the way to the bank. A year ago, when I first started researching this article, I sent Quazzo an email posing two simple questions: Given the work her firm does in education, did she anticipate recusing herself from school board decisions that presented a conflict of interest? And did she anticipate putting investments in a blind trust during her tenure? I never heard back. Then, this past December, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that companies in which she invested have reaped $2.9 million in business from Chicago Public Schools—compared to only $930,000 in the three-and-a-half years prior to her appointment.
She told the paper she saw no conflict of interest: “It’s my belief I need to invest in companies and philanthropic organizations who improve outcomes for children”—and that she wasn’t involved in the deals or aware that her companies’ take had tripled since she took office. Which would make her either a pretty inattentive school board member or a pretty inattentive executive: Some of her companies that had preexisting contracts with CPS cut their prices after Quazzo joined the school board so their bills would fall under the threshold that would require review by district bureaucrats. One of those bills came to precisely $24,999. The threshold for review? $25,000, naturally. Privatization is building a new Chicago machine in many respects more offensive than the machine of old.
The $14 billion Philadelphia-based facilities service conglomerate Aramark has a well-earned reputation for unsavory labor relations and shoddy business practices—for instance, the maggots discovered in food served in Aramark-run prison cafeterias in Michigan and Ohio. That didn’t keep the Chicago School Board from voting in March of 2014 to give Aramark a $260 million, three-year contract to handle custodial maintenance. Before the first month of the 2014 school year was out, however, a group of Chicago principals released a report describing filthy conditions in their schools since Aramark took over, including rodents, insects, mouse droppings and urine left in toilets for weeks. Conditions had been so bad just before the schools opened that parent and teacher volunteers had pitched in with cleaning.
What happened next? Within days of the report’s release, Aramark announced it was laying off 470 of its janitors, reducing the custodial labor force by almost 20 percent. In response to complaints that such layoffs help destroy the working class, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, an Emanuel appointee, all but boasted about one of the most problematic aspects of privatization: the way it allows public officials to evade accountability. The Chicago Sun-Times paraphrased her: “They are employed by private companies, so it’s not the district laying them off.”
Of course, another thing that elites like about privatization is that it lets them lay off public employees—especially unionized ones. In Chicago, privately run charter schools that replace traditional public schools are not covered by Chicago Teachers Union contracts, and most are not unionized. Before the Chicago Skyway was privatized, the toll-takers were full-time city employees with full benefits. Now many are part-time contractors without benefits. When a Japanese-owned technology company took over responsibility for the call center that handles water bill complaints, jobs were outsourced to part-timers. All told, since 2009, the city has cut 5,000 jobs, in addition to laying off 1,700 public-school employees. This is bad not just for the workers who lost their jobs and the labor movement generally, but could serve to drive down wages for all workers in the city.
Privatizers like Emanuel say they have no choice: The city is going broke. That alibi is threadbare. Shortly after his inauguration, Mayor Emanuel threatened 625 layoffs unless the city’s unions acceded to a set of work rule changes. In response, the city’s Coalition of Unionized Public Employees—which represents 6,400 workers—quickly released a study proposing to save the city $242 million. The plan: Adopt more efficient scheduling and contracting procedures, get rid of unneeded middle managers instead of front-line union workers—and, defying conventional wisdom, replace private contractors with city workers. According to two COUPE principals, Chicago Federation of Labor President Jorge Ramirez and business manager Lou Philips, they never got a direct response from City Hall. “We’re saying we can save you more than $200 million and they don’t even read it!” Ramirez told Emanuel biographer Kari Lydersen.
So things rest: Most privatization deals fail every public policy test. There’s little record of successful competition between concessionaires to deliver services more efficiently. The very logic is faulty, because most government services are what economists call a “natural monopoly”—which turns out to be what makes it so attractive to capitalists in the first place: “Infrastructure is ultra-low-risk because competition is limited by a host of forces that make it difficult to build, say, a rival toll road,” as Businessweek explained way back in 2007. “With captive customers, the cash flows are virtually guaranteed.” Meanwhile, transparency is plainly a joke; indeed, aldermen in hock to Mayor Emanuel have let languish an ordinance drafted by unions and progressive alderman demanding actual transparency. So, what’s really going on here?
It’s about money and power.
Consider, finally, the mystery of Emanuel’s “infrastructure trust.” The idea was announced with great fanfare in March 2012 as an innovative way to pour private money into public goods like airport expansion, street and water improvements, and an expanded commuter rail network. An “integrated, comprehensive approach” for “building a new Chicago,” Emanuel called it—with little risk to the public. The PowerPoint presentation alderman watched before voting 41 to 7 to approve the deal contained only five slides. The New York Times credulously reported the city’s estimate that the trust would create “30,000 jobs over the next three years.” How? Three years in, with not a single new job created, no one seems to have any idea.
Maybe they’re just working out the kinks. Chicago Public Schools certainly hasn’t given up on the idea. In late 2014, the school board and the City Council approved a $17 million agreement with several investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, to expand preschool using “social impact bonds.” The plan hinges on “success payments” that are triggered if children perform well on kindergarten readiness tests and third-grade literacy tests. The better kids do, the more investors get—up to double their money over the 16-year program, according to an analysis by the education magazine Catalyst Chicago. The deal, Catalyst explains, “relies on a complicated formula that poses little risk to investors … largely due to the proven track record of the project’s chosen preschool program.” Benefit to the public hardly seems the primary aim when you consider the expectation—built into the deal—that Chicago children will be using fewer special education services.
Chicago’s NBC affiliate, WMAQ, editorialized, “Once again, the city is about to enter into a complex, long-term financial transaction with millions of dollars at stake with almost no debate, little understanding of how the program works, and no third party to weigh in on the potential risk and rewards”—with children as collateral, to boot. Why? Follow the money. Rues Tom Tresser: “These are investment bankers at work cooking up business for their campaign contributors. … The banks and billionaires who are sitting on piles of cash are looking for some sweet deals, like Morgan Stanley’s getting $10 for every $1 they invested in our parking meters. They play. You pay.”
What’s next? Now that Emanuel is gliding to likely re-election in February, quite possibly a municipal constitutional apocalypse. The enabling legislation for his infrastructure trust includes the following language: “To the extent that any ordinance, resolution or order of the city is in conflict with the provisions of this ordinance, the provisions of this ordinance shall be controlling.” It sounds like a formula to turn the governing of the City by the Lake over to the bankers on a street called Wall. When Chicago voters go to the polls on February 24 to decide whether to keep Rahm Emanuel as their mayor or replace him with someone else, this is what that race should be all about.
Rick Perlstein
Executive Summary
Since 2012, the agrichemical and food
industries have mounted a complex,
multifaceted public relations, advertising,
lobbying and political campaign in the United
States, costing more than $100 million, to
defend genetically engineered food and crops
and the pesticides that accompany them. The
purpose of this campaign is to deceive the
public, to deflect efforts to win the right to
know what is in our food via labeling that is
already required in 64 countries, and ultimately,
to extend their profit stream for as long as
possible.
This campaign has greatly influenced how
U.S. media covers GMOs. The industry’s PR
firm, Ketchum, even boasted that “positive
media coverage has doubled” on GMOs. Due
to this influence over the media, the public
hears mostly what the industries claim: GMOs
are safe, and anyone who disagrees or raises
questions is not trustworthy.
This report will show how the industries have
manipulated the media, public opinion and
politics with sleazy tactics, bought science and
PR spin. It will describe fifteen things that Big
Food is hiding with its slick PR campaign on
GMOs.
#1: The agrichemical companies have a history
of concealing health risks from the public.
Time and again, the companies that produce
GMOs have hidden from consumers and
workers the truth about the dangers of their www.usrtk.org 5
products and operations. So how can we trust
them to tell us the truth about their GMOs?
#2: The FDA does not test whether GMOs are
safe. It merely reviews information submitted
by the agrichemical companies.
#3: Our nation’s lax policy on GMOs is the
work of former Vice President Dan Quayle’s
anti-regulatory crusade. It was designed and
delivered as a political favor to Monsanto.
#4: What the agrichemical and tobacco
industries have in common: PR firms,
operatives, tactics. The agrichemical industry’s
recent PR campaign is similar in some ways
to the most infamous industry PR campaign
ever – the tobacco industry’s effort to evade
responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of Americans each year.
#5: Russia’s PR firm runs the agrichemical
industry’s big PR salvo on GMOs. We don’t
trust the PR firm Ketchum when it spins for
Russia and President Putin. Why should we
trust its spin on GMOs?
#6: The agrichemical industry’s key front
groups and shills aren’t trustworthy. Many of
the industry’s leading advocates have records
of defending the indefensible, or other scandals
and conduct that inspires no confidence.
#7: The agrichemical companies have
employed repugnant PR tactics. These tactics
include attacks on scientists and journalists,
and brainwashing children.
#8: The agrichemical companies have a
potent, sleazy political machine. They have
allies in high places, and employ their power
vigorously – and sometimes corruptly — to
protect and expand their markets and their
profits from GMOs.
#9: Half of the Big Six agrichemical firms
can’t even grow their GMOs in their own
home countries. Because of the health and
environmental risks of GMOs, citizens of
Germany and Switzerland won’t allow farming
of BASF, Bayer and Syngenta’s GMO seeds.
#10: Monsanto supported GMO labeling in
the UK but opposes it in the USA. Although
Monsanto is based in St. Louis, Missouri,
Monsanto believes that British citizens deserve
stronger consumer rights than Americans do.
#11: The pesticide treadmill breeds profits,
so it will likely intensify. It is in the financial
interest of the agrichemical companies to
promote the evolution and spread of the
most pestilential superweeds and superpests,
because these will spur the sale of the greatest
quantities of the most expensive pesticides.
#12: GMO science is for sale. Science can be
swayed, bought or biased by the agrichemical
industry in many ways, such as suppressing
adverse findings, harming the careers
of scientists who produce such findings,
controlling the funding that shapes what
research is conducted, the lack of independent
U.S.-based testing of health and environmental
risks of GMOs, and tainting scientific reviews of
GMOs by conflicts of interest.
#13: There are nearly no consumer benefits
of GMOs. The GMOs that Americans eat are
not healthier, safer or more nutritious than
conventional foods. They do not look better,
nor do they taste better. By any measure that
consumers actually care about, they are not in
any way an improvement. Profits from GMOs
accrue to the agrichemical companies, while
health risks are borne by consumers.
#14: The FDA and food companies have been
wrong before: they have assured us of the
safety of products that were not safe. Many
drugs and food additives that the FDA allowed
on the market have subsequently been banned
because they were toxic or dangerous.
#15: A few other things the agrichemical
industry doesn’t want you to know about
them: crimes, scandals and other wrongdoing.
The agrichemical industry’s six major firms
— Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, DuPont, Bayer
and BASF — have been involved in so many
reprehensible activities that documenting them
would require at least an entire book.
This report will show how the
industries have manipulated
the media, public opinion and
politics with sleazy tactics,
bought science and PR spin.U.S. Right to Know 6
Introduction
Since 2012, the agrichemical and food
industries have mounted a complex,
multifaceted public relations, advertising,
lobbying and political campaign in the United
States, costing more than $100 million,1
to
defend genetically engineered food and crops
and the pesticides that accompany them.
This campaign has greatly influenced how
U.S. media covers genetically engineered food
and crops. The industry’s PR firm, Ketchum,
even boasted that, among other things, that
“positive media coverage has doubled” on
GMOs.2
The purpose of this campaign is to deceive
the public, to deflect efforts to win the right
to know what is in our food via labeling that is
already required in 64 countries, and ultimately,
to extend their profit stream for as long as
possible.3
We readily admit that genetically engineered
food and crops may in the future provide
benefits to society. This is not an anti-GMO
report. Rather, it is a report to reveal the
truth behind the spin that the agrichemical
companies are selling to the public via their
massive advertising, political and PR campaign.
Here’s the spin from the agrichemical industry’s
PR campaign: GMOs are safe, anyone who
disagrees is untrustworthy, and that the
companies that produce GMOs are on the
side of farmers, families, sustainability and the
environment.
When industries conduct this sort of PR
campaign, it is often because they have
something – or a lot – to hide. Think, for
example, of the tobacco industry in the 1970s
and ‘80s, or the nuclear power industry in the
1980s and ‘90s, or the fossil fuel industry in
1 See Appendix A for details.
2 CLIO Awards, 2014 winners page on GMO Answers. Ketchum
San Francisco & Washington, DC. Medium: Public Relations.
Category: Crisis & Issue Management.
3 The chemical industry has run similar campaigns in the past.
For an excellent overview, see Dan Fagin, Marianne Lavelle
and the Center for Public Integrity, Toxic Deception: How the
Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law and
Endangers Your Health. (Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group,
1996).
the 2000s.4 Industries try to shift the public
conversation with slick PR, advertising, and
other media sleights of hand. Whether or
not they succeed depends largely on the
inquisitiveness and tenacity of reporters,
citizens and policymakers, to pierce the thicket
of PR and advertising, and to uncover what lies
beneath it.
During the course of such PR charm offensives,
some facts and storylines are lost, while others
gain prominence.
This report will show how the industries have
manipulated the media, public opinion and
politics with sleazy tactics, bought science and
PR spin. It will describe fifteen things that Big
Food is hiding with its slick PR campaign on
GMOs.
_______________________________________
Genetic engineering is a relatively new
technology in agriculture. While humans
have been practicing agriculture for about
12,000 years, the commercial use of genetic
engineering in crops is merely two decades
old. It began with the Flavr Savr tomato, which
went on sale in the spring of 1994.5
Since then, the use of genetically engineered
crops has skyrocketed. Across the planet, in
2012, about 420 million acres of genetically
engineered crops were farmed in 28 countries.
The United States has been the quickest to
adopt this new technology: 41% of all acreage
worldwide planted with genetically engineered
crops was in the United States.6
By all measures, the agrichemical industry has
been highly profitable in recent years, and
strong growth is expected to continue. Take,
for example, the industry leader, Monsanto.
4 See, for example, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton,
Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public
Relations Industry. (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press,
2002). Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Trust Us We’re
Experts! How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with
Your Future. (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2001).
Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The
Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution. (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 2002.) Wendell Potter, Deadly Spin: An
Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR
Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans. (New York:
Bloomsbury Press, 2010). See also the Center for Media and
Democracy and its PR Watch, and the University of California,
San Francisco Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.
5 See especially Belinda Martineau, First Fruit: The Creation of
the Flavr SavrTM Tomato and the Birth of Biotech Food. (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 2001.)
6 Jorge Fernandez-Cornejo, Seth Wechsler, Mike Livingston,
and Lorraine Mitchell, “Genetically Engineered Crops in the
United States.” U.S. Department of Agriculture, February, 2014.
Economic Research Report #162.www.usrtk.org 7
Since 2000, Monsanto’s stock market value
has grown nearly tenfold.7 And Monsanto
expects that it will continue to flourish. For
example, in 2014 the company announced that
it expects to double its earnings in the next five
years. According to John Roberts, executive
director of chemical equity research for UBS,
Monsanto’s “confidence level is off the charts…
They feel they have as deep a growth pipeline
as they’ve had in a long time.”8 More generally,
financial analysts at Transparency Market
Research project that the global agricultural
biotechnology market will nearly double in
seven years, from $15.3 billion in 2012 to $28.7
billion in 2019.9
When profits are strong, industries aim to keep
profits coming in for as long as possible. The
agrichemical industry is no different. During
recent years, the agrichemical companies have
fought hard to maintain their highly profitable
industry. It is unclear for how much longer they
will succeed, as they face several threats.
(1) Most consumers don’t trust genetically
engineered foods. For example, a 2013 New
York Times poll found that an overwhelming
93% of Americans support labeling of
genetically engineered foods. According to
the Times poll, “Three-quarters of Americans
expressed concern about genetically modified
organisms in their food” and “about half”
of Americans say that they “would not eat
them.”10
(2) Many consumers are concerned about
effects of genetically engineered foods on their
health. The same New York Times poll found
that 37% of Americans are concerned about
the health effects of genetically engineered
foods, while 26% said that the foods are “not
safe to eat, or are toxic.”
These concerns reflect scientific studies
that raise questions about the health risks
of consuming genetically engineered food.
For example, a review of nineteen animal
feeding studies, published in Environmental
7 Drake Bennett, “Inside Monsanto, America’s Third-Most-Hated
Company.” Bloomberg Businessweek, July 3, 2014.
8 Carey Gillam, “Monsanto Profit Falls, But Shares Rise on Bullish
Outlook.” Reuters, June 25, 2014.
9 “Global Agricultural Biotechnology Market is Expected to
Reach USD 28,694.1 Million in 2019: Transparency Market
Research.” Transparency Market Research news release, May
29, 2014.
10 Allison Kopicki, “Strong Support for Labeling Modified Foods.”
New York Times, July 27, 2013.
A FEW KEY DEFINITIONS:
Agrichemical companies produce
chemicals used in agriculture, such as
pesticides, herbicides and synthetic
fertilizers, along with genetically
engineered seeds that may accompany
them.
The agrichemical industry is dominated
by six giant multinational corporations:
BASF, Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Syngenta
and Monsanto. These are the Big Six
agrichemical firms.
Big Food is comprised of the
agrichemical industry, agribusiness
industry, the processed food industry and
the supermarket chains.
Genes are the basic biological units of
heredity in living organisms. They are
biological blueprints, composed of DNA,
that determine what an organism will look
like, what it will do and how it will act.
Genetic engineering is the process of
adding DNA to an organism to provide it
with new traits or capabilities. It typically
involves the transfer of genetic material
from at least one species to another.
Scientists can combine genes to create
novel forms of life that otherwise would
not exist and could not be created by
nature.
Genetically engineered (GE) food is
food composed of genetically engineered
plants or animals.
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
are organisms that have been genetically
engineered.
GM refers to crops or food products that
have been genetically modified (also
known as genetically engineered.)U.S. Right to Know 8
Sciences Europe, concluded that the “data
appear to indicate liver and kidney problems”
in animals fed genetically engineered food.11
Another review by Consumers Union senior
scientist Michael Hansen called the capacity of
genetically engineered crops to create allergic
reactions “a major food safety concern.”12
In 2013, nearly 300 scientists endorsed
a statement that there is “no scientific
consensus” on the safety or health risks of
eating genetically engineered food.13 A 2014
review in Environment International of 21
studies of the effects of genetically engineered
foods on the digestive tracts of rats found an
“incomplete picture” regarding “the toxicity
(and safety) of GM products consumed by
11 Gilles-Eric Séralini et al., “Genetically Modified Crops Safety
Assessments: Present Limits And Possible Improvements.”
Environmental Sciences Europe, 2011. 23:10.
12 Memorandum from Michael Hansen, senior scientist, Consumer
Reports, to the American Medical Association Council on
Science and Public Health, “Reasons for Labeling Genetically
Engineered Food.” March 19, 2012.
13 “Statement: No Scientific Consensus on GMO Safety.”
European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental
Responsibility. October 21, 2013.
humans and animals.”14 In other words, it
concludes that there is not enough evidence
to say that genetically engineered foods are
safe to eat. In the words of Professor Dave
Schubert of the Salk Institute for Biological
Studies, “The claim that there is a consensus
among scientists that GM food products are
safe... is simply a PR campaign sponsoretd by
the industry.”15
Concerns about the health risks of genetically
engineered food are magnified by the “paradox
of risk assessment” surrounding them. The
FDA does not independently test the safety
of genetically engineered food. As FDA
spokesperson Theresa Eisenman said, “it is
the manufacturer’s responsibility to ensure
that the [GMO] food products it offers for sale
14 I.M. Zdziarski, J.W. Edwards, J.A. Carman and J.I. Haynes,
“GM Crops and the Rat Digestive Tract: A Critical Review.”
Environment International, December 2014. 73:423-433. doi:
10.1016/j.envint.2014.08.018.
15 Carey Gillam, “GMO Battles Over ‘Settled’ Science Spur New
Study of Crops.” Reuters, November 11, 2014. For a fuller
discussion of scientific studies on the health risks of genetically
engineered food, see John Fagan, Michael Antoniou and Claire
Robinson, “GMO Myths and Truths.” 2014. Chapter 3.www.usrtk.org 9
are safe...”16 Meanwhile, Monsanto has argued
that assuring safety is not their business.
“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the
safety of biotech food,” Phil Angell, director
of corporate communications for Monsanto,
told the New York Times. “Our interest is in
selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its
safety is the F.D.A.’s job.”17 Thus, the paradox:
the FDA and Monsanto pass the buck to each
other, while neither is willing to guarantee that
genetically engineered foods are safe to eat.
(3) The food industry is facing a crisis of
confidence generally, not merely regarding
genetically engineered food, but also the
use of antibiotics, the health risks of certain
pesticides, the use of “pink slime” as a meat
filler, the brutality of factory farms, the health
risks of eating processed foods, and the
epidemic of food-related diseases (including
obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease
and some forms of cancer) that plague our
nation. Each of these issues tends to raise
questions and reinforce skepticism of the food
industry generally, and its handling of the
other controversial issues, including genetically
engineered food.
(4) Labeling of genetically engineered
food could impinge on the profits of the
food and agrichemical industries. This
threat is apparently so grave that Grocery
Manufacturers Association President Pamela
Bailey declared that defeating the California
ballot measure for labeling of genetically
engineered food was her organization’s top
priority in 2012.18
(5) While the federal regulators have been lax
in their treatment of genetically engineered
foods and crops, this may be changing. The
U.S. Government Accountability Office has
launched a review of how FDA and USDA
evaluate the health and environmental risks
of genetically engineered foods and crops.19
The outcome of this review could well affect
the U.S. regulatory regime for genetically
engineered foods and crops.
(6) There are a number of other legislative,
16 Rachel Pomerance, “GMOs: A Breakthrough or Breakdown in
U.S. Agriculture?” U.S. News & World Report, April 25, 2013.
17 Michael Pollan, “Playing God in the Garden.” New York Times,
October 25, 1998.
18 Michael Pollan, “Vote for the Dinner Party,” New York Times,
October 10, 2012.
19 Bill Tomson, “GAO Takes on GMOs.” Politico Morning
Agriculture, October 23, 2014.
regulatory or trade policies that, if
implemented, could impair the profits of
the agrichemical industry, including bans or
restrictions the industry’s ability to plant or test
GMO crops, requirements related to containing
contamination of GMO crops or compensating
for such contamination, and export bans or
restrictions.
In many ways, the position of the agrichemical
industry today is similar to that of the tobacco
industry in the 1950s-80s – a powerful and
profitable industry facing doubts and questions
about the health risks of its products. And their
responses are similar too: creating a strong
political and public relations defense, as well
as lobbying efforts to turn back any policy or
initiative that would curtail their profits.
_______________________________________
Behind all this lies a simple question.
Why is the agrichemical industry so desperate
to hide its products?
Why does the industry fight so tenaciously
to keep secret when we are eating their
genetically engineered foods?
Most companies aren’t shy about promoting
their products. Usually, they loudly take credit
for them. Nearly every day, we see scores – if
not hundreds — of companies boasting of their
creations, and plastering their names and logos
all over them, literally almost everywhere.
It is curious that the agrichemical industry does
the opposite. If it were like other industries, the
agrichemical companies would affix labels with
logos and slogans like “made with genetically
engineered seeds” on food products in
supermarkets everywhere.
Even more curious, since 2012, the food and
agrichemical industries have spent more than
$100 million dollars to oppose labeling of
genetically engineered food. They have fought
hard on this point, with expensive political
campaigns, first-rate public relations efforts,
slick new websites, aggressive litigation,
funding front groups and operatives, hiring
well-connected lobbyists, organizing trade
group efforts, social media campaigns,
attacking scientific and journalistic critics,
making campaign contributions, and so much
more. U.S. Right to Know 10
The question is: Why? Why don’t the
agrichemical companies act like other
companies? Why don’t they want us to know
when we’re eating their products?
Their reticence to promote or acknowledge
their own products is even more striking, given
that in the U.S. there is a signal precedent for
labeling genetically engineered food: the first
genetically engineered food marketed in the
U.S., the Flavr Savr tomato. It was produced
by the company Calgene. The New York Times
explains,
To build public confidence, Calgene
officials were open about the process [of
genetic engineering]. They voluntarily
sought government approval, labeled the
engineered tomatoes clearly and provided
an 800 number for people with questions.
But all that changed after Calgene
was bought out by the much larger
Monsanto…20
Monsanto and the rest of the agrichemical
industry could have simply followed along the
path set out by Calgene: clear labeling of their
products. But they didn’t. Why?
It’s not as if the agrichemical industry faces a
difficult audience. In general, we Americans
welcome new technologies. Every day, our
newspapers, magazines and TV programs are
replete with tidings of the latest technologies.
For the most part, we Americans like to
learn about these new technologies (we
often call them “advances”), and are quick
to incorporate them in our work and lives.
Every day, companies make their case for
their new technologies, and we buy them. The
agrichemical industry is a glaring exception.
Of course, the agrichemical companies say that
their genetically engineered foods are safe.
But their strident opposition to labeling raises
questions and doubts about whether it makes
sense to buy genetically engineered foods.
Why are they so reticent to stand behind
their own products? What is the agrichemical
industry really hiding, and why are they hiding
it?
20 Michael Winerip, “You Call That a Tomato?” New York Times,
June 24, 2013. See also Belinda Martineau, First Fruit: The
Creation of the Flavr SavrTM Tomato and the Birth of Biotech
Food. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001.)
To build public confidence,
Calgene officials were
open about the process
[of genetic engineering].
They voluntarily sought
government approval,
labeled the engineered
tomatoes clearly and
provided an 800 number
for people with questions.
But all that changed after
Calgene was bought out by
the much larger Monsanto...
—Michael Winerip
New York Times, June 24, 2013www.usrtk.org 11
Fifteen things Big Food
is hiding with its slick
PR campaign on GMOs
#1: The agrichemical
companies have a
history of concealing
health risks from the
public
Monsanto is one of the world’s largest
producers of genetically engineered seeds,
and manufacturer of the best-selling herbicide,
Roundup. Our government relies on data from
Monsanto about GMO crops, yet the company
has in the past hid crucial information about
the health risks of its products and operations.
In a Washington Post article describing how
Monsanto polluted the town of Anniston,
Alabama with toxic PCBs, Michael Grunwald
recounts a key moment in a deposition of
Monsanto’s Anniston plant manager:
In 1998, a former Anniston plant manager,
William Papageorge, was asked in a
deposition whether Monsanto officials
ever shared their data about PCB hazards
with the community.
“Why would they?” he replied.21
Indeed, why would they? It’s a great question,
one that applies not only to PCBs but to
genetically engineered foods as well.
If there were something wrong with genetically
engineered food, would Monsanto or the other
agrichemical companies tell us?
If there were health risks, would the companies
disclose them?
Their history suggests that the answer is:
probably not.
The big agrichemical companies have a
well-documented record of hiding the truth
21 Michael Grunwald, “Monsanto Hid Decades Of Pollution: PCBs
Drenched Ala. Town, But No One Was Ever Told.” Washington
Post, January 1, 2002.
about the health risks of their products and
operations.
Let’s review some key moments in that history.
PCBs. Monsanto was the principal
manufacturer of toxic polychlorinated
biphenyls (PCBs). According to the U.S.
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry, “Approximately 99% of the PCBs
used by U.S. industry were produced by the
Monsanto Chemical Company in Sauget, Illinois,
until production was stopped in August 1977.”22
PCBs were banned in 1979. According to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “PCBs
have been demonstrated to cause cancer, as
well as a variety of other adverse health effects
on the immune system, reproductive system,
nervous system, and endocrine system.”23
The dangerous legacy of Monsanto’s PCB
pollution remains, especially in the town
of Anniston, Alabama.24 According to the
Washington Post, regarding Anniston,
thousands of pages of Monsanto
documents — many emblazoned with
warnings such as “CONFIDENTIAL: Read
and Destroy” — show that for decades, the
corporate giant concealed what it did and
what it knew.
In 1966, Monsanto managers discovered
that fish submerged in that creek turned
belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood
and shedding skin as if dunked into boiling
water. They told no one. In 1969, they
found fish in another creek with 7,500
times the legal PCB levels. They decided
“there is little object in going to expensive
extremes in limiting discharges.” In 1975,
a company study found that PCBs caused
tumors in rats. They ordered its conclusion
changed from “slightly tumorigenic” to
“does not appear to be carcinogenic.”25
22 “Toxicological Profile for Polychlorinated Biphenyls.” U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health
Service, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry,
November 2000, p. 467.
23 Polychlorinated Biphenyls: Basic Information.” U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.
24 See, for example, Michael Grunwald, “Monsanto Hid Decades
Of Pollution: PCBs Drenched Ala. Town, But No One Was Ever
Told.” Washington Post, January 1, 2002. Brett Israel, “Pollution,
Poverty and People of Color: Dirty Soil and Diabetes.” Scientific
American, June 13, 2012. Ellen Crean, “Toxic Secret: Alabama
Town Was Never Warned Of Contamination.” 60 Minutes, CBS
News, November 7, 2002.
25 Michael Grunwald, “Monsanto Hid Decades Of Pollution: PCBs
Drenched Ala. Town, But No One Was Ever Told.” Washington
Post, January 1, 2002.U.S. Right to Know 12
Baycol. Bayer AG is the corporate parent of
Bayer CropScience AG, a major agrichemical
company with 2013 revenues of nearly €9
billion from genetically engineered seeds,
fungicides, herbicides and insecticides.26
In 1997, Bayer began producing the statin
(cholesterol-lowering) drug Baycol. It promoted
the drug as “simple and safe.”27 But it withdrew
Baycol from the market in 2001 because the
frequency of fatal rhabdomyolysis (rapid
breakdown of muscle tissue which can cause
kidney failure) was far higher than in other
statins.28 As early as October 1999, the FDA
had already criticized Bayer’s marketing of
Baycol as “false, lacking in fair balance, or
otherwise misleading” with too little emphasis
26 “Bayer Continues Successful Course in Anniversary Year.”
Bayer CropScience news release, February 28, 2014.
27 In re Baycol Cases I and II, Court of Appeal of the State of
California, Second Appellate District, Division Seven.
28 Gina Kolata and Edmund L. Andrews, “Anticholesterol Drug
Pulled After Link With 31 Deaths.” New York Times, August 9,
2001.
on the risk of rhabdomyolysis.29 According
to Public Citizen, “Approximately one year
before Baycol was removed from the market
in August 2001, its manufacturer Bayer, using
FDA data on other statins, found that Baycol
had 20 times more reports of rhabdomyolysis…
per million prescriptions than Lipitor.”30 In
2003, the New York Times reported that
“company documents indicate that some
senior executives at Bayer were aware that
their anticholesterol drug had serious problems
long before the company pulled it from the
market.” Still worse, documents and other
evidence suggested that Bayer promoted
Baycol “even as a company analysis found that
patients on Baycol were falling ill or dying from
a rare muscle condition much more often than
patients on similar drugs.” There were about
100 deaths and 1,600 injuries linked to Baycolinduced
rhabdomyolysis.31
29 Correspondence from Michael A. Misocky, Division of Drug
Marketing, Advertising and Communications, U.S. Food
and Drug Administration to Carol Sever, Deputy Director of
Regulatory Affairs, Bayer Corporation, October 25, 1999.
Melody Petersen and Alex Berenson, “Papers Indicate That
Bayer Knew Of Dangers of Its Cholesterol Drug.” New York
Times, February 22, 2003.
30 Statement by Sidney Wolfe, MD, at the Public Hearing on
CDER’s Current Risk Communication Strategies for Human
Drugs (HRG Publication 1758). Public Citizen Health Research
Group.
31 Melody Petersen and Alex Berenson, “Papers Indicate That
Bayer Knew Of Dangers of Its Cholesterol Drug.” New York
Times, February 22, 2003. For more information about Bayer
generally, see the Coalition Against Bayer Dangers.www.usrtk.org 13
Silicone breast implants. Dow Chemical Co. is
the world’s second largest chemical company,32
and the corporate parent of Dow AgroSciences,
an agrichemical company that produces
genetically engineered seeds, insecticides,
herbicides, fumigants and fungicides. Dow
Corning, another subsidiary of Dow Chemical,
produced silicone breast implants that,
according to the New York Times, “ruptured
at rates far higher than initially suggested by
manufacturers.”33 The Times reported that
“tens of thousands of women have claimed
that they suffered a host of health problems
from silicone-filled breast implants, including
hardening of the breast tissue, implant
rupture and disabling disorders that resemble
autoimmune disorders like lupus.” In 1995, Dow
Corning declared bankruptcy because it was,
according to the Times, “overwhelmed by injury
claims filed against it by hundreds of thousands
of women who used silicone breast implants.”34
Dow Corning told callers to its telephone
hotline that its silicone breast implants were
“100 percent safe” and there have “never been
health problems with implants or silicone.” Dow
Corning stopped telling this to callers after the
FDA sent a letter “in which the company was
accused of giving out misleading information
about breast implants on its hot line. The
letter said the company was to take immediate
corrective action….[The FDA wrote] ‘These
statements overstate the safety of breast
implants and minimize known or suspected
side effects.’”35 In February 1997, the Times
reported that a Louisiana state court found
that “Dow Chemical Company had knowingly
deceived women by hiding information about
32 David Benoit and Ben Lefebvre, “Dow Chemical Lands in Hedge
Fund’s Sights.” Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2014.
33 Barry Meier, “Dow Chemical Deceived Women On Breast
Implants, Jury Decides.” New York Times, August 19, 1997.
34 Barnaby J. Feder, “Dow Corning In Bankruptcy Over Lawsuits.”
New York Times, May 16, 1995.
35 “After U.S. Warning, Dow Curbs Assurances About Breast
Implants.” New York Times, January 1, 1992.
the health risks of silicone used in breast
implants.”36
Bayer plant explosion. On August 28, 2008,
an explosion killed two people at the Bayer
CropScience plant in Institute, VA. According
to a report by the U.S. House Energy and
Commerce Committee, the explosion
“came dangerously close” to replicating the
catastrophic explosion that was so deadly in
Bhopal, India. Bloomberg’s account of the
congressional investigation explained that
executives at Bayer “conducted a ‘campaign
of secrecy,’ destroyed evidence and withheld
information from emergency responders
after a deadly chemical explosion….” The
toxic insecticide methomyl was released in
the explosion. But “Chemical Safety Board
Chairman John Bresland said Bayer officials
told emergency personnel on the day of the
explosion that ‘no dangerous chemicals had
been released.’”37 Bayer went to great lengths
to prevent disclosures about the explosion;
it even tried to employ a federal terrorism
provision that no company had ever invoked
before, to block a hearing by the Chemical
Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.38
PFOA. DuPont Co. is one of the world’s largest
chemical companies, and its subsidiary DuPont
Pioneer is a major agrichemical company. The
EPA announced on December 14, 2004, that
DuPont would pay a total penalty of $16 million,
36 Barry Meier, “Dow Chemical Deceived Women On Breast
Implants, Jury Decides.” New York Times, August 19, 1997.
37 Lorraine Woellert, “Bayer Explosion ‘Dangerously Close’
to Second Bhopal.” Bloomberg, April 21, 2009. See also
Matthew Wald, “Lawmakers Say Chemical Company Withheld
Information About Explosion.” New York Times, April 21,
2009. “Secrecy in the Response to Bayer’s Chemical Plant
Explosion.” Hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce,
U.S. House of Representatives, April 21, 2009. Serial No. 111-28.
38 Sean D. Hamill, “Trying to Limit Disclosure on Explosion.” New
York Times, March 28, 2009.
SOURCE: CBGNETWORK.ORGU.S. Right to Know 14
including “the largest civil administrative
penalty EPA has ever obtained under any
federal environmental statute,” regarding
the use of the chemical perfluorooctanoic
acid (PFOA). PFOA has been used to make
Teflon and other nonstick coatings. The EPA
stated that the violations consist of “multiple
failures to report information to EPA about
substantial risk of injury to human health or
the environment that DuPont obtained about
PFOA from as early as 1981 and as recently as
2004.”39
Chemical health risks. In 2010, DuPont agreed
to pay a $3.3 million fine for 57 violations
of the Toxic Substances Control Act. EPA
found that, regarding 57 studies, “DuPont
failed to immediately notify EPA of research
indicating substantial [health] risk found
during testing chemicals for possible use as
surface protection, masonry protection, water
repellants, sealants and paints.”40
DuPont’s La Porte plant accident. In the
early morning of November 15, 2014, a leak
of the flammable chemical methyl mercaptan
at DuPont’s factory in LaPorte, Texas led to
the deaths of four DuPont workers. Nearby,
also at the factory, there was an unknown
quantity of an infamous industrial chemical –
methyl isocyanate — which, when it exploded
in Bhopal, India in 1984, killed at least 2,200
people initially, in the world’s worst industrial
accident. However, the DuPont shift supervisor
who called 911 about the accident failed to
disclose the presence of the methyl isocyanate
and its potential danger to the public.
According to the Houston Chronicle,
DuPont shift supervisor Jody Knowles
gave no details about the chemicals
involved and minimized the risk in the 911
call to the La Porte fire department.
“We have a possible casualty five
(workers) my medics are telling me,” he
told a dispatcher.
She immediately asked: “Can you tell me is
39 “EPA Settles PFOA Case Against DuPont for Largest
Environmental Administrative Penalty in Agency History.” U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency news release, December
14, 2005. Michael Janofsky, “DuPont to Pay $16.5 Million for
Unreported Risks.” New York Times, December 15, 2005.
See also Mark Glassman, “E.P.A. Says It Will Fine DuPont For
Holding Back Test Results.” New York Times, July 9, 2004.
40 “EPA Announces $3.3 Million Settlement with DuPont for
Failure to Report Toxic Chemical Studies.” U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency news release, December 21, 2010.
this any risk to the public? Is it gonna be a
possible escaping from your premises?”
“No ma’am, it is not,” Knowles responded.41
Agent Orange. Dow Chemical and Monsanto
were the primary manufacturers of Agent
Orange, the infamous herbicide used during
the Vietnam War. About 20 million gallons
were sprayed in Vietnam.42 The herbicide was
contaminated with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzop-dioxin
(TCDD), an extremely toxic form of
dioxin. The Vietnamese Red Cross estimates
150,000 children have been born with birth
defects due to Agent Orange, with a total of
3 million Vietnamese affected by it.43 The U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs presumes
that many diseases are caused by exposure
to Agent Orange,44 but the number of U.S.
veterans sickened by it is unknown. Following
a lawsuit by Agent Orange victims, 291,000
people received compensation due to exposure
to Agent Orange.45
Dow was remarkably duplicitous about the
health risks of dioxin. Dow repeatedly denied
that dioxin caused any disease or illness other
than chloracne, a skin condition similar to
acne. In March 1983, the president of Dow, Paul
Oreffice, argued on NBC’s Today Show that
“there is absolutely no evidence of dioxin doing
any damage to humans except for causing
something that is called chloracne. It’s a rash.”46
However, in July 1983, the New York Times
reported that “The Dow Chemical Company
knew as early as the middle 1960’s about
evidence that exposure to dioxin might cause
people to become seriously ill and even die,
but the company withheld its concern from the
Government and continued to sell herbicides
contaminated by dioxin to the Army and the
public.” In 1965, Dow’s toxicology director
41 Lise Olsen and Mark Collette, “Deadly DuPont Leak Exposes
Safety, Response Failures:Chemical Plant Officials Slow to
React to Disaster, Minimized Risk to Fire Crews, Public in First
911 Call.” Houston Chronicle, November 22, 2014.
42 Clyde Haberman, “Agent Orange’s Long Legacy, for Vietnam
and Veterans.” New York Times, May 11, 2014.
43 Drew Brown, “4 Decades After War Ended, Agent Orange
Still Ravaging Vietnamese.” McClatchy, July 22, 2013. Tom
Fawthrop, “Vietnam’s War Against Agent Orange.” BBC, June
14, 2004. See also Lien Hoang, “Agent G.M.O.” New York Times,
March 26, 2013.
44 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, “Veterans’ Diseases
Associated with Agent Orange.”
45 William Glaberson, “Agent Orange, the Next Generation; In
Vietnam and America, Some See a Wrong Still Not Righted.”
New York Times, August 8, 2004.
46 Russell Mokhiber, Corporate Crime and Violence. (San
Francisco, Sierra Club Books, 1988), p. 80.www.usrtk.org 15
wrote that dioxin could be “exceptionally toxic”
to humans. Dow’s medical director wrote,
regarding dioxin, that “Fatalities have been
reported in the literature.”47
There is also a strong appearance that
Monsanto prepared fraudulent studies to
convince the EPA that dioxin was relatively
nontoxic. These studies were exposed by the
EPA chemist Cate Jenkins, in a memorandum
titled “Newly Revealed Fraud by Monsanto
in an Epidemiological Study Used by EPA to
Assess Human Health Effects from Dioxin.”48
Jenkins found a “long pattern of fraud”
regarding “dioxin contamination of a wide
range of Monsanto Corp. products, as well as
health studies of Monsanto’s dioxin-exposed
workers.”49
DBCP. Dow and Shell were the main
manufacturers of the pesticide DBCP
(1,2-Dibromo-3-Chloropropane). Early results
from DBCP animal health risk experiments were
troubling. Dow’s internal 1958 DBCP animal
testing report stated that their data “show
that liver, lung and kidney effects might be
expected….Testicular atrophy may result from
prolonged, repeated exposure.”50 In 1961, a
study in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology
ensured that Dow knew that DBCP was toxic
and could cause sterility.51 But Dow hid that
crucial health risk information from its workers.
According to the New York Times, it wasn’t
until the “mid-1970s, after tests by the National
Cancer Institute suggested that DBCP could
cause cancer in mice and rats, [that] Dow so
informed its workers…Dow concedes that it
never told its workers about the 1961 study’s
suggestion that DBCP affected the testes.”52
47 Ralph Blumenthal, “Files Show Dioxin Makers Knew of
Hazards.” New York Times, July 6, 1983.
48 E.G. Vallianatos and McKay Jenkins, Poison Spring: The Secret
History of Pollution and the EPA. (New York: Bloomsbury Press,
2014), p. 252, and pp. 63-72. See also Marie-Monique Robin,
The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and
the Control of the World’s Food Supply. (New York, New Press,
2010), pp. 48-59.
49 William H. Freivogel, “Greenpeace, Chemist Challenge
Monsanto on Dioxin Findings.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
November 29, 1990.
50 Jack Doyle, Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic
Century. (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004), p.
292.
51 Torkelson TR et al. “Toxicologic Investigations of 1,2-Dibromo-
3-Chloropropane.” Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology.
September 1961, 3:545-59. William K. Stevens, “Sterility Linked
to Pesticide Spurs Fears on Chemical Use.” New York Times,
September 11, 1977. “Let the Workers Know the Risks.” New
York Times editorial, September 27, 1977.
52 William K. Stevens, “Sterility Linked to Pesticide Spurs Fears on
Chemical Use.” New York Times, September 11, 1977.
In 1977, the EPA tightly restricted the use of
DBCP in the United States, and banned it in
1979, but Dow continued to ship DBCP to fruit
manufacturers such as Del Monte, Chiquita and
Dole, for use in Latin America. This led to DBCP
exposure that sterilized Latin American fruit
workers, and lawsuits from tens of thousands
of them.53 Thus far, Dow and Shell, and fruit
companies Dole and Chiquita, have largely
escaped liability for exposing workers to
DBCP.54
The agrichemical companies have repeatedly
kept silent, or suppressed key facts about
health risks of their products and operations.
It’s a pattern of deception. Given this history,
can we trust that they aren’t deceiving us yet
again about the health and environmental risks
genetically engineered food?
#2: The FDA does not
test whether GMOs are
safe
In recent testimony before Congress, the FDA
stated that it is “confident that the GE foods in
the U.S. marketplace today are as safe as their
conventional counterparts.”55
However, FDA does not itself test whether
genetically engineered foods are safe. The
FDA has repeatedly made this clear. As
Jason Dietz, a policy analyst at FDA explains
about genetically engineered food: “It’s the
manufacturer’s responsibility to insure that the
53 Diana Jean Schemo, “U.S. Pesticide Kills Foreign Fruit Pickers’
Hopes.” New York Times, December 6, 1995.
54 Vicent Boix and Susanna R. Bohme, “Secrecy and Justice in
the Ongoing Saga of DBCP Litigation.” International Journal of
Occupational and Environmental Health, June 2012, 18(2):154-
61. doi: 10.1179/1077352512Z.00000000010.
55 Statement of Michael M. Landa, J.D., Director, Center
for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Food and Drug
Administration, Department of Health and Human Services,
Before the Subcommittee on Health, Committee on Energy and
Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives. December 10, 2014.U.S. Right to Know 16
product is safe.”56 Or, as FDA spokesperson
Theresa Eisenman said, “it is the manufacturer’s
responsibility to ensure that the [GMO] food
products it offers for sale are safe…”57
Nor does the FDA require independent
pre-market safety testing for genetically
engineered food. As a matter of practice, the
agrichemical companies submit their own
studies to the FDA as part of a voluntary
“consultation.” Moreover, the FDA does not
require the companies to submit full and
complete information about these studies.
Rather, as the FDA has testified, “After the
studies are completed, a summary of the data
and information on the safety and nutritional
assessment are provided to the FDA for
review.”58
That the FDA does not see the complete
data and studies is a problem, according to
a Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering
Reviews article by William Freese and David
Schubert:
the FDA never sees the methodological
details, but rather only limited data and
the conclusions the company has drawn
from its own research….the FDA does
not require the submission of data. And,
in fact, companies have failed to comply
with FDA requests for data beyond that
which they submitted initially. Without
test protocols or other important data,
the FDA is unable to identify unintentional
mistakes, errors in data interpretation, or
intentional deception…59
At the end of the consultation, the FDA issues a
letter ending the consultation. Here is a typical
response from FDA, in its letter to Monsanto
about its MON 810 Bt corn:
Based on the safety and nutritional
assessment you have conducted, it is
our understanding that Monsanto has
concluded that corn products derived
from this new variety are not materially
56 Nathaniel Johnson, “The GM Safety Dance: What’s Rule and
What’s Real.” Grist, July 10, 2013.
57 Rachel Pomerance, “GMOs: A Breakthrough or Breakdown in
U.S. Agriculture?” U.S. News & World Report, April 25, 2013.
58 Statement of Michael M. Landa, J.D., Director, Center
for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Food and Drug
Administration, Department of Health and Human Services,
Before the Subcommittee on Health, Committee on Energy and
Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives. December 10, 2014.
59 William Freese and David Schubert, “Safety Testing of
Genetically Engineered Food.” Biotechnology and Genetic
Engineering Reviews, November 2004, 21:299-324.
different in composition, safety, and other
relevant parameters from corn currently
on the market, and that the genetically
modified corn does not raise issues
that would require premarket review or
approval by FDA…. as you are aware, it
is Monsanto’s responsibility to ensure
that foods marketed by the firm are
safe [emphasis ours], wholesome and in
compliance with all applicable legal and
regulatory requirements.60
This testing regime is insufficient for several
other reasons.
Most of the animal safety testing prepared for
the FDA is merely short-term. A study in the
International Journal of Biological Sciences
summarizes the typical testing regime: “The
most detailed regulatory tests on the GMOs are
three-month long feeding trials of laboratory
rats, which are biochemically assessed.”
Such tests may well be too brief in duration
to uncover pathologies that develop more
slowly, such as many types of organ damage,
endocrine disturbances and cancer.61
There are too few peer-reviewed studies on the
health risks of genetically engineered food. In
their 2004 article in Biotechnology and Genetic
Engineering Reviews, William Freese and David
Schubert wrote that, “Published, peer-reviewed
studies, particularly in the area of potential
human health impacts, are rare. For instance,
the EPA’s human health assessment of Bt crops
cites 22 unpublished corporate studies, with
initially only one ancillary literature citation.”62
Similarly, a 2014 review in Environment
International of 21 studies of the effects of
genetically engineered foods on the digestive
tracts of rats found an “incomplete picture”
regarding “the toxicity (and safety) of GM
products consumed by humans and animals.”63
In other words, it concludes that there is
60 Correspondence from Alan M. Rulis Ph.D., Director, Office
of Premarket Approval, Center for Food Safety and Applied
Nutrition, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to Dr. Kent
Croon, Regulatory Affairs Manager, Monsanto Company,
September 25, 1996.
61 Joël Spiroux de Vendômois, et al., “Debate on GMOs
Health Risks after Statistical Findings in Regulatory Tests.”
International Journal of Biological Sciences, 2010; 6(6):590-
598. doi:10.7150/ijbs.6.590.
62 William Freese and David Schubert, “Safety Testing of
Genetically Engineered Food.” Biotechnology and Genetic
Engineering Reviews, November 2004, 21:299-324.
63 I.M. Zdziarski, J.W. Edwards, J.A. Carman and J.I. Haynes,
“GM Crops and the Rat Digestive Tract: A Critical Review.”
Environment International, December 2014. 73:423-433. doi:
10.1016/j.envint.2014.08.018.www.usrtk.org 17
not enough evidence to say that genetically
engineered foods are safe to eat.
The FDA permits companies to submit their
own safety studies, but does not require
independent ones. However, the evidence
regarding pharmaceutical studies strongly
suggests that industry-funded studies are more
likely than independent ones to be favorable to
industry. Here’s Ben Goldacre’s review of this
evidence:
in 2010, three researchers from
Harvard and Toronto found all the trials
looking at five major classes of drug—
antidepressants, ulcer drugs and so on—
then measured two key features: were
they positive, and were they funded by
industry? They found over five hundred
trials in total: 85 per cent of the industryfunded
studies were positive, but only 50
per cent of the government funded trials
were. That’s a very significant difference.
In 2007, researchers looked at every
published trial that set out to explore the
benefit of a statin….This study found 192
trials in total, either comparing one statin
against another, or comparing a statin
against a different kind of treatment.
Once the researchers controlled for other
factors…they found that industry-funded
trials were twenty times more likely to
give results favoring the test drug. Again,
that’s a very big difference.
We’ll do one more. In 2006, researchers
looked into every trial of psychiatric drugs
in four academic journals over a ten-year
period, finding 542 trial outcomes in total.
Industry sponsors got favorable outcomes
for their own drug 78 per cent of the time,
while independently funded trials only
gave a positive result in 48 per cent of
cases.64
These results present a compelling
argument for FDA to require
independent pre-market safety testing
for genetically engineered food, but the
FDA fails to do so.
Perhaps more importantly, the agrichemical
64 Ben Goldacre, “Trial Sans Error: How Pharma-Funded Research
Cherry-Picks Positive Results.” Scientific American, February 13,
2013. Ben Goldacre, Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead
Doctors and Harm Patients. (New York: Faber and Faber, 2012),
pp. 1-2.
industry is under no obligation to report the
results of all their studies. How do we know
that they are not suppressing evidence of
health risks of genetically engineered food? It is
well-known that in other industries “publication
bias” and the suppression of studies is
commonplace. That is certainly true in the
pharmaceutical industry. Here, for example, is
Ben Goldacre’s description of missing evidence
in trials on antidepressants:
researchers found seventy-four studies in
total, representing 12,500 patients’ worth
of data. Thirty-eight of these trials had
positive results, and found that the new
drug worked; thirty-six were negative.
The results were therefore an even split
between success and failure for the drugs,
in reality. Then the researchers set about
looking for these trials in the published
academic literature, the material available
to doctors and patients. This provided a
very different picture. Thirty-seven of the
positive trials—all but one—were published
in full, often with much fanfare. But the
trials with negative results had a very
different fate: only three were published.
Twenty-two were simply lost to history,
never appearing anywhere other than in
those dusty, disorganized, thin FDA files.
The remaining eleven which had negative
results in the FDA summaries did appear
in the academic literature, but were
written up as if the drug was a success….
This was a remarkable piece of work,
spread over twelve drugs from all the
major manufacturers, with no stand-out
bad guy. It very clearly exposed a broken
system: in reality we have thirty-eight
positive trials and thirty-seven negative
ones; in the academic literature we have
forty-eight positive trials and three
negative ones.65
Why shouldn’t we expect the agrichemical
industry to follow the pharmaceutical industry’s
pattern of suppressing negative results? This
65 Ben Goldacre, Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead
Doctors and Harm Patients. (New York: Faber and Faber, 2012),
p. 20. See also Erick H. Turner, Annette M. Matthews, Eftihia
Linardatos, Robert A. Tell, and Robert Rosenthal, “Selective
Publication of Antidepressant Trials and Its Influence on
Apparent Efficacy.” New England Journal of Medicine, January
17, 2008. 2008; 358:252-260. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa065779.
Benedict Carey, “Researchers Find a Bias Toward Upbeat
Findings on Antidepressants.” New York Times, January 17,
2008.U.S. Right to Know 18
question seems especially relevant, given the
agrichemical industry’s history of suppressing
evidence of health risks of their other products
and operations. It makes no sense for the FDA
to trust an industry with such a record.
It is also worth remembering that in the U.S.
there is a history of fraud in toxicological
testing. As Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle
explain in their book Toxic Deception, “The
U.S. regulatory system for chemical products
is tailor-made for fraud. The subjects are
arcane, the results subjective, the regulators
overmatched, and the real work conducted
by – or for – the manufacturers themselves.”66
Regarding Monsanto’s role in such frauds, they
write that:
Paul Wright had been a research chemist
66 Dan Fagin, Marianne Lavelle and the Center for Public Integrity,
Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates
Science, Bends the Law and Endangers Your Health. (Secaucus,
NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1996), p. 33.
at Monsanto before he went to work for
IBT [then the nation’s largest toxicology
lab] in 1971 as its chief rat toxicologist.
Wright stayed at the lab for only 18
months before he returned to Monsanto….
But it was long enough, the [federal]
government investigators concluded,
for him to be in the middle of a series
of apparently fraudulent studies that
benefitted Monsanto products…In all
three cases [regarding an herbicide and
a chlorinator], the [federal government]
investigators wrote in an internal memo,
there was evidence that Monsanto
executives knew that the studies were
faked but sent them to the FDA and the
EPA anyway.67
67 Dan Fagin, Marianne Lavelle and the Center for Public Integrity,
Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates
Science, Bends the Law and Endangers Your Health. (Secaucus,
NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1996), p. 34.www.usrtk.org 19
Finally, how can we assess the health risks of
genetically engineered foods that are currently
on the market? At this time, we can’t. The FDA
does not require any post-market studies of
health risks of genetically engineered food.
As a 2010 study in the International Journal of
Biological Sciences points out, “although some
stakeholders claim that a history of safe use of
GMOs can be upheld, there are no human or
animal epidemiological studies to support such
a claim as yet, in particular because of the lack
of labeling and traceability in GMO-producing
countries.”68 Without such epidemiological
studies on genetically engineered food, we
can’t know whether GMOs are safe or not, and
if they cause illnesses, what they are, who is
afflicted, and with what frequency.
Perhaps not coincidentally, there is a similar
problem with testing of pesticide levels on
the fruits and vegetables eaten by American
consumers. A November 2014 report by the
U.S. Government Accountability Office found
that the FDA only tests the pesticide levels
of less than one per thousand imported fruits
and vegetables, and one per hundred of those
grown domestically. GAO concluded that the
FDA’s testing program is not “statistically
valid.”69 The Washington Post explains the
GAO’s conclusion: “The U.S. Food and Drug
Administration does not perform enough
pesticide residue tests — on either imported or
domestic foods – to say whether the American
food supply is safe…”70
Of course, the agrichemical companies say
their genetically engineered foods are safe.
What’s curious about this is that they have
enough money to carry out independent premarket
and post-market testing of the health
risks of their products. Such testing would
be an easy way to put to rest any questions
about health risks. But they don’t. Why not?
Also, the agrichemical industry could lobby
for federal laws or rules requiring pre-market
and post-market safety testing for genetically
68 Joël Spiroux de Vendômois et al., “Debate on GMOs
Health Risks after Statistical Findings in Regulatory Tests.”
International Journal of Biological Sciences, 2010; 6(6):590-
598. doi:10.7150/ijbs.6.590.
69 “Food Safety: FDA and USDA Should Strengthen Pesticide
Residue Monitoring Programs and Further Disclose Monitoring
Limitations.” U.S. Government Accountability Office, November
6, 2014. GAO-15-38.
70 Kimberly Kindy, “Pesticide Levels On Food Unknown Due to
Poor Government Testing.” Washington Post, November 7,
2014.
engineered foods. And they would likely
prevail. They haven’t done that either. Why
not? It suggests they don’t want to know the
answers, or they don’t want us to know the
answers. Or both. This doesn’t inspire trust.
Even at the outset, some FDA scientists had
concerns about the health risks of genetically
engineered food. According to the New York
Times,
Among them was Dr. Louis J. Pribyl, one
of 17 government scientists working on a
policy for genetically engineered food. Dr.
Pribyl knew from studies that toxins could
be unintentionally created when new
genes were introduced into a plant’s cells.
But under the new edict, the government
was dismissing that risk and any other
possible risk as no different from those of
conventionally derived food. That meant
biotechnology companies would not need
government approval to sell the foods
they were developing.
“This is the industry’s pet idea, namely
that there are no unintended effects that
will raise the F.D.A.’s level of concern,”
Dr. Pribyl wrote in a fiery memo to the
F.D.A. scientist overseeing the policy’s
development. “But time and time
again, there is no data to back up their
contention.”
Dr. Pribyl, a microbiologist, was not alone
at the agency. Dr. Gerald Guest, director
of the center of veterinary medicine,
wrote that he and other scientists at the
center had concluded there was “ample
scientific justification” to require tests and
a government review of each genetically
engineered food before it was sold.
Three toxicologists wrote, “The possibility
of unexpected, accidental changes in
genetically engineered plants justifies a
limited traditional toxicological study.”71
The federal government’s premise for
lax regulation of GMOs was the notion of
“substantial equivalence” – that new genetically
engineered foods were substantially equivalent
to regular foods, so there was no need for
regulation. As the FDA’s 1992 “guidance to
industry” stated, “FDA believes that the new
71 Kurt Eichenwald, Gina Kolata and Melody Petersen,
“Biotechnology Food: From the Lab to a Debacle.” New York
Times, January 25, 2001.U.S. Right to Know 20
techniques are extensions at the molecular
level of traditional methods and will be used
to achieve the same goals as pursued with
traditional plant breeding.”72 It was with this
idea that the agrichemical industry evaded
rigorous safety testing.
But the premise of “substantial equivalence”
was dubious from the start. It was an a priori
political concept – adopted without studies
or evidence – to treat genetically engineered
food as GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe).
It was claimed by the agrichemical industry,
not proven by independent study. For this
reason, some FDA staff opposed the idea of
“substantial equivalence.” For example, Dr.
Linda Kahl, an FDA compliance officer, was
concerned about unpredictable or unknown
safety risks from genetically engineered food.
She wrote:
“The process of genetic engineering and
traditional breeding are different, and
according to the technical experts in
the agency, they lead to different risks,”
Dr. Kahl wrote. “There is no data that
addresses the relative magnitude of risk
— for all we know, the risks may be lower
for genetically engineered foods than for
foods produced by traditional breeding.
But the acknowledgment that the risks are
different is lost in the attempt to hold to
the doctrine that the product and not the
process is regulated.”73
Along the same lines, E. J. Matthews of
the FDA’s Toxicology Group warned that
“genetically modified plants could…contain
unexpected high concentrations of plant
toxicants” and that these could be “uniquely
different chemicals that are usually expressed
in unrelated plants.”74
“Substantial equivalence is a pseudo-scientific
concept,” explained a commentary by Erik
Millstone, Eric Brunner and Sue Mayer in
Nature, “because it is a commercial and
political judgment masquerading as if it were
scientific. It is, moreover, inherently antiscientific
because it was created primarily to
72 “Statement of Policy: Foods Derived From New Plant Varieties.”
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, May 29, 1992. 57 FR 22984.
73 Marian Burros, “Documents Show Officials Disagreed On
Altered Food.” New York Times, December 1, 1999.
74 Helena Paul and Ricarda Steinbrecher, Hungry Corporations:
Transnational Biotech Companies Colonise the Food Chain.
(London: Zed Books, 2003), p. 170.
provide an excuse for not requiring biochemical
or toxicological tests.”75
As Consumers Union senior staff scientist
Michael Hansen points out, even the FDA
itself has explicitly rejected its own premise
of “substantial equivalence.” It did so in its
2001 proposed rule on pre-market notice of
genetically engineered food. The FDA wrote:
Because some rDNA-induced unintended
changes are specific to a transformational
event (e.g., those resulting from insertional
mutagenesis), FDA believes that it needs
to be provided with information about
foods from all separate transformational
events, even when the agency has been
provided with information about foods
from rDNA-modified plants with the
same intended new trait and has had no
questions about such foods…. In contrast,
the agency does not believe that it needs
to receive information about foods from
plants derived through narrow crosses
[such as traditional plant breeding]76
Yet, even though the FDA has acknowledged
the flaws in its own premise of “substantial
equivalence,” the underlying policy lives on –
now without any justification at all.
So, the FDA states that it is “confident”
about the safety of GMOs currently in the
marketplace. But it does not itself conduct
safety testing on GMOs. It does not sponsor
independent safety testing. It does not
require independent safety testing. It does not
require long-term safety testing, to uncover
ill effects that have delayed onset. It does not
have access to the full data and content of all
industry safety testing. And it does not require
post-market epidemiological testing. Without
such testing, and full access to industry data,
the FDA cannot credibly decree, declare or
certify that GMOs are safe.
75 Erik Millstone, Eric Brunner and Sue Mayer, “Beyond
‘Substantial Equivalence.’” Nature 401, 525-526, October 7,
1999. doi:10.1038/44006.
76 “Premarket Notice Concerning Bioengineered Foods.” US Food
and Drug Administration, January 18, 2001. 66 FR 4706, at 4711.
Memorandum from Michael Hansen, Senior Scientist, Consumer
Reports, to AMA Council on Science and Public Health,
“Reasons for Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods.” March
19, 2012.www.usrtk.org 21
#3: Our nation’s lax
policy on GMOs is the
work of former Vice
President Dan Quayle’s
anti-regulatory
crusade
Our nation’s policy on genetically engineered
food is the product of President George H. W.
Bush’s vice president, Dan Quayle. Quayle is
perhaps best remembered for misspelling the
word “potato” in a spelling bee, and for his
work as the Bush administration’s “regulation
terminator.”77 But his most important legacy
was his giant favor to the agrichemical industry
and its genetically engineered foods and crops.
Under the Quayle policy, the FDA does not
test the safety of genetically engineered food.
It does not certify that these foods are safe.
Rather, Quayle’s policy allows industry to get
away with self-policing of health risks. As Jason
Dietz, a policy analyst at FDA explains: “It’s the
manufacturer’s responsibility to insure that the
product is safe.”78
Here’s how the Quayle policy on genetically
engineered food came about.
77 “Dan Quayle, Regulation Terminator.” BusinessWeek, November
3, 1991.
78 Nathaniel Johnson, “The GM Safety Dance: What’s Rule and
What’s Real.” Grist, July 10, 2013.U.S. Right to Know 22
As vice president, under President Reagan,
George H. W. Bush expressed his support for
deregulation of genetically engineered foods.
In a 1987 walkthrough of Monsanto’s St. Louis
laboratories, when Monsanto’s regulatory
concerns came up, Bush responded: “Call me,
I’m in the dereg business. I can help.”79
Two years later, when Bush became President,
he was in an excellent position to help. On
March 31, 1989, he created the White House
Council on Competitiveness, and put his vicepresident,
Dan Quayle, in charge of it. The
Washington Post called Quayle’s regulatory
relief task force a “command post for a war
against government regulation of American
business.” It called Quayle a “zealot when
it comes to deregulation.”80 According to
the Post, “Word quickly spread through the
business community that the Competitiveness
79 Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto:
Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World’s Food
Supply. (New York: New Press, 2010), p. 144.
80 Bob Woodward and David S. Broder, “Quayle’s Quest: Curb
Rules, Leave ‘No Fingerprints.’” Washington Post, January 9,
1992.
Council was ready and able to help on
regulatory matters, and its agenda filled up.”
The Quayle regulatory relief task force
intervened in countless regulatory battles,
including efforts to “change regulations on
federal rules relating to commercial aircraft
noise, bank liability on property loans, housing
accessibility for the disabled, clothing makers’
right to work at home, disclosure requirements
on pensions, protection of underground water
from landfill runoff, reporting requirements
for child-care facilities located in religious
institutions, and fees for real estate
settlements.”81
Here’s how the New York Times described the
political process that led to the Quayle policy
on genetically engineered food.
In the weeks and months that followed,
the White House complied, working
behind the scenes to help Monsanto
81 Bob Woodward and David S. Broder, “Quayle’s Quest: Curb
Rules, Leave ‘No Fingerprints.’” Washington Post, January 9,
1992.www.usrtk.org 23
— long a political power with deep
connections in Washington — get the
regulations that it wanted.
It was an outcome that would be
repeated, again and again, through three
administrations. What Monsanto wished
for from Washington, Monsanto — and, by
extension, the biotechnology industry —
got. If the company’s strategy demanded
regulations, rules favored by the industry
were adopted. And when the company
abruptly decided that it needed to throw
off the regulations and speed its foods to
market, the White House quickly ushered
through an unusually generous policy of
self-policing.
Even longtime Washington hands said that
the control this nascent industry exerted
over its own regulatory destiny — through
the Environmental Protection Agency, the
Agriculture Department and ultimately
the Food and Drug Administration — was
astonishing.82
James Maryanski, the former biotechnology
coordinator for FDA’s Center for Food
Safety and Applied Nutrition, explained the
White House’s involvement: “Basically, the
government had taken a decision that it would
not create new laws….Yes, it was a political
decision. It was a very broad decision that
didn’t apply to just foods. It applied to all
products of biotechnology.”83
On May 26, 1992, Vice President Quayle himself
announced our nation’s policy on genetically
engineered foods and crops as a deregulatory
initiative.
“The reforms we announce today will
speed up and simplify the process of
bringing better agricultural products,
developed through biotech, to consumers,
food processors and farmers,” Mr.
Quayle said. “We will ensure that biotech
products will receive the same oversight
as other products, instead of being
hampered by unnecessary regulation.”84
82 Kurt Eichenwald, Gina Kolata and Melody Petersen,
“Biotechnology Food: From the Lab to a Debacle.” New York
Times, January 25, 2001.
83 Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto:
Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World’s Food
Supply. (New York: New Press, 2010), p. 146.
84 Kurt Eichenwald, Gina Kolata and Melody Petersen,
“Biotechnology Food: From the Lab to a Debacle.” New York
Times, January 25, 2001.
Quayle said that the United States “was the
world leader in biotechnology” and that the
government wanted to “keep it that way.”85
Of course, the Quayle policy was lax as
intended. No food safety laws or regulations
were proposed or promulgated. The FDA
merely issued a “guidance” that establishes a
process for voluntary “consultations” on safety.
The Quayle policy did not require mandatory
pre-market or post-market safety testing of
genetically engineered food. In essence, the
agrichemical industry got exactly what it
wanted: the appearance of regulation, without
the actuality of it. An article in Nature explained
“The biotechnology companies wanted
government regulators to help persuade
consumers that their products were safe, yet
they also wanted the regulatory hurdles to be
set as low as possible.”86
Henry Miller, the founding director of the
FDA’s Office of Biotechnology, explained the
outcome quite bluntly: “In this area [regulation
of GMOs], the U.S. government agencies have
done exactly what big agribusiness has asked
them to do and told them to do.”87
Under the Quayle policy, agrichemical
companies were not even required to notify the
FDA of a new genetically engineered food or
product. That minor requirement was added in
2001.88
And so it is unsurprising that the Quayle policy
was prepared under the supervision of the
FDA’s deputy commissioner for policy, Michael
Taylor, a former vice president for public policy
at Monsanto,89 who had also represented
Monsanto as a partner of the law firm King &
Spalding.90
85 Marian Burros, “Documents Show Officials Disagreed On
Altered Food.” New York Times, December 1, 1999.
86 Erik Millstone, Eric Brunner and Sue Mayer, “Beyond
‘Substantial Equivalence.’” Nature 401, 525-526, October 7,
1999. doi:10.1038/44006.
87 Kurt Eichenwald, Gina Kolata and Melody Petersen,
“Biotechnology Food: From the Lab to a Debacle.” New
York Times, January 25, 2001. Henry Miller isn’t the only
former regulator to make such remarks. For example,
former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman commented that
“Regulators even viewed themselves as cheerleaders for
biotechnology…” Stephanie Simon, “Biotech Soybeans Plant
Seed of Risky Revolution.” Los Angeles Times, July 1, 2001.
88 See “Premarket Notification Concerning Bioengineered Foods.”
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. January 18, 2001, 66 FR
4706.
89 Taylor currently serves as the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for
Foods and Veterinary Medicine.
90 Judy Sarasohn, “Monsanto Losing VIP.” Washington Post,
December 23, 1999.U.S. Right to Know 24
When assessing whether or not to trust the
agrichemical companies and their genetically
engineered food, it is noteworthy that several
of their public relations firms were once
employed by the tobacco industry in its
efforts to evade responsibility and liability
for the millions of Americans they killed.91
These PR efforts on behalf of the tobacco
industry – perhaps the most significant and
destructive PR campaign ever – raise questions
about whether these same firms are spinning
a similarly deceitful PR campaign for the
agrichemical industry to hide any health or
91 “More than 20 million Americans have died as a result of
smoking since the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking
and health was released in 1964…..Between 2005-2009,
smoking was responsible for more than 480,000 premature
deaths annually among Americans 35 years of age and older.”
“The Health Consequences of Smoking – 50 Years of Progress.”
U.S. Surgeon General, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, 2014. See also generally Robert N. Proctor, Golden
Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case
for Abolition. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
2011). Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year
Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph
of Philip Morris. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997). Allan M.
Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly
Persistence of the Product that Defined America. (New York:
Basic Books, 2007). Stanton A. Glantz, John Slade, Lisa A.
Bero, Peter Hanauer and Deborah E. Barnes, The Cigarette
Papers. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996).
Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, University of California,
San Francisco.
environmental risks of genetically engineered
food.
Tobacco Institute’s PR firm tasked with
reviving Monsanto’s image & spinning Bayer
Americans have a negative view of Monsanto,
and it’s getting worse. In a 2013 Harris poll
measuring the “reputation quotient” of “the
most visible companies,” Monsanto performed
poorly, ranking 47th out of 60 companies.92
In the 2014 Harris Poll, it fell to third to last,
“above BP and Bank of America and just
behind Halliburton.”93 Bloomberg Businessweek
even titled its recent profile of Monsanto,
“Inside Monsanto, America’s Third-MostHated
Company.”94 Politico’s recent profile of
Monsanto’s PR woes began with “Monsanto
is the agriculture world’s prince of darkness,
spreading its demonic genetically modified
seeds on fields all over the earth….”95
In 2013, to boost its public image, Monsanto
92 Harris Poll 2013 RQ Summary Report. Harris Interactive,
February 2013.
93 Drake Bennett, “Inside Monsanto, America’s Third-Most-Hated
Company.” Bloomberg Businessweek, July 3, 2014.
94 Drake Bennett, “Inside Monsanto, America’s Third-Most-Hated
Company.” Bloomberg Businessweek, July 3, 2014.
95 Jenny Hopkinson, “Monsanto Confronts Devilish Public Image
Problem.” Politico, November 29, 2013.
#4: What the
agrichemical and
tobacco industries
have in common:
PR firms, operatives,
tactics www.usrtk.org 25
has hired the PR firm Fleishman Hillard to
“reshape” its reputation “amid fierce opposition
to the seed giant’s genetically modified
products,” as the PR industry’s Holmes Report
put it. It notes that the companies, both
headquartered in St. Louis:
have a solid historic relationship. After
previously serving as the company’s
AOR [Agency of Record] in the 80s, FH
has more recently worked on branding
and comms projects for some of the
company’s divisions…. According to
sources familiar with the situation,
Monsanto is aiming [to] develop a more
cohesive communications approach, in
the face of sustained NGO criticism.96
Among other things, Monsanto is trying to
resuscitate its image with “mommy bloggers,”
trying to convince them that Monsanto is really
a “sustainable agriculture company.”97
In 2013, Fleishman Hillard also became the PR
agency of record for Bayer.98
The Tobacco Institute was the cigarette
industry’s main lobbying organization. And
Fleishman Hillard worked as its public relations
firm. In its resignation letter to the Tobacco
Institute in 1993, Fleishman Hillard’s Richard
J. Sullivan notes that “Our company has
represented the Institute for the past seven
and a half years….We always believed that
we provided excellent service to you and the
Institute, and in return you have always been
very generous and supportive of us.”99
In the Washington Post, Morton Mintz
recounted the story of how Fleishman Hillard
and the Tobacco Institute converted the
Healthy Buildings Institute into a front group
for the tobacco industry in its effort to spin
away public concern about the dangers of
second-hand smoke.100
Fleishman Hillard was also caught using
unethical tactics against public health and
96 Arun Sudhaman, “Monsanto Selects FleishmanHillard To
Reshape Reputation.” The Holmes Report, July 24, 2013.
97 Sarah Henry, “Monsanto Woos Mommy Bloggers.” Modern
Farmer, September 18, 2014.
98 Virgil Dickson, “Bayer Brings on Fleishman for Global Issues
Account.” PR Week, August 1, 2013.
99 Correspondence from Richard J. Sullivan, Fleishman Hillard
to Susan Stuntz, Senior Vice President, Tobacco Institute,
April 16, 1993. Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, Bates No.
TIOK0011478.
100 Morton Mintz, “Second-hand Money.” Washington Post, March
24, 1996.
tobacco control advocates. According to a
study by Ruth Malone in the American Journal
of Public Health, Fleishman Hillard conducted
espionage against tobacco control advocates
on behalf of the tobacco company R. J.
Reynolds. It even secretly audiotaped tobacco
control meetings and conferences.101 However,
in recent years, Fleishman Hillard has worked
on a number of anti-smoking campaigns.
Ogilvy & Mather, DuPont Pioneer’s PR Firm,
Worked for the Tobacco Institute
DuPont Pioneer is the world’s second largest
seed producer, and a major producer of
genetically engineered seeds.
On March 26, 2012, the Des Moines Register
reported that Pioneer had hired the PR
firm Ogilvy & Mather, which also represents
Pioneer’s corporate parent, DuPont.102 Ogilvy
& Mather’s work on behalf of DuPont Pioneer
has been highly regarded. The PR Society
of America awarded Ogilvy PR and DuPont
Pioneer its highest honor, “Best of the Anvils,”
for producing a PR campaign to obfuscate the
responsibility of DuPont and its neonicotinoid
pesticides in the ongoing crisis afflicting the
world’s bees.103
Ogilvy & Mather Public Affairs also worked
for the Tobacco Institute, then the principal
lobbying arm of the tobacco industry.
According to a 1987 agreement between Ogilvy
and the Tobacco Institute, “Ogilvy will provide
The Institute public affairs consulting services….
[including] assistance in strategy development
and implementation, writing assignments as
appropriate, and initiating and maintaining
contact with targeted coalition groups.”104
Ogilvy also conducted “media tours” for the
Tobacco Institute regarding matters such as
“indoor air quality,” “environmental tobacco
smoke,” and “economic issues.”105
101 Ruth E. Malone, “Tobacco Industry Surveillance of Public Health
Groups: The Case of STAT and INFACT.” American Journal of
Public Health, June 2002. 92(6): 955–960.
102 Dan Piller, “Pioneer Shifts Ad, PR Agency Work.” Des Moines
Register, March 26, 2012.
103 Jack O’Dwyer, “PRSA Award-Winning DuPont Linked to Bee
Deaths.” Jack O’Dwyer’s Newsletter, December 11, 2013.
104 Correspondence from William Kloepfer, Jr., Senior Vice
President, The Tobacco Institute Inc., to Joseph L. Powell,
Jr., Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather Public Affairs. June 30, 1987.
Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, University of California,
San Francisco. Bates No. TI01480030-TI01480031.
105 Correspondence from Peter G. Sperber, The Tobacco
Institute, to Joseph L. Powell, Jr., Chairman & CEO, Ogilvy &
Mather. August 18, 1987. Legacy Tobacco Documents Library,
University of California, San Francisco. Bates No. TI01480028-
TI01480029. U.S. Right to Know 26
Ketchum’s work for the tobacco industry
The Council for Biotechnology has hired
Ketchum to produce its major PR campaign
and website, GMO Answers.106
Ketchum, McLeod and Grove also wrote copy
for Brown & Williamson’s cigarette advertising
campaigns. For example, they prepared
copy to convince Americans to smoke Fact
cigarettes because they were supposedly less
dangerous than other cigarettes:
Is Fact a safer cigarette? You like to
smoke. You enjoy it. But just to be on the
safe side, you settle for a low-‘tar.’ Well,
according to the critics, that’s not safe
enough….If you think they’re right, then
you should smoke Fact…107
106 Georgina Gustin, “Monsanto, Other Biotech Companies,
Launch Website To Answer GMO-Related Questions.” St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, July 29, 2013. Dan Flynn, “Plant Biotechnology
Industry Rolls Out Site to Address Top Consumer Questions.”
Food Safety News, March 20, 2014.
107 Ketchum, McLeod and Grove, “Safety (critics)/Challenge
Combination.” Advertising copy for Brown & Williamson,
May 13, 1976. Now that the tobacco industry is in disrepute,
Ketchum has switched sides. In May 2014, Legacy announced
that Ketchum is the public relations agency of record for both
Legacy and its Truth campaign.
Two Syngenta PR firms worked for the
tobacco industry
According to news reports, Syngenta hired
the PR firm Jayne Thompson & Associates
to help spin a massive 2004 lawsuit against
it regarding atrazine.108 On its website, Jayne
Thompson’s firm boasts of its work on behalf
of Altria, the parent company of tobacco firm
Philip Morris USA:
“to craft and manage a high-stakes integrated
crisis, media relations and public affairs
campaign” resulting in, among other things,
“more than a dozen supportive editorials…
strong Illinois media coverage…national
editorial support and international press
attention.”109
In the New Yorker, Rachel Aviv notes that
after a critical New York Times article about
atrazine, Syngenta hired a PR firm called the
White House Writers Group to help defend its
108 Ameet Sachdev, “PR Executive Sets Off Firestorm With
Proposal to Discredit Madison County Court System.” Chicago
Tribune, May 28, 2011.
109 Jayne Thompson & Associates, “Crisis Communications, Media
Relations & Public Affairs”.
SCREEN SHOT OF KETCHUM’S PR WEBSITE, GMO ANSWERS.www.usrtk.org 27
embattled herbicide.110 Among other things,
Syngenta’s PR firm, the White House Writers
Group, has also done PR work for the Philip
Morris tobacco company, including work on
speeches, talking points and fact sheets.111
Top operative against GMO labeling was
outside counsel to Philip Morris
Tom Hiltachk is the managing partner of
the Sacramento law firm Bell, McAndrews
& Hiltachk LLP. He was the treasurer for the
front group/campaign committee that the
agrichemical and food industries employed
to oppose Proposition 37, the 2012 California
ballot initiative for labeling of genetically
engineered food.112 Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk
represented the “No on 37” campaign.113
Donations to the “No on 37” campaign went
directly to Bell, McAndrews and Hiltachk’s
offices.114
Hiltachk is a former outside counsel to Philip
Morris.115 Among his other work on behalf of
the tobacco industry, he also represented
“Californians for Smokers Rights”116 and the
“Cigarettes Cheaper!” chain stores in their
opposition to the collection of California
tobacco taxes.117
110 Rachel Aviv, “A Valuable Reputation.” New Yorker, February 10,
2014. See also Clare Howard, “Syngenta’s Campaign to Protect
Atrazine, Discredit Critics.” Environmental Health News, June 17,
2013.
111 See, for example, Memorandum for Craig Fuller, Senior Vice
President, Corporate Affairs, Philip Morris Companies, from
Clark S. Judge, White House Writers Group, “Regarding
Written Deliverables Called For By PM-RJR Task Force.” March
12, 1993. Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, University of
California, San Francisco. Bates No. 2048596137-2048596141A.
Memorandum for Craig L. Fuller, Senior Vice President,
Corporate Affairs, Philip Morris Companies, from Clark
S. Judge, Managing Partner, White House Writers Group,
“Regarding Edited Versions of First Round Speeches.” June
2, 1993. Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, University of
California, San Francisco. Bates No. 2023923028-2023923029.
112 See the campaign finance electronic filings of “No on 37:
Coalition Against the Deceptive Food Labeling Scheme,
Sponsored by Farmers and Food Producers.” California
Secretary of State.
113 See campaign finance disclosures of “No on 37: Coalition
Against the Deceptive Food Labeling Scheme, Sponsored by
Farmers and Food Producers.” California Secretary of State.
114 Michele Simon, “Big Tobacco Shills Trying to Stop GMO
Labeling in California.” Huffington Post, August 14, 2012.
115 Stella Aguinaga, Stanton A. Glantz, “The Use of Public Records
Acts to Interfere with Tobacco Control.” Tobacco Control,
September 1995, 4(3): 222–230. Lee Fang, “Smelling A Chance
To Burn Oil Money, Tobacco Lobbyists Orchestrate Effort To
Repeal CA Clean Energy Law.” Think Progress, July 27, 2010.
116 Stella Aguinaga, Stanton A. Glantz, “The Use of Public Records
Acts to Interfere with Tobacco Control.” Tobacco Control,
September 1995, 4(3): 222–230. Lee Fang, “Smelling A Chance
To Burn Oil Money, Tobacco Lobbyists Orchestrate Effort To
Repeal CA Clean Energy Law.” Think Progress, July 27, 2010.
117 “Judge Rejects Tobacco Firms’ Challenge to Collection of
Taxes Under Prop. 10.” Associated Press/Los Angeles Times,
November 16, 2000.
“No on 37” opposition research firm worked
for tobacco giant Altria
MB Public Affairs is an opposition research firm
that that was hired by the “No on 37” campaign
to defeat GMO labeling in California.118
Previously, MB Public Affairs worked for the
tobacco company Altria (formerly Philip Morris
Cos.), according to the Los Angeles Times.
119
Using the tobacco industry playbook by
pretending to care (about farmers and
sustainability)
The tobacco industry was famous for its
self-serving advertising and public relations
campaigns to make smokers think that it cared
about them, while it was actually promoting a
product that, when used as intended, is often
deadly.
For example, in 1953, the tobacco company
Liggett & Myers ran an advertising campaign
called “Best For You,” in which it promoted
its Chesterfield cigarettes as “Best for you.”120
One of its 1954 ads featured the claim that
Chesterfields were “The cigarette tested and
approved by 30 years of scientific tobacco
research.”121 Another set of advertisements
for Virginia Slims promoted the idea that
cigarettes could help smokers to be slim,
beautiful and empowered.122 Many other
tobacco ad campaigns ran in a similar vein.
Of course, the tobacco companies cared only
about profits, not smokers, but this ruse helped
to hook generations of smokers.
In a similar way, just as tobacco companies
pretended to care about smokers, the
agrichemical companies pretend to care about
farmers and sustainability, when what they
really care about is profits.
The agrichemical industry uses farmers as
spokespeople because Americans typically
view farmers as trustworthy and honorable.
For example, Monsanto has produced a
118 See campaign finance disclosures of “No on 37: Coalition
Against the Deceptive Food Labeling Scheme, Sponsored by
Farmers and Food Producers.” California Secretary of State.
119 Jim Newton, “A Mysterious Inquiry.” Los Angeles Times, June
20, 2011.
120 “Best for You.” Stanford Research Into the Impact of Tobacco
Advertising, Stanford School of Medicine.
121 “Today’s Chesterfield is the Best Cigarette Ever Made!”
Stanford Research Into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising,
Stanford School of Medicine.
122 “Virginia Slims Before 1989.” Stanford Research into the Impact
of Tobacco Advertising, Stanford School of Medicine.U.S. Right to Know 28
website titled “American Farmers,”123 packed
with beautiful and moving photographs of
farmers and their families, and bountiful
harvests of crops. Here’s what Monsanto says it
wants to accomplish: “Through our America’s
Farmers programs, we hope to help educate
consumers about modern agriculture, grow
rural communities and schools, and celebrate
women in agriculture.”124
The website celebrates farmers and farming in
myriad ways. “Farmers do more than feed, fuel
and clothe the world,” Monsanto’s website says.
“They are the life blood of rural communities,
supporting the local economy and giving back
to the community whenever possible.”125 It even
gives out awards and “recognition” for farmers
and their families.
In essence, Monsanto is trying to associate
itself and its genetically engineered crops with
the positive halo of our nation’s farmers, and to
use that to boost its profits.
Undoubtedly, American farmers and their
families do heroic things every day, and get
less credit than they deserve. So many work
hard, and go without thanks, celebration or
even much compensation, to feed our country
and our planet. So, of course American farmers
deserve celebration. But what is wrong with
these PR efforts is the cynical use of good
farmers and their families – not to help them,
but rather to bolster Monsanto and its profits.
The food and agrichemical companies and their
front groups also use farmers prominently in
their negative campaign ads against labeling of
genetically engineered food, because farmers
are seen as trustworthy. Farmers were used as
spokespeople in ads in the campaigns against
GMO labeling ballot initiatives in California,126
Washington,127 Oregon128 and Colorado.129 In
California, the name of the industry front group
campaign committee against GMO labeling was
“No On 37: Coalition Against The Deceptive
Food Labeling Scheme, Sponsored By Farmers
123 Monsanto’s American Farmers website.
124 “Your Day Begins With a Farmer.” Monsanto’ American Farmers
website.
125 “Recognition Programs.” Monsanto’s America’s Farmers
website.
126 “Farmer Ted Sheely: No On 37.” Advertisement for No on 37.
127 “Third-Generation Farmer: Brenda Alford.” Advertisement for
No on 522.
128 No on 92 commercials, “Farmer Matt” and “Three Generations.”
129 No on 105 commercials, “Farmer Veronica Lasater,” and
“Modern Beet Varieties.”
And Food Producers,”130 even though most of
the money for the campaign came from big
agrichemical and food companies.
In a similar vein, Monsanto’s new national
advertising campaign includes a 60-second
spot titled “Food is Love,” that cynically tries
to associate itself with the warmth and love
that comes out of sharing food with friends
and family. In this emotional spot, Monsanto
is pretending that it cares about you and your
loved ones.131
Just as the agrichemical industry pretends
to care about farmers, and about you, it
also pretends to care about “sustainability.”
Of course, given the adverse impact of
herbicides like Roundup on soil health,132
there may well be few things less sustainable
than spraying vast quantities such herbicides
on crops and fields across the planet.133
Nevertheless, for example, Monsanto boasts
often and loudly that it embraces the idea
of “sustainability,” producing slick websites
(posted at sustainability.monsanto.com),134
beautiful videos on sustainability,135 along with
a “commitment to sustainable agriculture,” and
statements professing its “vision for sustainable
agriculture.”136
These protestations from Monsanto in support
of “sustainability” are ironic, as they come from
a company that produced huge quantities of
toxic chemicals and pollution. For example,
Monsanto was the main manufacturer of toxic
PCBs. The dangerous legacy of Monsanto’s
PCB pollution remains, especially in the town
of Anniston, Alabama,137 and it is incompatible
with the idea of sustainability.
130 Their campaign finance filings are available from the California
Secretary of State.
131 See Maria Altman, “Monsanto Appeals Directly To Consumers
In New Ad Campaign.” St. Louis Public Radio, November 5,
2014. “Food is Love.” Monsanto commercial, November 5, 2014.
132 See, for example, Stephanie Strom, “Misgivings About How a
Weed Killer Affects the Soil.” New York Times, September 19,
2013. Carey Gillam, “Roundup Herbicide Research Shows Plant,
Soil Problems.” Reuters, August 12, 2011.
133 See, for example, “Eight Ways Monsanto Fails at Sustainable
Agriculture.” Union of Concerned Scientists, January 4, 2012.
134 “Monsanto’s Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability,”
Monsanto website.
135 See, for example, “Monsanto Company: Committed to
Sustainable Agriculture, Committed to Farmers,” and
“Monsanto’s Commitment to Sustainable Agriculture.”
136 “Our Commitment to Sustainable Agriculture.” Monsanto
website.
137 See, for example, Michael Grunwald, “Monsanto Hid Decades
Of Pollution.” Washington Post, January 1, 2002. Brett Israel,
“Pollution, Poverty and People of Color: Dirty Soil and
Diabetes.” Scientific American, June 13, 2012. Ellen Crean,
“Toxic Secret.” 60 Minutes, CBS News, November 7, 2002. www.usrtk.org 29
Dow Chemical and Monsanto were also the
primary manufacturers of Agent Orange, an
infamous herbicide used during the Vietnam
War. About 20 million gallons were sprayed in
Vietnam.138 The herbicide was contaminated
with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin
(TCDD), which is a highly toxic chemical.
Monsanto was also a manufacturer of the
infamous pesticide DDT. Again, this record is
incompatible with sustainability.
#5: Russia’s PR firm
runs the agrichemical
industry’s big PR salvo
on GMOs
The agrichemical industry faces major public
relations challenges, so it needs superb PR
assistance. Perhaps it is not surprising that they
hired the public relations firm that represents
Russia, Ketchum, to manufacture the spin they
need to keep its lavish profits flowing from
the sale of genetically engineered seeds and
related pesticides.
138 Clyde Haberman, “Agent Orange’s Long Legacy, for Vietnam
and Veterans.” New York Times, May 11, 2014.
We Americans have good reason to distrust
the ways that Russia and its PR firm Ketchum
spin Russia’s aggressive foreign policy. So
why should we trust Ketchum and its major
public relations initiative to sell the idea that
genetically engineered foods are safe for
humans and the environment?
Ketchum is one of the world’s largest public
relations firms. It is owned by the giant
advertising firm Omnicom.
Ketchum began working for
Russia in 2006. According to
ProPublica, Russia pays Ketchum
generously: “From mid-2006
to mid-2012, Ketchum received
almost $23 million in fees and
expenses on the Russia account
and an additional $17 million on the account of
Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled energy
giant…”139 According to the New York Times,
Ketchum has ten employees working on the
Russia account.140
Ketchum’s work on behalf of Russia is wellknown.
For example, in a recent news report,
Reuters identified Ketchum as “The U.S.
139 Justin Elliott, “From Russia With PR.” ProPublica, September 12,
2013.
140 Ravi Somaiya, “P.R. Firm for Putin’s Russia Now Walking a
Fine Line.” New York Times, August 31, 2014. See also Rosie
Gray, “Putin Spokesman Suggests Kremlin Might End Ketchum
Contract.” BuzzFeed, September 2, 2014.
SOURCE: U.S. Right to Know 30
company that
handles public
relations for Russia
in the United
States.”141 Here’s
how the Washington
Post introduced its
readers to Ketchum:
“Meet Ketchum, a
New York-based PR
firm that looks out
for Russia’s interests
in the U.S.”142 When Russian President Vladimir
V. Putin wanted to place a magnificently
deceptive op-ed143 in the New York Times
about Syria, it had Ketchum place it.144
What else does Ketchum do for Russia?
According to the Washington Post, “Ketchum
spends a lot of time sending out press releases,
setting up meetings with visiting Russian
officials, and talking with journalists about
things like Russia’s G20 presidency and U.S.-
Russia relations…”145
In recent months, Ketchum has tried to spin
itself away from any ties to Russian foreign
policy. It claimed that “We are not advising the
Russian Federation on foreign policy, including
the current situation in Ukraine.”146
Ketchum and espionage
Aside from its work for Russia, Ketchum
has a history of unethical activities. For
example Ketchum hired the notorious private
investigative firm Beckett Brown International
(BBI) to conduct a massive espionage effort
against Greenpeace, including hiring police
to gain access to Greenpeace’s trash, hiring
141 Andy Sullivan, “Russia’s U.S. PR Firm Distances Itself from
Ukraine Dispute.” Reuters, March 6, 2014.
142 Holly Yeager, “Who Would Work For Russia? These People.”
Washington Post, March 7, 2014. David Teather, “PR Groups
Cash in on Russian Conflict.” Guardian, August 23, 2009.
143 Vladimir V. Putin, “A Plea for Caution From Russia: What
Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria.” New York Times,
September 11, 2013.
144 Rosie Gray, “Ketchum Placed Controversial Putin Op-Ed:
The PR Firm’s Biggest Russia Coup Ever?” BuzzFeed News,
September 12, 2013. Justin Elliott, “From Russia With PR.”
ProPublica, September 12, 2013.
145 Holly Yeager, “Who Would Work For Russia? These People.”
Washington Post, March 7, 2014. Ketchum’s recent work for
Russia is cheerfully detailed in its filings required by the
Foreign Agents Registration Act. See, for example, Ketchum’s
supplemental statement to the FARA registration unit of the
U.S. Department of Justice, July 11, 2014. See also Eamon
Javers, “Who’s on Putin’s American Payroll?” CNBC, March 5,
2014.
146 Andy Sullivan, “Russia’s U.S. PR Firm Distances Itself from
Ukraine Dispute.” Reuters, March 6, 2014.
a firm staffed by former National Security
Agency (NSA) employees to conduct computer
intrusion and electronic surveillance, and
obtaining phone records of Greenpeace staff or
contractors.147
Ketchum appears to have also targeted
consumer, food safety and environmental
groups with espionage over issues related to
genetically engineered food. According to an
email from BBI staffer Jay Bly to Tim Ward, a
former Maryland State Trooper also working for
BBI:
Received a call from Ketchum yesterday
afternoon re three sites in DC. It seems
Taco Bell turned out some product made
from bioengineered corn. The chemicals
used on the corn have not been approved
for human consumption. Hence Taco Bell
produced potential glow-in-the-dark tacos.
Taco Bell is owned by Kraft. The Ketchum
Office, New York, has the ball. They
suspect the initiative is being generated
from one of three places:
1. Center for Food Safety, 7th & Penn SE
2. Friends of the Earth, 1025 Vermont Ave
(Between K & L Streets)
3. GE Food Alert, 1200 18th St NW (18th &
M)
#1 is located on 3rd floor. Main entrance is
key card. Alley is locked by iron gates. 7
dempsters [sic] in alley—take your pick.
#2 is in the same building as Chile
Embassy. Armed guard in lobby & cameras
everywhere. There is a dumpster in the
alley behind the building. Don’t know if it is
tied to bldg. or a neighborhood property.
Cameras everywhere.
#3 is doable but behind locked iron gates
at rear of bldg.148
Ketchum has been involved in other scandals,
too. For example, the U.S. Government
Accountability Office criticized Ketchum in
147 James Ridgeway, “Black Ops, Green Groups.” Mother Jones,
April 11, 2008. Gary Ruskin, Spooky Business: Corporate
Espionage Against Non-Profit Organizations. November 20,
2013. Spencer S. Hsu, “Greenpeace Accuses Dow Chemical,
Sasol and P.R. Allies of Corporate Spying.” Washington Post,
November 29, 2010. Ralph Nader, “Corporations Spy on
Nonprofits With Impunity.” Huffington Post, August 22, 2014.
For details regarding Greenpeace’s lawsuit against Ketchum
and others, see Greenpeace’s Spy Gate web page.
148 James Ridgeway, “The Dirty History of Corporate Spying.”
Guardian, February 15, 2011.
SOURCE: WWW.KREMLIN.RU
RUSSIAN PRESIDENT
VLADIMIR PUTINwww.usrtk.org 31
2004 and 2005 for producing video news
releases that violated federal prohibitions
against “covert propaganda” because they
failed to disclose that they were financed by
the federal government.149
What Russia’s PR Firm Does To Spin GMOs
Public relations firms like Ketchum are
notoriously secretive, so there is little public
information available about what services they
really provide to the agrichemical industry.
Here’s what we know.
The Council for Biotechnology selected
Ketchum to produce a major public relations
initiative: the GMO Answers campaign and
website,150 to help promote the industry’s views
on genetically engineered food. According
to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Ketchum
will oversee the site” which the agrichemical
companies “hope will help clear up confusion —
and dispel mistrust — about their products.”151
Ketchum’s spinning for the agrichemical
industry has been so artful that it was
shortlisted in 2014 for a CLIO Award in the
category of “Public Relations: Crisis and Issue
Management.”152
Ketchum claims its work on GMOs has had
a major impact. According to a Ketchum
video, “positive media coverage has doubled.
On Twitter, where we closely monitor the
conversation, we’ve successfully balanced 80%
149 “Matter of: Department of Health and Human Services, Centers
for Medicare & Medicaid Services—Video News Releases.” U.S.
General Accounting Office, May 19, 2004. GAO file # B-302710.
Correspondence with U.S. Senators Frank R. Lautenberg and
Edward M. Kennedy. “Subject: Department of Education—No
Child Left Behind Act Video News Release and Media Analysis.”
U.S. Government Accountability Office, September 30, 2005.
GAO File #B-304228. Sebastian Jones and Michael Grabell,
“PR Firm Behind Propaganda Videos Wins Stimulus Contract.”
ProPublica, March 30, 2010. Robert Pear, “White House’s
Medicare Videos Are Ruled Illegal.” New York Times, May 20,
2004.
150 http://www.gmoanswers.com.
151 Georgina Gustin, “Monsanto, Other Biotech Companies,
Launch Website To Answer GMO-Related Questions.” St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, July 29, 2013. Dan Flynn, “Plant Biotechnology
Industry Rolls Out Site to Address Top Consumer Questions.”
Food Safety News, March 20, 2014.
152 “Ketchum Continues Winning Tradition at CLIOs with Three
Awards, One Shortlist Mention.” Ketchum news release,
October 2, 2014.
of interactions with detractors.”153 Cathleen
Enright, executive director for the Council for
Biotechnology Information, has also confirmed
the campaign’s influence to Reuters. It “has
tracked media reports about GMOs since the
campaign began and has seen ‘measurable
change,’ Enright said. ‘We’ve seen the positive
tone ... increase. That tells us we are having an
impact.’”154
The American Farm Bureau Federation
also boasts of Ketchum’s social media work
in support of GMOs and the agrichemical
industry. According to Andrew Walmsley of the
American Farm Bureau Federation, Ketchum
“seeks out negative (biotech-related) tweets on
Twitter. We started that earlier this year. They’ll
monitor for negative tweets and then ask (the
author) to check out GMOanswers. … Since we
launched that there’s been about an 80 percent
reduction in negative Twitter traffic as it relates
to GMOs.”155
Not surprisingly, given the impact that
Ketchum’s GMO Answers campaign has had,
the Council for Biotechnology Information has
“committed to spending millions more annually
for several more years on this campaign,”
according to Reuters, though it would not
disclose exactly how much it has spent or
will spend on it. Reuters reported that it is a
“multimillion-dollar campaign.”156
The GMO Answers site purports to be a place
where consumers can get “answers” from
industry leaders and “independent experts”
about genetically engineered food.
There is not enough space here to point
out all of the deceptions in Ketchum’s GMO
Answers website. But among the most
notable deceptions — a classical public
relations strategy – is to attribute comments
to “independent experts” when they are
153 Ketchum helps the agrichemical industry respond to negative
comments on social media. An article in the Delta Farm Press
quotes Andrew Walmsley of the American Farm Bureau
Federation states that Ketchum “seeks out negative (biotechrelated)
tweets on Twitter. We started that earlier this year.
They’ll monitor for negative tweets and then ask (the author) to
check out GMOanswers. … Since we launched that there’s been
about an 80 percent reduction in negative Twitter traffic as it
relates to GMOs.” CLIO Awards, public relations category, 2014
winners page on GMO Answers.
154 Carey Gillam, “U.S. GMO Crop Companies Double Down on
Anti-labeling Efforts.” Reuters, July 29, 2014.
155 David Bennett, “The Battle Over Biotech Food Labeling
Heating Up.” Delta Farm Press, August 4, 2014.
156 Carey Gillam, “U.S. GMO Crop Companies Double Down on
Anti-labeling Efforts.” Reuters, July 29, 2014.U.S. Right to Know 32
not independent at all. For example, the site
identifies Bruce M. Chassy as an “independent
expert.”157 He is nothing of the sort, and has a
history of hiding his ties to the agrichemical
and food industries.158 Another supposedly
“independent expert” is Hans Sauer, who
is actually “Deputy General Counsel for
Intellectual Property for the Biotechnology
Industry Organization,” a major trade group
for the biotechnology and agrichemical
industries.159 Another supposedly “independent
expert” is Kent Bradford, director of the Seed
Biotechnology Center at UC Davis.160 Two years
ago, public health lawyer Michele Simon called
out Bradford for parroting word-for-word the
talking points of the agrichemical industry in
an anti-GMO labeling op-ed that was published
the Woodland Daily Democrat.
161
Ketchum is also behind the agriculture industry
front group U.S. Farmers and Ranchers
Alliance. According to the St. Louis PostDispatch,
In 2011 the leaders of 12 commodity groups
met in St. Louis at the invitation of Rick
Tolman, head of the National Corn Growers
Association, resolving to do something
to better connect with consumers. They
formed the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers
Alliance, which in turn launched the
“Food Dialogues,” a series of panel
discussions and other programs intended
to reach shoppers with a more ag-friendly
message. The group members pooled their
resources and hired New York PR firm,
Ketchum, to help guide strategy.162
For ample good reason, we Americans are
disinclined to trust Ketchum when it speaks
for Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin.
157 “Independent Expert: Bruce M. Chassy,” GMO Answers.
158 “Bruce Chassy has received research grants from major
food companies and has conducted seminars for Monsanto,
Mills Labs (Minneapolis, MN, USA), Unilever (Gaithersburg,
MD, USA), Genencor (S. San Francisco, CA, USA), Amgen
(Thousand Oaks, CA, USA), Connaught Labs (now part of
Aventis, Strasbourg, France) and Transgene (Strasbourg,
France).” Virginia A. Sharpe and Doug Gurian-Sherman,
“Competing Interests.” Nature Biotechnology 21, 1131 (2003)
doi:10.1038/nbt1003-1131a.
159 “Independent Expert: Hans Sauer.” GMO Answers. Sauer’s
bio states that he has “18 years of in-house experience in the
biotechnology industry.”
160 “Independent Expert: Kent Bradford.” GMO Answers.
161 Kent J. Bradford, “Prop. 37: More Than Meets the Eye.”
Woodland Daily Democrat, September 30, 2012. Michele Simon,
“Did Monsanto Write This Anti-GMO Labeling Op-Ed Signed by
a UC Davis Professor?” Treehugger, October 4, 2012.
162 Georgina Gustin, “PR Push by Ag and Biotech Industries Has a
Secret Weapon: Moms.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 3, 2013.
Russia’s lack of credibility is legendary. Why
should we trust Ketchum when it speaks on
GMOs any more than we trust it when it speaks
for Russia?
#6: The agrichemical
industry’s key front
groups and shills
aren’t trustworthy
The creation and use of front groups and
shills is a standard public relations tactic of
the tobacco, fossil fuels, chemicals and other
industries to advance their public relations,
legislative, regulatory or other goals. They
provide a number of PR advantages to
companies and industries:
• They multiply the number of speakers
on behalf of a corporate point of view,
validating it from an “independent” or
academic perspective, making it seem that
the company or industry is not alone or
isolated.
• They may have more credibility than the
company or industry, because they may not
be seen as directly profiting from corporate
actions, and because their conflicts of
interest may be hidden.
• The front groups and shills may say things
that, for many reasons, the company or
industry wishes it could say, but cannot say
directly.
The use of front groups in public relations
was invented and pioneered by the legendary
public relations and marketing genius Edward
Bernays, in his work on behalf of the tobacco
industry and many others.163
Following are a few of the agrichemical
industry’s key front groups and shills.
Henry Miller
Henry I. Miller is perhaps the most prolific
and best-known apologist for genetically
engineered food and crops. He is the
163 See, for example, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Trust Us,
We’re Experts! (New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001), pp. 44-5.
Timothy L. O’Brien, “Spinning Frenzy: P.R.’s Bad Press.” New
York Times, February 13, 2005.www.usrtk.org 33
“the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific
Philosophy and Public Policy at the Hoover
Institution.”164 He was the founding director
of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. He
has written numerous articles and op-eds
in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times,
Forbes and other news outlets in support of
genetically engineered food, and against the
labeling of it.165 He was even featured in TV
advertisements against Proposition 37, a ballot
initiative for labeling of genetically engineered
food in the State of California.166
Miller’s bio on the Forbes website proclaims:
“I debunk junk science and flawed public
policy.”167 However, during the course of his
life, Miller himself has often presented an agile
defense of junk science and flawed public
policy.
Defending the tobacco industry
In a 1994 APCO Associates PR strategy
memo to help Phillip Morris organize a global
campaign to fight tobacco regulations, Henry
Miller was referred to as “a key supporter” of
these pro-tobacco industry efforts.168
• In 2012, Miller wrote that “nicotine … is not
particularly bad for you in the amounts
delivered by cigarettes or smokeless
164 Hoover Institution, Henry Miller bio.
165 See, for example, Jayson Lusk and Henry I. Miller, “We Need
G.M.O. Wheat.” New York Times, February 2, 2014. Henry I.
Miller and Gregory Conko, “General Mills Has a Soggy Idea for
Cheerios.” Wall Street Journal, January 20, 2014. Henry I. Miller,
“India’s GM Food Hypocrisy.” Wall Street Journal, November
28, 2012. Henry I. Miller, “Organic Farming Is Not Sustainable.”
Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2014. Henry I. Miller, “More Crop
for the Drop.” Project Syndicate, August 7, 2014. Henry Miller,
“California’s Anti-GMO Hysteria.” National Review, March
31, 2014. Henry I. Miller, “Genetic Engineering and the Fight
Against Ebola.” Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2014. Henry
I. Miller, “Salmon Label Bill Should Be Thrown Back.” Orange
County Register, April 4, 2011. Henry I. Miller, “GE Labels Mean
Higher Costs.” San Francisco Chronicle, September 7, 2012.
Gregory Conko and Henry Miller, “Labeling Of Genetically
Engineered Foods Is a Losing Proposition.” Forbes, September
12, 2012. Gregory Conko and Henry I. Miller, “A Losing
Proposition on Food Labeling.” Orange County Register,
October 11, 2012. Henry I. Miller and Bruce Chassy, “Scientists
Smell A Rat In Fraudulent Genetic Engineering Study.” Forbes,
September 25, 2012. Jay Byrne and Henry I. Miller, “The
Roots of the Anti-Genetic Engineering Movement? Follow the
Money!” Forbes, October 22, 2012.
166 See, for example, Marc Lifsher, “TV Ad Against Food Labeling
Initiative Proposition 37 Is Pulled.” Los Angeles Times, October
4, 2012. Eric Van Susteren, “Stanford Demands Anti-Prop. 37
Ad Be Changed.” Palo Alto Weekly, October 17, 2012.
167 Forbes, Henry Miller bio and articles page.
168 Memorandum from Tom Hockaday and Neal Cohen of
Apco Associates Inc. to Matt Winokur, “Thoughts on TASSC
Europe.” March 25, 1994. Legacy Tobacco Documents Library,
University of California, San Francisco. Bates No. 2024233595-
2024233602.
products.”169
Denying climate change
• Miller is a member of the “scientific advisory
board” of the George C. Marshall Institute,170
which is famous for its oil and gas industry
funded denials of climate change.171
Defending the pesticide industry
• Miller defended the use of widely-criticized
neonicotinoid pesticides and claimed that
“the reality is that honeybee populations are
not declining.”172
• Miller has repeatedly argued for the reintroduction
of DDT, a toxic pesticide
banned in the United States since 1972,
which has been linked to pre-term birth and
fertility impairment in women.173
Defending exposure to radiation from nuclear
power plants
• In 2011, after the Japanese tsunami and
radiation leaks at the Fukushima nuclear
power plants, Miller argued in Forbes that
“those … who were exposed to low levels
of radiation could have actually benefitted
from it.”174 At that time, he even penned
an article titled “Can radiation be good for
you?”175
Defending the plastics industry
In an article in Forbes, Miller defended the use
of the endocrine disruptor bisphenol A (BPA),
which is banned in Europe and Canada for use
in baby bottles.176
Henry Miller’s other activities
Miller was a trustee of the infamous industry
front group American Council for Science and
Health, according to the ACSH website.177
169 Henry I. Miller and Jeff Stier, “The Cigarette Smokescreen.”
Defining Ideas, March 21, 2012.
170 Competitive Enterprise Institute, Henry Miller bio.
171 See, for example, the profile of the George C. Marshall Institute
in DeSmogBlog.
172 Henry I. Miller, “Why the Buzz About a Bee-pocalypse Is a
Honey Trap.” Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2014.
173 Henry I. Miller, “Re-Booting DDT.” Project Syndicate, May
5, 2010. Henry I. Miller, “Rachel Carson’s Deadly Fantasies.”
Forbes, September 5, 2012.
174 Henry I. Miller, “Can Tiny Amounts Of Poison Actually Be Good
For You?” Forbes, December 21, 2011.
175 Henry I. Miller, “Can Radiation Be Good For You?” Project
Syndicate, April 8, 2011.
176 Henry I. Miller, “BPA Is A-OK, Says FDA.” Forbes, March 12,
2014.
177 “The Buzz About a Bee-pocalyse Is a Honey Trap.” American
Council on Science and Health, July 23, 2014. U.S. Right to Know 34
American Council on Science and Health
The American Council on Science and
Health is a frequent defender of genetically
engineered foods and crops.178 It is a front
group for the tobacco, agrichemical, fossil fuel,
pharmaceutical and other industries.
Personnel
ACSH’s “Medical/Executive Director” is Dr.
Gilbert Ross.179 In 1993, according to United
Press International, Dr. Ross was “convicted of
racketeering, mail fraud and conspiracy,” and
was “sentenced to 47 months in jail, $40,000
in forfeiture and restitution of $612,855” in a
scheme to defraud the Medicaid system.180
• ACSH’s Dr. Ross was found to be a “highly
untrustworthy individual” by a judge who
sustained the exclusion of Dr. Ross from
Medicaid for ten years.181
Funding
ACSH has often billed itself as an
“independent” group, and has been referred
to as “independent” in the press. However,
according to internal ACSH financial
documents obtained by Mother Jones:
• “ACSH planned to receive a total of
$338,200 from tobacco companies
between July 2012 and June 2013. Reynolds
American and Phillip Morris International
were each listed as expected to give
$100,000 in 2013, which would make them
the two largest individual donations listed in
the ACSH documents.”182
• “ACSH donors in the second half of 2012
included Chevron ($18,500), Coca-Cola
178 See, for example, the American Council on Science and Health
web page on GMOs.
179 “Meet the ACSH Team,” American Council on Science and
Health website.
180 “Seven Sentenced for Medicaid Fraud.” United Press
International, December 6, 1993. See also correspondence
from Tyrone T. Butler, Director, Bureau of Adjudication, State
of New York Department of Health to Claudia Morales Bloch,
Gilbert Ross and Vivian Shevitz, “RE: In the Matter of Gilbert
Ross, M.D.” March 1, 1995. Bill Hogan, “Paging Dr. Ross.” Mother
Jones, November 2005. Martin Donohoe MD FACP, “Corporate
Front Groups and the Abuse of Science: The American Council
on Science and Health (ACSH).” Spinwatch, June 25, 2010.
181 Department of Health and Human Services, Departmental
Appeals Board, Civil Remedies Division, In the Cases of Gilbert
Ross, M.D. and Deborah Williams M.D., Petitioners, v. The
Inspector General. June 16, 1997. Docket Nos. C-94-368 and
C-94-369. Decision No. CR478.
182 Andy Kroll and Jeremy Schulman, “Leaked Documents Reveal
the Secret Finances of a Pro-Industry Science Group.” Mother
Jones, October 28, 2013. “American Council on Science and
Health Financial Report, FY 2013 Financial Update.” Mother
Jones, October 28, 2013.
($50,000), the Bristol Myers Squibb
Foundation ($15,000), Dr. Pepper/Snapple
($5,000), Bayer Cropscience ($30,000),
Procter and Gamble ($6,000), agribusiness
giant Syngenta ($22,500), 3M ($30,000),
McDonald’s ($30,000), and tobacco
conglomerate Altria ($25,000). Among the
corporations and foundations that ACSH
has pursued for financial support since July
2012 are Pepsi, Monsanto, British American
Tobacco, DowAgro, ExxonMobil Foundation,
Philip Morris International, Reynolds
American, the Koch family-controlled
Claude R. Lambe Foundation, the Dowlinked
Gerstacker Foundation, the Bradley
Foundation, and the Searle Freedom
Trust.”183
• ACSH has received $155,000 in
contributions from Koch foundations from
2005-2011, according to Greenpeace.184
Indefensible and incorrect statements on
science
ACSH has:
Claimed that “There is no evidence that
exposure to secondhand smoke involves heart
attacks or cardiac arrest.”185
• Argued that “there is no scientific
consensus concerning global warming.
The climate change predictions are based
on computer models that have not been
validated and are far from perfect.”186
• Argued that fracking “doesn’t pollute water
or air.”187
• Claimed that “The scientific evidence is
clear. There has never been a case of ill
health linked to the regulated, approved use
of pesticides in this country.”188
183 Andy Kroll and Jeremy Schulman, “Leaked Documents Reveal
the Secret Finances of a Pro-Industry Science Group.” Mother
Jones, October 28, 2013. “American Council on Science and
Health Financial Report, FY 2013 Financial Update.” Mother
Jones, October 28, 2013.
184 “Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group: American Council
on Science and Health (ACSH).” Greenpeace. See also Rebekah
Wilce, “Kochs and Corps Have Bankrolled American Council on
Science and Health.” PR Watch, July 23, 2014.
185 Richard Craver, “The Effects of the Smoking Ban.” WinstonSalem
Journal, December 12, 2012.
186 Elizabeth Whelan, “’Global Warming’ Not Health Threat.” PRI
(Population Research Institute) Review, January 1, 1998.
187 Elizabeth Whelan, “Fracking Doesn’t Pose Health Risks.” The
Daily Caller, April 29, 2013.
188 “TASSC: The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition,” p. 9.
Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, University of California,
San Francisco. November 21, 2001. Bates No. 2048294227-
2048294237. www.usrtk.org 35
• Declared that “There is no evidence that
BPA [bisphenol A] in consumer products of
any type, including cash register receipts,
are harmful to health.”189
• Argued that the exposure to mercury, a
potent neurotoxin, “in conventional seafood
causes no harm in humans.”190
Bruce M. Chassy
On the agrichemical industry PR website
GMOAnswers, Bruce Chassy is identified as an
“independent expert.”191 In reality, he is nothing
of the sort. He has been supported by the
agrichemical and processed food industries,
and defends them in the media, and on his
website Academics Review, and elsewhere.192
Chassy has hid his ties to industry before. For
example, a 2003 letter in Nature Biotechnology
points out the journal’s failure to require its
authors to disclose “close ties to companies
that directly profit from the promotion
of agricultural biotechnology.” The letter
continues that “Bruce Chassy has received
research grants from major food companies
and has conducted seminars for Monsanto,
Mills Labs (Minneapolis, MN, USA), Unilever
(Gaithersburg, MD, USA), Genencor (S. San
Francisco, CA, USA), Amgen (Thousand Oaks,
CA, USA), Connaught Labs (now part of
Aventis, Strasbourg, France) and Transgene
(Strasbourg, France).”193
At other times, Chassy has been more
forthright about where his support comes from.
189 “The Top 10 Unfounded Health Scares of 2012.” American
Council on Science and Health, February 22, 2013.
190 “The Biggest Unfounded Health Scares of 2010.” American
Council on Science and Health, December 30, 2010.
191 “Independent Expert: Bruce M. Chassy,” GMOanswers.
192 See, for example, Academics Review. Henry I. Miller and
Bruce Chassy, “Scientists Smell A Rat In Fraudulent Genetic
Engineering Study.” Forbes, September 25, 2012. “Genetically
Modified Crops Are Overregulated, Food Science Expert
Says.” Science Daily, February 17, 2013. Andrew Pollack, “Foes
of Modified Corn Find Support in a Study.” New York Times,
September 19, 2012. “The Potential Impacts of Mandatory
Labeling for Genetically Engineered Food in the United States.”
Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, Issue Paper
#54, April, 2014. Elaine Watson, “Dr Chassy: ‘None of the
Animals and Plants We Eat Today Exist ‘In Nature’, They Have
All Been Extensively Genetically Modified.’” Food Navigator,
August 6, 2013. John R. Allen Jr., “Resistance To GMOs Works
Against the Hungry and Poor.” National Catholic Reporter,
May 19, 2019. Steve Tarter, “Hybrid Crops That Used to Offer
Resistance to Rootworm No Match for Mother Nature.” Peoria
Journal-Star, June 21, 2014. David Nicklaus, “GMO Labeling
Drive Is Based on Fear, Not Science.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
August 19, 2012.
193 Virginia A. Sharpe and Doug Gurian-Sherman, “Competing
Interests.” Nature Biotechnology 21, 1131 (2003) doi:10.1038/
nbt1003-1131a.
For example, Chassy is co-author of a 2010
study in Food and Chemical Toxicology that
was “supported” by “BASF; Bayer CropScience;
Dow AgroSciences; Monsanto Company;
Pioneer, A Dupont Company; Syngenta
Biotechnology, Inc.”194
Chassy also is one of the “Scientific Advisors”
to the notorious American Council on Science
and Health.195
Pamela C. Ronald
Pamela Ronald is prominent defender of
genetically engineered foods and crops.196 She
is professor of plant pathology at the University
of California, Davis.197
In 2013, her reputation as a scientist suffered
two serious blows, following retraction of two
of her scientific papers.198
194 Wayne Parrott, Bruce Chassy, Jim Ligon, Linda Meyer, Jay
Petrick, Junguo Zhou, Rod Herman, Bryan Delaney, Marci
Levine, “Application of Food and Feed Safety Assessment
Principles to Evaluate Transgenic Approaches to Gene
Modulation in Crops.” Food and Chemical Toxicology, Vol. 48,
Issue 7, July 2010, pp. 1773–1790. doi: 10.1016/j.fct.2010.04.017.
195 American Council on Science and Health, “Scientific Advisors.”
196 See, for example, Pamela Ronald, “How Scare Tactics on
GMO Foods Hurt Everybody.” MIT Technology Review, June
12, 2014. Pamela Ronald, “Genetically Engineered Crops—
What, How and Why.” Scientific American, August 11, 2011.
Pamela C. Ronald and James E. McWilliams, “Genetically
Engineered Distortions.” New York Times, May 14, 2010. Pamela
Ronald, “The Truth About GMOs.” Boston Review, September
6, 2013. Pamela Ronald, “Would Rachel Carson Embrace
‘Frankenfoods’? - This Scientist Believes ‘Yes.’” Forbes, August
12, 2012. Amanda Little, “A Journalist and a Scientist Break
Ground in the G.M.O. Debate.” New Yorker, April 25, 2014. Tom
Standage, “Biotechnology.” Economist, November 2, 2010.
197 Pamela Ronald bio, Ronald Laboratory.
198 Sang-Wook Han, Malinee Sriariyanun, Sang-Won Lee, Manoj
Sharma, Ofir Bahar, Zachary Bower, Pamela C. Ronald,
“Retraction: Small Protein-Mediated Quorum Sensing in a
Gram-Negative Bacterium.” PLOS One, September 9, 2013.
Retraction of Lee et al., Science 326 (5954) 850-853. Science,
October 11, 2013: Vol. 342 no. 6155, p. 191, DOI: 10.1126/
science.342.6155.191-a. See also Jonathan Latham, “Can the
Scientific Reputation of Pamela Ronald, Public Face of GMOs,
Be Salvaged?” Independent Science News, November 12,
2013. Pamela Ronald, “Lab Life: The Anatomy of a Retraction.”
Scientific American, October 10, 2013. U.S. Right to Know 36
#7: The agrichemical
companies have
employed repugnant
PR tactics
Syngenta investigates and attacks its critics
Syngenta is one of the world’s largest
agrichemical companies. Among other things,
it is notable for its aggressive attacks against
its critics.
Writing in the New Yorker, Rachel Aviv
recounted the story of Syngenta’s unusually
forceful attacks against Tyrone Hayes,
a professor of integrative biology at the
University of California, Berkeley. Hayes had
published studies showing that Syngenta’s
widely-used herbicide atrazine is an endocrine
disruptor in frogs. In response, Syngenta
launched a multi-pronged effort to, in the
words of Syngenta communications manager
Sherry Ford, “discredit Hayes.” Among other
tactics Syngenta deployed against Hayes, Aviv
reports that
In 2005, Ford made a long list of methods
for discrediting him: “have his work
audited by 3rd party,” “ask journals to
retract,” “set trap to entice him to sue,”
“investigate funding,” “investigate wife.”
The initials of different employees were
written in the margins beside entries,
presumably because they had been
assigned to look into the task.199
In its efforts to defend atrazine, Syngenta
also investigated the investigative reporter
Danielle Ivory, who now writes for the New
York Times. According to Beau Hodai and
Lisa Graves, when Ivory was asking questions
about atrazine, “Bret Jacobson, the founder
and president of Maverick Strategies and
Communications, a public relations/consulting
firm specializing in ‘opposition research,’
submitted a dossier on Ivory to the firm ‘Quinn
199 Rachel Aviv, “A Valuable Reputation.” New Yorker, February 10,
2014. See also Clare Howard, “Syngenta’s Campaign to Protect
Atrazine, Discredit Critics.” Environmental Health News, June 17,
2013.
Thomas Public Affairs.’”200
Brainwashing children
In 2012, the Council for Biotechnology
Information, a public relations front group for
the big agrichemical companies, released the
Biotechnology Basics Activity Book, which
delivers pro-industry propaganda to children.
The workbook is filled with false and deeply
questionable statements about genetically
engineered crops, such as “biotechnology
is helping to improve the health of the Earth
and the people who call it home.” Children are
encouraged to do the workbook exercises,
because, “As you work through the puzzles
in this book, you will learn more about
biotechnology and all of the wonderful ways it
can help people live better lives in a healthier
world.”201
Attacking and intimidating scientists
The agrichemical industry and its PR minions
have a history of harsh and career-threatening
attacks against their scientific critics,202
including Tyrone Hayes,203 Ignacio Chapela,204
Arpad Pusztai,205 Gilles-Eric Séralini,206 Manuela
200 Beau Hodai and Lisa Graves, “Syngenta PR’s Weed-Killer Spin
Machine: Investigating the Press and Shaping the “News” about
Atrazine.” PR Watch, February 7, 2012. Memorandum from Bret
Jacobson, Maverick Strategies to Quinn Thomas Public Affairs,
“RE: Quick Backgrounder on Danielle Ivory.” March 4, 2010.
201 Council for Biotechnology Information, “Biotechnology Basics
Activity Book.” See also Ronnie Cummins, “Outrageous
Lies Monsanto and Friends Are Trying to Pass off to Kids as
Science.” Alternet, March 20, 2012.
202 Emily Waltz, “GM Crops: Battlefield.” Nature, September 2,
2009. 461, 27-32. doi:10.1038/461027a. John Fagan, Michael
Antoniou and Claire Robinson, “GMO Myths and Truths.” pp.
93-99.
203 Rachel Aviv, “A Valuable Reputation.” New Yorker, February 10,
2014. Clare Howard, “Syngenta’s Campaign to Protect Atrazine,
Discredit Critics.” Environmental Health News, June 17, 2013.
“Silencing the Scientist: Tyrone Hayes on Being Targeted by
Herbicide Firm Syngenta.” Democracy Now, February 21, 2014.
204 George Monbiot, “The Fake Persuaders.” Guardian, May 14,
2002. Andy Rowell, “Immoral Maize.” GMWatch.
205 Andrew Rowell, “The Sinister Sacking of the World’s Leading
GM Expert and the Trail That Leads to Tony Blair and the White
House.” Daily Mail, July 7, 2003, “Why I Cannot Remain Silent:
Interview with Dr. Arpad Pusztai.” GM-Free, August/September,
1999. Marion Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and
Bioterrorism. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
2004), pp. 186-9. Marie-Monique Robin, The World According
to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the
World’s Food Supply. (New York: New Press, 2010), pp. 178-187.
206 Adriane Fugh-Berman and Thomas G. Sherman, “Rounding
Up Scientific Journals.” Bioethics Forum, January 10, 2014.
“Controversial Seralini Study Linking GM to Cancer in Rats
Is Republished.” Guardian, June 24, 2014. Barbara Casassus,
“Paper Claiming GM Link with Tumours Republished.” Nature,
June 24, 2014. doi:10.1038/nature.2014.15463.www.usrtk.org 37
Malatesta,207 and Emma Rosi-Marshall.208
How do these attacks affect what is known
about the agrichemical industry and its
genetically engineered crops? No one really
knows. But given this history, any scientist
who publishes findings that are contrary to
the interests of the agrichemical industry can
reasonably expect a sharp attack, or perhaps
even a career-ending one. Of course there
are scientists who are courageous enough
to publish despite such prospects. But surely
worries about how the industry might respond,
and its effects on career prospects, has a
deterrent effect on scientists’ initiation and
publication of research that is adverse to the
agrichemical industry.
#8: The agrichemical
companies have a
potent, sleazy political
machine
The agrichemical industry’s political machine
is deeply powerful, subtle and complex. Here’s
how the Guardian describes it:
Monsanto and the US farm biotech
industry wield legendary power. A
revolving door allows corporate chiefs
to switch to top posts in the Food and
Drug Administration and other agencies;
US embassies around the world push GM
technology onto dissenting countries;
government subsidies back corporate
research; federal regulators do largely
as the industry wants; the companies
pay millions of dollars a year to lobby
politicians; conservative thinktanks
combat any political opposition; the courts
enforce corporate patents on seeds;
and the consumer is denied labels or
information.209
What follows is a brief summary of the
207 See interview with Manuela Malatesta in Marie-Monique Robin,
The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and
the Control of the World’s Food Supply. (New York: New Press,
2010), pp. 176-177.
208 Emily Waltz, “GM Crops: Battlefield.” Nature, September 2,
2009. 461, 27-32. doi:10.1038/461027a.
209 John Vidal, “Monsanto Protection Act Put GM Companies
Above the Federal Courts.” Guardian, April 4, 2013.
agrichemical industry’s political infrastructure,
and its recent major initiatives.
Personnel
In the United States, it is the hallmark of a
powerful industry to have strong ties to both
Democrats and Republicans, and across
the U.S. political spectrum. Certainly, the
agrichemical industry does.
Personnel is power, so the saying goes. Here
is a brief review of the agrichemical industry’s
most potent political allies:
Hillary Clinton
As of this writing, Clinton is the presumptive
favorite to be the Democratic nominee for
President in 2016. She has a long history of
support for the agrichemical industry. Most
recently, on June 25, 2014, she delivered the
keynote address to the Biotechnology Industry
Organization (BIO) international conference
where she essentially endorsed genetically
engineered crops, stating “I stand in favor of
using seeds and products that have a proven
track record, you say, and are scientifically
provable [sic] to continue to try to make the
case to those who are skeptical.”210
Clinton was a strong ally of the agrichemical
industry during her tenure as Secretary of
State, continuing the Bush administration’s
support of the industry.211 However, in the 2007-
8 Democratic presidential primaries, Clinton
supported labeling of genetically engineered
food.212
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence
Thomas. From 1977-79, Justice Thomas
worked as an attorney in the “pesticide
and agriculture division” of the Monsanto
Company.213
210 Christina London, “Hillary Clinton: We Can’t Afford to Lose
Biotechs.” NBC7 San Diego, June 26, 2014. Ken Stone, “Hillary
Clinton Cheers Biotechers, Backing GMOs and Federal Help.”
Times of San Diego, June 25, 2014. Max Ocean, “Hillary Clinton
Goes to Bat for GMOs at Biotech Conference.” Common
Dreams, July 3, 2014. “Clinton Cool with GMOs.” Politico
Morning Agriculture, June 27, 2014.
211 See, for example, “Biotech Ambassadors: How the U.S. State
Department Promotes the Seed Industry’s Global Agenda.”
Food and Water Watch, May 2013. Tom Philpott, “Taxpayer
Dollars Are Helping Monsanto Sell Seeds Abroad.” Mother
Jones, May 18, 2013.
212 Paula Lavigne, “Labels For Genetically Altered Food Becoming
A Hot Political Topic.” Port Clinton (OH) News Journal,
November 5, 2007.
213 Bio of Justice Clarence Thomas, Oyez Project, Chicago-Kent
College of Law.U.S. Right to Know 38
Mitt Romney. The Republican 2012 candidate
for president was an architect of Monsanto’s
metamorphosis from a chemical manufacturer
to a genetic engineering and agrichemical firm.
Romney was CEO of Bain & Company, and
Monsanto was its largest consulting client.214
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom
Vilsack. In 2001, Vilsack was honored by the
Biotechnology Industry Organization as it
“Governor of the Year” for his “support of the
industry’s economic growth and agricultural
biotechnology research.”215
FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods
Michael Taylor. Taylor was Monsanto’s vice
president for public policy from 1998-2001.216
214 Wayne Barrett, “Mitt Romney, Monsanto Man.” The Nation,
September 12, 2012.
215 “Iowa’s Vilsack Named BIO Governor of the Year.”
Biotechnology Industry Organization news release, September
20, 2001.
216 Elizabeth Flock, “Monsanto petition tells Obama: ‘Cease FDA
ties to Monsanto.’” Washington Post, January 30, 2012.
The Obama administration. There are many
signs of the agrichemical industry’s sway over
the Obama administration. While a presidential
candidate in 2007, Senator Barack Obama
pledged to label genetically engineered food if
he were elected president. Seven years later, he
has yet to keep his promise.217
Obama’s trade and foreign policy strives to
sweep away international concerns about the
health and safety of genetically engineered
food and crops. One major component of
the Obama administration’s advocacy of the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
for Europe and the Trans-Pacific Partnership
for Asia is to convince Europe and Asia to open
their markets to U.S. genetically engineered
217 Jenny Hopkinson, “Lawmakers Ask Obama to Keep ‘07 GMO
Labeling Promise.” Politico, January 16, 2014.
: MITT ROMNEY BY GAGE SKIDMORE / HILLARY CLINTON BY US DEPT OF STATE / MICHAEL R. TAYLOR BY FDA
FROM LEFT: MITT ROMNEY, HILLARY CLINTON AND FDA DEPUTY COMMISSIONER
FOR FOODS MICHAEL TAYLORwww.usrtk.org 39
crops and foods.218 And a key purpose of the
U.S. State Department’s Office of Agriculture,
Biotechnology and Textile Trade Affairs is
to “maintain open markets for U.S. products
derived from modern biotechnology,”
according to its website. The website continues
that “The Department of State works with
a host of other agencies and organizations
to promote acceptance of this promising
technology.”219
Congress, federal pre-emption and the DARK
Act
In Congress, the agrichemical industry’s allies
are pushing legislation to eliminate the ability
of states to require labeling of genetically
engineered food. This legislation, dubbed by its
sponsors the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling
Act of 2014” and by consumer groups the
“Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK)
Act,” was championed by Rep. Mike Pompeo
(R-KS). The most generous contributors to
Rep. Pompeo’s campaigns – by a large margin
— have been tied to Koch Industries,220 whose
Koch brothers have spent countless millions in
advocacy against environmental causes. At the
end of the 113th Congress, Pompeo’s legislation
(H.R. 4432) had 37 co-sponsors, of whom 34
were Republicans. It is interesting that this
legislation for federal pre-emption of states
rights to label food would gain Republican
support in the House, given the Republican
Party’s advocacy of states’ rights and returning
power to the states.
Lobbying and the purchase of influence
The food and agrichemical industries are
spending freely on lobbying in Washington.
According to an analysis by the Environmental
Working Group, corporations that oppose GMO
labeling spent $27 million on lobbying during
the first half of 2014, more than three times
218 See, for example, Michael Birnbaum, “At Trade Talks, U.S., E.U.
Ready for Fight on Genetically Modified Crops.” Washington
Post, May 17, 2013. Anthony Faiola, “Free Trade with U.S.?
Europe Balks at Chlorine Chicken, Hormone Beef.” Washington
Post, December 4, 2014. Fiona Harvey, “EU Under Pressure
to Allow GM Food Imports from US and Canada.” Guardian,
September 5, 2014. Andreas Geiger, “American Agriculture,
GMOs and Europe.” The Hill, October 21, 2013. Mute Schimpf,
Karen Hansen-Kuhn, “EU-US Trade Deal: A Bumper Crop for
‘Big Food’?” Friends of the Earth Europe and the Institute for
Agriculture and Trade Policy, October 2013. James Trimarco,
“Will a Secretive International Trade Deal Ban GMO Labeling?”
Yes! magazine, October 18, 2013.
219 U.S. Department of State, web page on biotechnology for the
Office of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Textile Trade Affairs.
220 Center for Responsive Politics, campaign finance profile of Rep.
Mike Pompeo. Opensecrets.org.
what they spent during the whole of 2013.221
In Congress, as in the general public, GMOs
have greater acceptance among Republicans
than Democrats. So, naturally, the agrichemical
companies want to bolster their power
where they are weakest. And so the food
and agrichemical industries have been hiring
lobbyists with ties to Democrats, such as
former U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln,222 Former
U.S. Congressman Vic Fazio,223 and former top
Gephardt staffer Steve Elmendorf.224 This trend
may reverse since Republicans will control
Congress in 2015; in December 2014, the
Grocery Manufacturers Association hired as its
top lobbyist Denzel McGuire, who had been a
senior aide to incoming Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell.225
The Grocery Manufacturers Association’s
lobbying campaign to oppose GMO labeling
has been so effective that the Capitol Hill
newspaper The Hill named it one of the “Top 10
lobbying victories of the year.”226
Massive expenditures against state ballot
initiatives for GMO labeling
In the 2012, 2013 and 2014 elections, the
agrichemical and food industries and their
allies spent more than $103 million to defeat
four statewide ballot initiatives for labeling of
genetically engineered food.
In effect, this money is a tax on consumers
imposed by the agrichemical and food
companies to obliterate consumers’ rights to
know what is in our food.
In California, the agrichemical and food
companies and their allies spent $46 million to
defeat Proposition 37, a 2012 ballot initiative for
labeling of genetically engineered food.227
221 Libby Foley, “The Anti-Label Lobby.” Environmental Working
Group, September 3, 2014. Carey Gilliam, “GMO Labeling
Foes Triple U.S. Spending In First Half Of The Year Over 2013.”
Reuters, September 3, 2014.
222 See Lincoln Policy Group lobbying disclosure report for client
Monsanto.
223 See Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld lobbying disclosure
report for Monsanto.
224 See Elmendorf Ryan lobbying disclosure report for client
Grocery Manufacturers Association.
225 “GMA Hires Denzel McGuire as EVP of Government Relations.”
Grocery Manufacturers Association news release, December 1,
2014.
226 Megan R. Wilson, “Top 10 Lobbying Victories of the Year.” The
Hill, December 11, 2014.
227 California Secretary of State, campaign finance filings for “No
on 37: Coalition Against The Deceptive Food Labeling Scheme,
Sponsored By Farmers And Food Producers.” U.S. Right to Know 40
In Washington State, these industries spent $20
million to defeat I-522, a 2013 ballot measure
for GMO labeling in Washington. This is large
expenditure in a state with less than 4 million
registered voters.228 According to the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, merely $600 of this money
came from within Washington.229
In 2014, these industries spent $20 million
to defeat Oregon ballot Measure 92 and $16
million to defeat Colorado Proposition 105,
for labeling of genetically engineered foods in
those states.230
Grocery Manufacturers Association accused
of record-breaking money laundering effort to
defeat GMO labeling
In Washington State, the agrichemical and
food industries used extraordinary – if not
illegal — means to defeat a 2013 GMO labeling
ballot initiative. The industries’ tactics were
so extreme that Washington State Attorney
General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit against
the Grocery Manufacturers Association for
money laundering.231 The suit asked for an
injunction against money laundering as well as
civil penalties.
228 Washington Secretary of State, voter registration data web
page.
229 Joel Connelly, “Grocery Manufacturers Fail to Squelch MoneyLaundering
Lawsuit.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 13, 2014.
230 Carey Gillam, “GMO Labeling Measures Fail in Colorado, Look
Lost in Oregon.” Reuters, November 5, 2014.
231 State of Washington v. Grocery Manufacturers Association.
State of Washington, Thurston County Superior Court, No.
13-2-02156-8. Filed October 16, 2013. See Washington State
Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s complaint and news release.
See also Carey Gillam, “Washington State Sues Lobbyists Over
Campaign Against GMO Labeling.” Reuters, October 16, 2013.
On November 20, 2013, Attorney General
Ferguson amended his complaint against the
Grocery Manufacturers Association, charging
that it had laundered not merely $7.2 million
but actually $10.6 million. According to the
Attorney General’s office, “This is the largest
amount the state has ever addressed in a
campaign finance concealment case.”232
On June 13, 2014 Thurston County Superior
Court Judge Christine Schaller ruled against
the GMA’s motion to dismiss the suit, and has
allowed the case against the GMA to proceed
to trial.233
In a notable show of arrogance, the GMA
retaliated against Washington State by
countersuing to strike down Washington’s
money laundering and anti-corruption laws.
As Washington State Attorney Genera Bob
Ferguson explained about the GMA: “They
did not just say ‘We haven’t broken the law.’
What they’re saying is some of your campaign
finance laws are unconstitutional. That raises
the stakes.”234 Among other things, this is an
effort to deter future attorneys general from
232 See amended complaint, “AG Amends Lawsuit Against
Grocery Manufacturer’s Association to Reflect Millions More in
Campaign Contributions Concealed From Voters.” Washington
State, Office of the Attorney General, news release, November
20, 2013.
233 See Judge Schaller’s July 25, 2014 order in State of Washington
v. Grocery Manufacturers Association, and “Attorney General’s
Enforcement Case Against Grocery Manufacturers Association
Continues to Trial.” Washington State, Office of the Attorney
General, news release, June 13, 2014. See also Joel Connelly,
“Grocery Manufacturers Fail to Squelch Money-Laundering
Lawsuit.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 13, 2014.
234 Jim Brunner, “Grocery Group Claims Its Civil Rights Violated By
Washington Campaign-Finance Laws.” Seattle Times, January
13, 2014.www.usrtk.org 41
SOURCE: WHITE HOUSE (PETE SOUZA)
enforcing campaign finance laws against the
GMA.
Court stripping and pre-empting litigation: the
“Monsanto Protection Act”
In the United States, we are supposed to live
under rule of law. This means that all persons
and corporations are subject to the law, and to
its penalties. It means that we are supposed to
have a “government of laws and not of men,”
to use John Adams’s phrase. The idea’s origins
lie in the Magna Carta. No one and no thing
– no person, elected official, organization or
corporation – is supposed to be above the law.
Now imagine what would happen if bank
robbers lobbied to successfully strip the
courts of any ability to bring them to trial. Or
perpetrators of fraud. Imagine the damage that
would be done to our system of justice, to rule
of law.
In essence, this is similar to what Monsanto did
— successfully. In an affront to the separation
of powers, Monsanto lobbied its home state
senator, Roy Blunt (R-MO), to insert an
appropriations rider235 to render genetically
engineered crops immune from challenge in
the federal courts.236 It pre-empted federal
judicial review of them. This effort at courtstripping
required the Secretary of Agriculture
to continue to allow genetically engineered
crops to be cultivated, even if a federal court
had ruled that they were a potential risk to
human health, other crops or the environment.
235 Section 735 of H.R. 933, the Consolidated and Further
Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013. The text of the rider
reads: “In the event that a determination of non-regulated
status made pursuant to section 411 of the Plant Protection
Act is or has been invalidated or vacated, the Secretary
of Agriculture shall, notwithstanding any other provision
of law, upon request by a farmer, grower, farm operator,
or producer, immediately grant temporary permit(s) or
temporary deregulation in part, subject to necessary and
appropriate conditions consistent with section 411(a) or 412(c)
of the Plant Protection Act, which interim conditions shall
authorize the movement, introduction, continued cultivation,
commercialization and other specifically enumerated activities
and requirements, including measures designed to mitigate
or minimize potential adverse environmental effects, if any,
relevant to the Secretary’s evaluation of the petition for nonregulated
status, while ensuring that growers or other users
are able to move, plant, cultivate, introduce into commerce
and carry out other authorized activities in a timely manner:
Provided, That all such conditions shall be applicable only for
the interim period necessary for the Secretary to complete
any required analyses or consultations related to the petition
for non-regulated status: Provided further, That nothing in this
section shall be construed as limiting the Secretary’s authority
under section 411, 412 and 414 of the Plant Protection Act.”
236 David Rogers, “Big Agriculture Flexes Its Muscle.” Politico,
March 25, 2013. See also Zoë Carpenter, “How Congress Just
Stuck It to Monsanto.” The Nation, October 17, 2013.
Consumer advocates dubbed Senator Blunt’s
rider the “Monsanto Protection Act.” President
Obama signed the “Monsanto Protection Act”
rider into law on March 26, 2013. It remained in
effect until the end of the federal government’s
2013 fiscal year, on September 30, 2013. The
rider was not renewed, so it is no longer in
effect.
Grocery Manufacturers Association litigates
against the consumer’s right to know
On May 8th, 2014, Vermont became the first
state to enact a law requiring labeling of
genetically engineered food.237 The law does
not go into effect for two years.
In response, on June 12th, the Grocery
Manufacturers Association, Snack Food
Association, International Dairy Foods
Association and the National Association of
Manufacturers filed a lawsuit in federal court
to block the Vermont GMO labeling law from
taking effect.238
In addition, on September 11th, the GMA filed
for a preliminary injunction to stop Vermont
from carrying out its GMO labeling law, until
the courts have decided whether the law will
survive the GMA challenge.239
237 Dana Ford and Lorenzo Ferrigno, “Vermont Governor Signs
GMO Food Labeling into Law.” CNN, May 8, 2014. Connecticut
and Maine have also passed GMO labeling laws, but they
contain trigger clauses that require other states to pass similar
laws before they can take effect.
238 See initial complaint in Grocery Manufacturers Association et
al. v. Sorrell et al.,
239 Elaine Watson, “GMA et al Seek Injunction to Stop Vermont
Implementing GMO Labeling Law Until Legal Dispute Is
Resolved.” Food Navigator, September 15, 2014.U.S. Right to Know 42
SOURCE: VPR: ANGELA EVANCIE The GMA’s litigation is expected to be costly
to the state of Vermont. While the actual costs
are unknown at this time, USA Today estimated
that Vermont’s legal fees would be $5-8 million
if it lost the litigation.240
The GMA’s litigation against Vermont serves
at least six functions. First, of course, to strike
down the law itself. Second, to deter citizens
from trying to pass GMO labeling laws in other
states. Third, to inflict financial retribution
against a state that has acted against the
interests of the agrichemical industry. Fourth,
to signal that it may inflict similarly costly
retribution against other states that pass GMO
labeling laws. Fifth, to discourage legislators –
especially fiscal conservatives – from voting for
similar legislation in other states. Sixth, to drain
money from efforts to win other state GMO
labeling laws into defensive efforts to protect
the Vermont labeling law.
Knocking down international resistance to
GMOs via secretive international trade treaties.
Across the planet, there is widespread concern
about the health and environmental impacts
of genetically engineered food and crops. And
so it is not surprising that, according to the
Center for Food Safety, 64 countries have laws
requiring mandatory labeling of genetically
engineered food.241
240 Elizabeth Weise, “Vermont’s GMO Labeling Rule Likely Won’t
Affect Stocks in the Near-Term.” USA Today, April 24, 2014.
241 Center for Food Safety web page on “International Labeling
Laws.”
In an effort to demolish this international
resistance, the agrichemical companies
are using their functional control over U.S.
trade policy as a battering ram against other
countries trade barriers.
U.S. negotiators for the Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership for Europe and
the Trans-Pacific Partnership for Asia are
employing both treaties to eliminate resistance
to genetically engineered food and crops.242
Constitutionalizing the GMO
The agrichemical and agribusiness industries
are promoting state constitutional amendments
in support of the “right to farm,” including the
right to farm genetically engineered crops.
North Dakota approved such an amendment in
2012 to protect “modern farming practices,” as
did Missouri in 2014. Bloomberg Businessweek
explains, “Much of the drive behind the
amendments has come from big corporations.
Members of Missouri Farmers Care [a key
supporter] include Cargill—one of the nation’s
242 See, for example, Fiona Harvey, “EU Under Pressure to Allow
GM Food Imports from US and Canada.” Guardian, September
5, 2014. Michael Birnbaum, “At Trade Talks, U.S., E.U. Ready
for Fight on Genetically Modified Crops.” Washington Post,
May 17, 2013. Anthony Faiola, “Free Trade with U.S.? Europe
Balks at Chlorine Chicken, Hormone Beef.” Washington Post,
December 4, 2014. Andreas Geiger, “American Agriculture,
GMOs and Europe.” The Hill, October 21, 2013. Mute Schimpf,
Karen Hansen-Kuhn, “EU-US Trade Deal: A Bumper Crop for
‘Big Food’?” Friends of the Earth Europe and the Institute for
Agriculture and Trade Policy, October 2013. James Trimarco,
“Will a Secretive International Trade Deal Ban GMO Labeling?”
Yes! magazine, October 18, 2013. See also the Institute for
Agriculture and Trade Policy’s web page on GMOs. www.usrtk.org 43
largest processors of beef, pork, and turkey—
and Monsanto, as well as a long list of state
agricultural industry associations.”243
The American Legislative Exchange Council
(ALEC) has long been promoting a similar idea.
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, in
1996, ALEC
came up with model legislation that would
expand existing right-to-farm laws to grant
wide-ranging legal rights to farms of all
sizes. ALEC’s bill, intended as a template
for state politicians, voided local farm
ordinances and made it harder to lodge
complaints about animal mistreatment,
pollution, and noise. Supporters and
opponents of the amendments see them
as the evolution of those efforts, taking
farm protection, for better or worse, to the
next level.244
The purchase of judicial influence
According to a study by the Center for
Public Integrity, Dow Chemical is one of our
nation’s leading “sponsors” of controversial
expense-paid judicial “educational seminars”
attended by federal judges between 2008-12.
It sponsored 47 of these judicial “seminars,”
trailing only the Charles G. Koch Charitable
Foundation (109), the Searle Freedom Trust
(54), ExxonMobil (54), Shell (54), Pfizer (54),
State Farm Insurance (54) and the Lynde and
Harry Bradley Foundation (51). “Sponsors pick
up the cost of judges’ expenses, which often
include air fare, hotel stays and meals,” the
Center for Public Integrity reports. “Since the
1990s,” it continues, “critics have complained
that many of the privately funded conferences
serve state and federal judges a steady dose of
free-market, anti-regulation lectures that could
influence judges’ rulings from the bench.”245
243 Brooke Jarvis, “A Constitutional Right to Industrial Farming?”
Bloomberg Businessweek, January 9, 2014. See also Julie
Bosman, “Missouri Weighs Unusual Addition to Its Constitution:
Right to Farm.” New York Times, August 2, 2014.
244 Brooke Jarvis, “A Constitutional Right to Industrial Farming?”
Bloomberg Businessweek, January 9, 2014.
245 Chris Young, Reity O’Brien and Andrea Fuller, “Corporations,
Pro-business Nonprofits Foot Bill for Judicial Seminars.” Center
for Public Integrity, March 28, 2013.
The Monsanto/Indonesia bribery
scandal
In a corrupt effort to relax Indonesia’s
environmental regulations on genetically
engineered cotton crops, Monsanto
gave an Indonesian official an “envelope
stuffed with hundred-dollar bills,”
according to the New York Times, and
“Monsanto was also caught concealing
the bribe with fake invoices.”246 The U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission
charged that from “1997 to 2002,
Monsanto inaccurately recorded, or
failed to record, in its books and records
approximately $700,000 of illegal or
questionable payments made to at
least 140 current and former Indonesian
government officials and their family
members.”247 Monsanto admitted to
violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices
Act, and paid a $1 million fine.248
#9: Half of the Big Six
agrichemical firms
can’t even grow their
GMOs in their own
home countries
It is a sign of the character of the agrichemical
companies that those who know them best
don’t trust them.
Three of the Big Six agrichemical companies
are banned from growing their genetically
engineered crops in their own home countries.
These countries have powerful economic
incentives to promote the products of their
own corporations. And yet, in this case, they do
the opposite.
Syngenta is headquartered in Basel,
Switzerland. In 1995, Switzerland adopted
246 Eric Lichtblau, “In Justice Shift, Corporate Deals Replace Trials.”
New York Times, April 9, 2008.
247 “SEC Sues Monsanto for Paying a Bribe.” U.S. Securities
and Exchange Commission, Litigation Release No. 19023,
Accounting and Auditing Enforcement, Release No. 2159,
January 6, 2005. See also SEC complaint in SEC v. Monsanto
Company.
248 “Monsanto Company Charged With Bribing Indonesian
Government Official: Prosecution Deferred For Three Years.”
U.S. Department of Justice news release, January 6, 2005.U.S. Right to Know 44
regulations requiring labeling of genetically
engineered food. It was one of the first
countries to do so.249 In November 2005, Swiss
voters approved a referendum, with 55.7%
support, endorsing a five-year ban on the
planting of genetically engineered crops.250 In
2010, the Swiss parliament extended the ban
for three more years.251 In December 2012, the
Swiss parliament extended the ban through the
end of 2017.252
Bayer is headquartered in Leverkusen,
Germany; and BASF in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
E.U. regulations require labeling of genetically
engineered food. And the E.U.’s restrictions on
growing GMO crops are among the toughest
in the world.253 In practice, at this time, only
one GMO crop is commercially cultivated
in Europe: Monsanto’s MON 810 corn.254
However, Germany banned MON 810 as well.255
Consequently, in Germany – home of Bayer and
BASF – no GMO crops are grown.
Germany’s Agriculture Minister, Christian
Schmidt, is forthright on German distrust of
Bayer and BASF’s genetically engineered
crops. As he said in 2014: “One thing is clear:
Our citizens do not want genetically-modified
plants in the fields and want no gene-
249 Franz Xaver Perrez, “Taking Consumers Seriously: The Swiss
Regulatory Approach to Genetically Modified Food.” N.Y.U.
Environmental Law Journal, 2000, Vol. 8, Issue 3.
250 Tom Wright, “Swiss Ban Genetically Modified Crops.”
International Herald Tribune, November 27, 2005.
251 “GMO Moratorium Extended for Three Years.” Swissinfo, March
10, 2010.
252 Swiss Expert Committee for Biosafety, web page on “Marketing
of genetically modified organisms.” January 20, 2014.
253 John Davidson, “GM Plants: Science, Politics and EC
Regulations.” Plant Science, February 2010, Vol. 178, Issue 2,
pp. 94-98. DOI: 10.1016/j.plantsci.2009.12.005
254 European Commission, web page on “New EU approach” to
GMO cultivation. “EU Moves Step Closer to Law on National
GMO Crop Bans.” Reuters, November 11, 2012.
255 “Germany to Ban Cultivation of GMO Maize-Minister.” Reuters,
April 14, 2009.
technology products on shop shelves.”256
In 2012, BASF withdrew its efforts to even
attempt to sell genetically its engineered
products in Europe. According to BASF board
member Stefan Marcinowski, “There is still
a lack of acceptance for this technology in
many parts of Europe — from the majority of
consumers, farmers and politicians….Therefore,
it does not make business sense to continue
investing in products exclusively for cultivation
in this market.”257
On November 11, 2014, the EU parliament
approved a plan to allow EU nations to ban
the farming of genetically engineered crops
on their lands. It awaits final action by the
parliament and EU nations, but appears likely
to become law.258 Given the unpopularity of
genetically engineered crops in Germany,
this increases the likelihood that the ban on
cultivation of Bayer and BASF genetically
engineered crops will continue indefinitely.
In general, outside the United States, there is
great skepticism about genetically engineered
food. According to the Center for Food Safety,
64 countries require labeling of genetically
engineered food.259
That skepticism of genetically engineered
food has been adopted by international
organizations and treaties as well. The
international food standards organization,
Codex Alimentarius, specifically allows for
GMO labeling because of health risks and
other concerns.260 In addition, two international
treaties treat GMOs as presenting either
potential health or environmental risks, and
therefore as matters of concern. These treaties
include the Convention on Biological Diversity
and its Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, and
the International Plant Protection Convention.261
256 “German Govt Still Undecided on GMO Policy, Minister Tells
Paper.” Reuters, March 17, 2014.
257 James Kanter, “BASF to Stop Selling Genetically Modified
Products in Europe.” New York Times, January 16, 2012.
258 “EU Moves Step Closer to Law on National GMO Crop Bans.”
Reuters, November 11, 2012. “EU Deal Gives Countries Opt-out
on Growing Approved GM Crops.” Reuters, December 4, 2014.
259 “Genetically Engineered Food Labeling Laws Map.” Center for
Food Safety, April 2, 2013.
260 Jerry Hagstrom, “Biotech Foods Clear for Own Label.” Agweek,
July 11, 2011. “Consumer Rights Victory as US Ends Opposition
to GM Labeling Guidelines.” Consumers International, July 5,
2011.
261 See, for example, Hilary Weiss, “Genetically Modified Crops:
Why Cultivation Matters.” Brooklyn Journal of International
Law, 2014. 39 Brooklyn Journal of International Law 875. Phil
Bereano, “A Primer on GMOs and International Law.” Council
for Responsible Genetics.www.usrtk.org 45
#10: Monsanto
supported GMO
labeling in the UK but
opposes it in the USA
In the late 1990’s, Monsanto ran advertisements
in the United Kingdom in support of labeling
of genetically engineered food. In the UK,
there is mandatory labeling of genetically
engineered food. According to one Monsanto
ad in Britain, “Before you buy a potato, or any
other food, you may want to know whether
it’s the product of food biotechnology…We
have complete confidence that our food crops
are as safe and nutritious as the standard
alternatives. Recently you may have noticed a
label appearing on some of the food in your
supermarket. This is to inform you about the
use of biotechnology in food. Monsanto fully
supports UK food manufacturers and retailers
in their introduction of these labels. We believe
you should be aware of all the facts before
making a purchase.”262
262 Dana Hull, “Monsanto, Which Is Fighting Efforts to Label
Genetically Engineered Food in California, Supported Labeling
Such Food in Britain.” San Jose Mercury News, September 1,
2012.
However, in the United States, Monsanto has
spent tens of millions of dollars in opposition to
labeling of genetically engineered food.
Monsanto is an American company. It was
founded in St. Louis, Missouri in 1901. It is still
based in St. Louis.
Apparently, this is Monsanto’s peculiar vision
of corporate patriotism: it believes that the
British deserve stronger consumer rights than
Americans do.
#11: The pesticide
treadmill breeds
profits, so it will likely
intensify
More than half a century ago, in her landmark
book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson predicted
the phenomenon called the “pesticide
treadmill” or the “pesticide trap.” Carson
explained that the use of pesticides, by natural
selection, will ensure that the most pesticideresistant
insects and weeds flourish, therefore
requiring ever greater dousings of pesticides
to control. As Carson wrote, “Darwin himself
could scarcely have found a better example
of the operation of natural selection than
is provided by the way the mechanism of
[pesticide] resistance operates.”263 In other
words, the pesticide treadmill is an evolutionary
imperative.
It is less noticed, but also important, that
the pesticide treadmill is also a financial
imperative. It is in the economic interest of the
agrichemical industry to make the pesticide
treadmill spin as fast as possible.
That is to say, the agrichemical industry
will profit the most from ever more grave
infestations of ever more pesticide-resistant
superweeds and superpests, which will drive
the use of ever larger quantities of more
expensive pesticides. Hardier pests bring
higher revenues.
263 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1962), p. 272. See also Robert van den Bosch, The Pesticide
Conspiracy. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1978).
Robert Wuliger, “Robert Van Den Bosch: Stop the Pesticide
Conspiracy.” Mother Earth News, July/August 1979.
Before you buy a potato, or any other food, you may
want to know whether it's the product of food
biotechnology.
Monsanto is a leading biotechnology company. Our
potato, corn and soybean seeds are adapted to produce
better yields through better control of pests and weeds. In
a step on from traditional cross-breeding, a naturallyoccurring
beneficial gene has been inserted into the
plants' genetic make-up.
We have complete confidence that our food crops are as
safe and nutritious as the standard alternatives.
Recently you may have noticed a label appearing on
some of the food in your supermarket. This is to inform
you about the use of biotechnology in food.
Monsanto fully supports UK food manufacturers and
retailers in their introduction of these labels. We believe
you should be aware of all the facts before making a
purchase.
We encourage you to look out for these labels. And, if
you'd like to know more, please ask for a leaflet at your
supermarket, call our consumer information line on 0800
092 0401, or use our online Comments & Questions
form.
(THE INSECT RESISTANT GM POTATO HAS BEEN APPROVED BY
GOVERNMENT REGULATORY AGENCIES IN THE US, CANADA, AUSTRALIA,
MEXICO, ROUMANIA, AND NEW ZEALAND. POTATOES PRODUCED BY
BIOTECHNOLOGY ARE NOT YET AVAILABLE IN THE UK)
To
find
out
what
others
are
saying,
call
Iceland
on
0990
133373
or
visit
their
website
at
www.iceland.co.uk.
Try
contacting
Friends
of
the
Earth
on
0171
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and
at
www.foe.co.uk.
Click on the icons below to see additional information from
Monsanto about food biotechnology:
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About Monsanto | Links | Comments & Questions | Home | News
Copyright 2003 Monsanto CompanyU.S. Right to Know 46
In some ways, the pesticide treadmill is merely
a type of planned obsolescence in agricultural
products.
The pesticide treadmill is akin to drug
addiction: the more pesticides you use, the
more you need.
It is also in the financial interest of the
agrichemical companies to scare farmers about
the existence of newer and hardier pests,
to convince them to buy more genetically
engineered seeds and the pesticides that
accompany them.
Call it the pesticide paradox. While the
agrichemical industries trumpet their supposed
efforts to improve crop yields, in fact it is
strongly in their financial interest to promote
the growth of the superweeds and superpests
that detract from crop yields.
So, if we continue to follow the products and
prescriptions of the agrichemical industry,
the future of agriculture may well be plagued
by superlative superweeds and superpests,
controlled only temporarily by inundations
with the latest, most expensive or most toxic
pesticides. And, of course, continued high
profits for the agrichemical industry.
This is, in fact, what appears to be happening.
Dow AgroSciences is selling new crops of corn
and soybeans, called Enlist, that are resistant
to the Enlist Duo herbicides glyphosate and
2,4-D, a component of the infamous Vietnam
war defoliant Agent Orange.264 The crops are
supposed to help farmers control weeds that
are resistant to glyphosate alone, because
those superweeds would hopefully be killed by
the 2,4-D. The U.S. Department of Agriculture
has approved the crops for commercial
farming. In its analysis, the USDA estimated
that the use of the crops would increase the
amount of 2,4-D used in the United States by
200 to 600 percent by 2020.265 Similarly, at
the time of this writing, Monsanto is nearing
regulatory approval for dicamba-resistant
soybeans and cotton.266 That is great news for
Dow and Monsanto, and yet another turn of the
pesticide treadmill.
#12: GMO science is for
sale
It is presumed by many that science proceeds
like an arrow straight towards the discovery of
truth, without bending due to any economic
forces that may bear upon it.
In fact, sometimes the opposite is true.
Science is for sale. Powerful corporations can
procure it in many ways, some subtle, some
not. But in the aggregate, they can have a
powerful effect on what is known and what is
not known. That appears especially true for the
agrichemical industry.
What follows is a discussion of a few ways
that science can be swayed, bought or biased
by the agrichemical industry. It is outside the
scope of this report to recount all of instances
in which these tactics have been used. Rather,
this is merely an effort to sketch the tactics
that have been employed by the agrichemical
industry.267
264 See the Dow AgroSciences website for Enlist.
265 Andrew Pollack, “Altered to Withstand Herbicide, Corn and
Soybeans Gain Approval.” New York Times, September 17, 2014.
See also Bill Freese, “Going Backwards: Dow’s 2,4-D-Resistant
Crops and a More Toxic Future.” Food Safety Review, Center for
Food Safety, Winter 2012.
266 “USDA Paves the Way for Planting of Two More Pesticide
Promoting Genetically Engineered (GE) Crops.” Center for
Food Safety, December 12, 2014.
267 See, for example, Dan Fagin, Marianne Lavelle and the Center
for Public Integrity, Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry
Manipulates Science, Bends the Law and Endangers Your
Health. (Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1996.).www.usrtk.org 47
Suppression of adverse findings
We have already discussed how industry can
suppress adverse studies and findings, with
some examples from the pharmaceutical
industry. Similar things appear to have
happened in the agrichemical industry.
According to Scientific American, “In a number
of cases, experiments that had the implicit
go-ahead from the seed company were later
blocked from publication because the results
were not flattering.”268 For example, University
of California, Berkeley Professor Tyrone Hayes
explains:
“I was approached by the manufacturer
[Syngenta] and asked to study the effects
of atrazine, the herbicide, on frogs. And
after I discovered that it interfered with
male development and caused males
to turn into females, to develop eggs,
the company tried to prevent me from
publishing and from discussing that work
with other scientists outside of their
panel.”269
Here’s another example: after Ohio State
University plant ecologist Allison Snow
uncovered preliminary evidence that a
genetically engineered sunflower could make
wild sunflowers grow like weeds, Pioneer
Hi-Bred and Dow AgroSciences “blocked a
follow-up study by refusing to allow the team
access to either the transgene or the seeds
from the earlier study,” according to a report
in Nature.270 “It is very frustrating,” Snow told
Nature. “We want to do good science. But this
is keeping us from answering questions we
want to ask.”
The New York Times reported on how Syngenta
stymied the work of University of Minnesota
entomology Professor Ken Ostlie. Dr. Ostlie
said he had permission from three
companies in 2007 to compare how well
their insect-resistant corn varieties fared
against the rootworms found in his state.
But in 2008, Syngenta, one of the three
companies, withdrew its permission and
268 “Do Seed Companies Control GM Crop Research?” Scientific
American, July 20, 2009.
269 “Silencing the Scientist: Tyrone Hayes on Being Targeted by
Herbicide Firm Syngenta.” Democracy Now, February 21, 2014.
See also Rachel Aviv, “A Valuable Reputation.” New Yorker,
February 10, 2014.
270 Rex Dalton and San Diego, “Superweed Study Falters as Seed
Firms Deny Access to Transgene.” Nature, October 17, 2002.
419, 655. doi:10.1038/419655a.
the study had to stop.
“The company just decided it was not in its
best interest to let it continue,” Dr. Ostlie
said.271
In another case, university scientists working
on a GMO corn variety found that it was
decimating beneficial lady beetles that had
been fed the corn. According to an article in
Nature Biotechnology,
When the researchers presented their
results to Pioneer, the company forbade
them from publicizing the data. “The
company came back and said ‘you are
under no circumstances able to publicize
this data in any way’,” says a scientist
associated with the project, who asked to
remain anonymous. Because the product
had not yet been commercialized, the
research agreement gave Pioneer the right
to prevent publication of their results.272
In the realm of pharmaceuticals, activists
have worked hard to compel industry to
produce a registry of all clinical trials, to ensure
transparency of scientific results. As the New
York Times explains, “Until recently, the idea
that companies should routinely hand over
detailed data about their clinical trials might
have sounded far-fetched. Now, the onus is on
the industry to explain why it shouldn’t.”273
In particular, prospective registration of
safety testing is a good remedy to ensure
transparency and to prevent suppression of
findings of health or environmental risks of
genetically engineered food or crops.
Regarding health or environmental risks, there
is no compelling reason why the agrichemical
industry should be able to keep its research
findings secret. When human health or the
environment is at stake, there should be a
strong predisposition to transparency, and to
releasing scientific results – published or not –
into the public domain.
Currently, there is at no registry of scientific
experiments on the health or environmental
effects of genetically engineered crops.
271 Andrew Pollack, “Crop Scientists Say Biotechnology Seed
Companies Are Thwarting Research.” New York Times,
February 19, 2009.
272 Emily Waltz, “Under Wraps.” Nature Biotechnology 27, 880-882
(2009). doi:10.1038/nbt1009-880.
273 Katie Thomas, “Breaking the Seal on Drug Research.” New York
Times, June 29, 2013.U.S. Right to Know 48
So, there is no way to discover whether
the agrichemical industry has suppressed
any other such experiments. The record of
the pharmaceutical industry suggests that
suppression of adverse results is likely to occur
in the agrichemical industry.
Harming the careers of scientists who produce
adverse findings
We have discussed how the agrichemical
industry and its allies have repeatedly attacked
scientists who have produced findings adverse
to its interests, including Tyrone Hayes,274
274 Rachel Aviv, “A Valuable Reputation.” New Yorker, February 10,
2014. Clare Howard, “Syngenta’s Campaign to Protect Atrazine,
Discredit Critics.” Environmental Health News, June 17, 2013.
“Silencing the Scientist: Tyrone Hayes on Being Targeted by
Herbicide Firm Syngenta.” Democracy Now, February 21, 2014.
Ignacio Chapela,275 Arpad Pusztai,276 Gilles-Eric
Séralini,277 Manuela Malatesta,278 and Emma
Rosi-Marshall.279
Funding shapes what research is conducted
The agrichemical companies are unlikely
to support research that may undermine
their financial interests. Meanwhile,
there is a declining amount of public
funds available for agricultural research.
As Cornell Professor Elson Shields
explains, “In my 30 years as a public
scientist, there’s been a dramatic erosion
of public funding. And that makes
science more dependent on private
funding.”280 That means less funding for
independent studies to assess health
and environmental risks of genetically
engineered food and crops.
Supporting academic departments and
scientists who produce positive findings
“He who pays the piper calls the tune,”
the old saying goes. According to Food &
Water Watch’s report on corporate funding
of university agriculture research, “Public
Research, Private Gain,” by 2010 private
contributions supplied nearly one-quarter of all
agriculture research funding at U.S. land grant
universities.281
Such funding likely brings many benefits to the
agrichemical industry. For example, in a survey
of over 3,000 scientists, 16% admitted to
“changing the design, methodology or results
275 George Monbiot, “The Fake Persuaders.” Guardian, May 14,
2002. Andrew Rowell, “Immoral Maize.” GMWatch.
276 Andrew Rowell, “The Sinister Sacking of the World’s Leading
GM Expert and the Trail That Leads to Tony Blair and the White
House.” Daily Mail, July 7, 2003, “Why I Cannot Remain Silent:
Interview with Dr. Arpad Pusztai.” GM-Free, August/September,
1999. Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto:
Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World’s Food
Supply. (New York: New Press, 2010), pp. 178-187. Marion
Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism.
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 186-9.
277 Adriane Fugh-Berman and Thomas G. Sherman, “Rounding
Up Scientific Journals.” Bioethics Forum, January 10, 2014.
“Controversial Seralini Study Linking GM to Cancer in Rats
Is Republished.” Guardian, June 24, 2014. Barbara Casassus,
“Paper Claiming GM Link with Tumours Republished.” Nature,
June 24, 2014. doi:10.1038/nature.2014.15463.
278 See interview with Manuela Malatesta in Marie-Monique Robin,
The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and
the Control of the World’s Food Supply. (New York: New Press,
2010), pp. 176-177.
279 Emily Waltz, “GM Crops: Battlefield.” Nature, September 2,
2009. 461, 27-32. doi:10.1038/461027a.
280 Nathaniel Johnson, “Genetically Modified Seed Research:
What’s Locked and What Isn’t.” Grist, August 5, 2013.
281 “Public Research, Private Gain: Corporate Influence Over
University Agriculture Research.” Food & Water Watch, April
2012.www.usrtk.org 49
of a study in response pressure from a funding
source” within the previous three years. Among
mid-career scientists, 21% admitted to this.282
In 2011, a study in the journal Food Policy
reviewed 94 articles about health risks or
nutritional values of GMOs. It found that “the
existence of either financial or professional
conflict of interest was associated to study
outcomes that cast genetically modified
products in a favorable light,” and that “a
strong association was found between author
affiliation to industry (professional conflict of
interest) and study outcome.”283
This is an old phenomenon in the pesticide
industry. More than fifty years ago, in
Silent Spring, Rachel Carson wrote that the
chemical companies were “pouring money
into universities to support research on
insecticides.” She asked, of academic scientists
funded by the chemical industry: “Can we
then expect them to bite the hand that literally
feeds them?” She continues, “But knowing their
bias, how much credence can we give to their
protests that insecticides are harmless?”284
There appear to be many close parallels with
pharmaceutical industry, because of the size
and scope of its grants to academic institutions
and individual scientists. In her famous essay,
“Is Academic Medicine For Sale,” then-editorin-chief
of the New England Journal of Medicine
(and now senior lecturer at Harvard Medical
School) Marcia Angell asks: “Why shouldn’t
clinical researchers have close ties to industry?”
She answers:
One obvious concern is that these ties
will bias research, both the kind of work
that is done and the way it is reported…
there is now considerable evidence that
researchers with ties to drug companies
are indeed more likely to report results
that are favorable to the products of those
companies than researchers without such
ties. That does not conclusively prove
that researchers are influenced by their
282 Brian C. Martinson, Melissa S. Anderson, Raymond de Vries,
“Scientists Behaving Badly.” Nature, June 9, 2005. 435, 737-
738, DOI: 10.1038/435737a.
283 Johan Diels, Mario Cunha, Célia Manaia, Bernardo SabugosaMadeira,
Margarida Silva, “Association of Financial or
Professional Conflict of Interest to Research Outcomes on
Health Risks or Nutritional Assessment Studies of Genetically
Modified Products.” Food Policy, April 2011. Vol. 36, Issue 2, pp.
197-203. DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2010.11.016.
284 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962),
pp. 258-59.
financial ties to industry. Conceivably,
drug companies seek out researchers who
happen to be getting positive results. But I
believe bias is the most likely explanation,
and in either case, it is clear that the
more enthusiastic researchers are, the
more assured they can be of industry
funding…. It is that close and remunerative
collaboration with a company naturally
creates goodwill on the part of researchers
and the hope that the largesse will
continue. This attitude can subtly influence
scientific judgment in ways that may be
difficult to discern.285
Financial incentives for scientists
encourage positive results for the
agrichemical industry
If scientists who produce positive results for the
agrichemical industry are financially rewarded
with grants and other career-enhancements,
and those who produce adverse results are
attacked in serious and potentially careerthreatening
ways, then this likely predisposes
some scientists to work with industry and to
produce positive results for them.
This likely shapes what studies are proposed
and carried out, what results are published, and
therefore what is “known” about genetically
engineered crops and the pesticides with which
it is grown.
Positive studies are more likely to be
published than adverse ones. It is well
understood that there is “publication bias”
regarding clinical trials of pharmaceuticals.
As Ben Goldacre explained it in the New York
Times,
Trials with positive or flattering results,
unsurprisingly, are about twice as likely to
be published — and this is true for both
academic research and industry studies.
If I toss a coin, but hide the result every
time it comes up tails, it looks as if I always
throw heads. You wouldn’t tolerate that if
we were choosing who should go first in a
game of pocket billiards, but in medicine,
it’s accepted as the norm.286
Given the parallels between the pharmaceutical
285 Marcia Angell, “Is Academic Medicine For Sale?” New England
Journal of Medicine, May 18, 2000. 342:1516-1518. DOI: 10.1056/
NEJM200005183422009.
286 Ben Goldacre, “Health Care’s Trick Coin.” New York Times,
February 1, 2013. U.S. Right to Know 50
and agrichemical industries, and their generous
funding of scientific experimentation, such
“publication bias” may well be the norm
in studies of the health risks of genetically
engineered food.
Is there any independent US-based testing of
health of environmental risks of GMOs?
The agrichemical companies hold intellectual
property rights to the genetically engineered
crops that they produce. Any use of those
crops – for farming, scientific experiment,
or anything else — in the U.S. is only by
permission of the companies that own the
intellectual property.
So, in that important sense, research on these
foods and crops is not truly independent of the
agrichemical companies.
Research findings about health or
environmental risks of genetically engineered
food and crops would be more convincing if
it were fully independent of the agrichemical
companies that produce them, i.e., if it were
not necessary to receive their permission to
study their products. As a remedy, Scientific
American has proposed that “Going forward,
the EPA should also require, as a condition
of approving the sale of new seeds, that
independent researchers have unfettered
access to all products currently on the
market.”287
Scientists have criticized the agrichemical
industry for denying access to their seeds
and crops. According to a 2009 editorial in
Scientific American,
Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify
that genetically modified crops perform
as advertised. That is because agritech
companies have given themselves veto
power over the work of independent
researchers….
• • •
“It is important to understand that it is
not always simply a matter of blanket
denial of all research requests, which is
bad enough,” wrote Elson J. Shields, an
entomologist at Cornell University, in a
letter to an official at the Environmental
Protection Agency…“but selective denials
and permissions based on industry
287 “Do Seed Companies Control GM Crop Research?” Scientific
American, July 20, 2009.
perceptions of how ‘friendly’ or ‘hostile’ a
particular scientist may be toward [seedenhancement]
technology.”
• • •
when scientists are prevented from
examining the raw ingredients in our
nation’s food supply or from testing
the plant material that covers a large
portion of the country’s agricultural land,
the restrictions on free inquiry become
dangerous.288
The agrichemical industry responded to
the scientists’ criticism by loosening some
restrictions on research uses of its seeds. But
some restrictions still seem to remain. For
example, academic scientists still can’t perform
experiments on seeds before they are released
on the market.
Some scientists are still skeptical of the ways
that industry still controls research on their
crops. According to Professor Elson Shields
of Cornell, “Each company has to decide how
many universities to make those [research]
agreements with…What justification they have
and why they pick one over the other, that’s
above my pay grade. It may be that they know
there’s a scientist whose work they don’t like,
so they don’t choose that university.”289
Conflicts of interest have tainted scientific
reviews of genetically engineered food
There are at least two prominent cases in which
conflicts of interest have marred the outcomes
of scientific reviews of genetically engineered
foods.
Twelve days before California voted on the
ballot initiative Proposition 37, for labeling
of genetically engineered food, the board of
directors of the American Academy for the
Advancement of Science released a statement
that genetically engineered crops “pose no
greater risk than the same foods made from
crops modified by conventional plant breeding
techniques,” and that mandatory labeling of
GMOs could therefore “mislead and falsely
288 “Do Seed Companies Control GM Crop Research?” Scientific
American, July 20, 2009. See also Andrew Pollack, “Crop
Scientists Say Biotechnology Seed Companies Are Thwarting
Research.” New York Times, February 19, 2009.
289 Nathaniel Johnson, “Genetically Modified Seed Research:
What’s Locked and What Isn’t.” Grist, August 5, 2013.www.usrtk.org 51
alarm consumers.”290
However, at the time the AAAS board released
its statement, its chair was Nina Federoff,
who has close ties to the biotechnology
industry. For five years, she was a member of
the scientific advisory board of Evogene, an
Israeli biotechnology company.291 She was a
“long-time member” of the board of directors
of the biotechnology firm Sigma-Aldrich.292
In her role as “science and technology
advisor” to the State Department and U.S.
Agency for International Development,
the Pesticide Action Network called her
“literally the U.S. ambassador for GE.”293 She
even endorsed a campaign statement by
opponents of Proposition 37, offering that
she was “passionately opposed to labeling” of
290 “AAAS Board of Directors: Legally Mandating GM Food Labels
Could ‘Mislead and Falsely Alarm Consumers.’” American
Academy for the Advancement of Science news release,
October 25, 2012. “Statement by the AAAS Board of Directors
on Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods.” American
Association for the Advancement of Science, October 20, 2012.
291 “Professor Nina V. Fedoroff, the U.S. Secretary of State’s New
Science and Technology Adviser, Resigns from Evogene’s
Scientific Advisory Board.” Evogene news release, July 22,
2007.
292 “Sigma-Aldrich Board Member Nina Fedoroff Resigns to
Become Science and Technology Adviser to U.S. Secretary of
State.” Sigma-Aldrich news release.
293 Heather Pilatic, “20 Yrs Later, the Biotech Brigade Marches
on….” Pesticide Action Network North America, May 31, 2012.
genetically engineered food.294 295 In response,
a group of scientists and physicians, including
“many long-standing members” of AAAS,
rejected the AAAS statement on GMOs,
because it “tramples the rights of consumers to
make informed choices.”296
In a similar case, a study conducted for the
National Academy of Sciences297 was tainted
because the “study director,” Michael J.
Phillips, left his position midway for position
at the Biotechnology Industry Organization.298
Phillips later became vice-president of the
Biotechnology Industry Organization.299
Environmental and consumer groups also
pointed out numerous other conflicts of
interest among those who produced the
294 “Coalition Against the Deceptive and Costly Food Labeling
Proposition says Scientists and Academic Community Oppose
Ballot Measure Mandating Labeling of Genetically Engineered
Foods.” Coalition Against the Deceptive and Costly Food
Labeling Proposition news release, June 13, 2012.
295 For background on Federoff’s ties to the agrichemical and
biotechnology industries, see for example Tom Philpott,
“U.S. Foreign Policy: GMO All the Way.” Grist, August 26,
2008 Michele Simon, “Is a Major Science Group Stumping for
Monsanto?” Grist, October 30, 2012. Russell Mokhiber, “AAAS
Captured from the Top Down.” Corporate Crime Reporter,
November 1, 2012. See also Charlie Cray, “California Prop 37:
The Right to Know.” Greenpeace, October 31, 2012.
296 Patricia Hunt et al., “Yes: Food Labels Would Let Consumers
Make Informed Choices.” Environmental Health News.
297 Genetically Modified Pest-Protected Plants: Science and
Regulation. (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000).
298 Melody Petersen, “Biotech Expert’s New Job Casts a Shadow
on Report.” New York Times, August 16, 1999.
299 “People.” Nature Biotechnology, 21, 1401 (2003). doi:10.1038/
nbt1103-1401.U.S. Right to Know 52
National Academy of Sciences study.300
Like the pharmaceutical industry, the
agrichemical industry has deployed many tools
and techniques to bias science in its favor.
Given the history in both of these industries,
it is naïve, at best, to believe that science
cannot be manipulated in myriad ways, and
that is objective regarding matters where
corporations and industries have billions of
dollars at stake.
#13: There are nearly
no consumer benefits
of GMOs
Of the approximately 30 traits that are
genetically engineered into crops for
commercial use, they fall into two distinct
classes. Many are either pesticide- or herbicideresistant
(or both), to withstand dousings of
potent chemicals, such as glyphosate. Some
300 “Environmental and Consumer Groups Question Credibility
of Controversial NAS Study on Biotech Foods.” National
Environmental Trust news release, April 5, 2000. See also
Meredith Wadman, “GM Advisory Panel Is Slanted, Say Critics.”
Nature, May 6, 1999. 399, 7. doi:10.1038/19817.
have a pesticide, called Bt toxin, incorporated
into them, to withstand pest infestations. Some
have both.301
To be generous to the agrichemical industry, of
all these genetically engineered crops that have
been brought to market, only three may have
actually provided any benefits to consumers.
These are the Flavr Savr tomato, the “Rainbow”
papaya and the “Innate” potato.302 In 1994,
the company Calgene, marketed the first
genetically engineered product, a tomato
called the Flavr Savr that was intended to
have a longer shelf life.303 It was withdrawn
from the market in 1997, after the company
was purchased by Monsanto, which stopped
selling the seeds.304 Then there is the Rainbow
papaya, which was genetically engineered to
301 “GM Crops: A Story in Numbers.” Nature, May 2, 2013. 497, 22-
23. doi:10.1038/497022a
302 Though the agrichemical industry touts “golden rice” –
GMO rice enriched with beta-carotene – it still hasn’t been
commercially produced, and appears to be more of a PR stunt
than a real way to deliver beta carotene to those who need it.
See, for example, Michael Pollan, “The Great Yellow Hype.” New
York Times, March 4, 2001.
303 Warren E. Leary, “F.D.A. Approves Altered Tomato That Will
Remain Fresh Longer.” New York Times, May 19, 1994. Belinda
Martineau, First Fruit: The Creation of the Flavr SavrTM Tomato
and the Birth of Biotech Food. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001.)
304 “What Happened to the Flavr Savr?” Chemical and Engineering
News, April 19, 1999. Kenneth Chang, “Building a Better MassMarket
Tomato.” New York Times, August 26, 2013. www.usrtk.org 53
withstand the ringspot virus. It is now the most
prevalent papaya grown in Hawaii. Finally, there
is a new genetically engineered “Innate” potato
that may produce less of the toxic chemical
acrylamide when fried.305
That’s it. One hasn’t been cultivated in the 21st
century, another preserved the cultivation of
papayas in Hawaii, and another is entirely new.
Now, let’s examine the rest of the genetically
engineered foods and products – that most
Americans eat in large amounts. These are
corn, soybeans, sugar beets, canola and cotton
(think cottonseed oil).
The genetically engineered foods that
Americans eat are not healthier, safer or more
nutritious than conventional foods. They do
not look better, nor do they taste better. They
do not have a longer shelf life. Using any
measure that consumers actually care about,
they are not in any way an improvement over
conventional products.
They do, however, confer risks to consumers.
There are studies that link genetically
engineered foods to allergies, liver and kidney
disease and other illnesses.306
Well then, who benefits from genetically
engineered food and crops? The agrichemical
companies do: they sell the seeds and the
pesticides that often go with them. Perhaps
some farmers do as well. Consumers do not
benefit.
In other words, the agrichemical industry is
selling consumers a basket of products in
which there appears to be risk but no benefits.
That raises an important question: If there are
no benefits to consumers, why should we bear
any health risks of genetically engineered food
and its pesticides?
305 Andrew Pollack, “U.S.D.A. Approves Modified Potato. Next Up:
French Fry Fans.” New York Times, November 7, 2014.
306 See, for example, Gilles-Eric Séralini et al., “Genetically
Modified Crops Safety Assessments: Present Limits And
Possible Improvements.” Environmental Sciences Europe, 2011.
23:10. Memorandum from Michael Hansen PhD, senior scientist,
Consumer Reports, to the American Medical Association
Council on Science and Public Health, “Reasons for Labeling
Genetically Engineered Food.” March 19, 2012. “Statement: No
Scientific Consensus on GMO Safety.” European Network of
Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility. October
21, 2013. John Fagan, Michael Antoniou and Claire Robinson,
“GMO Myths and Truths.” 2014. Chapter 3.
#14: The FDA and food
companies have been
wrong before: they
have assured us of the
safety of products that
were not safe
Many people believe that if a food is sold in the
U.S. market, it must be safe. This impression is
false.
On food safety, the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration and food companies have been
wrong before – many times. The FDA and food
companies have often allowed food products
or additives on the market, later to discover
they were, in fact, unsafe.
This is important, because it suggests that
since the FDA and food companies have been
wrong before, they could be wrong again, this
time about genetically engineered foods.
(It is curious that many Republicans – who
are inclined to distrust the federal agencies,
including the FDA — should so readily accept
the idea that a food is safe because the FDA
allows it on the market.)
What follows is a list of food additives, artificial
flavors and sweeteners that were sold in the
United States and later removed from the
market because they were unsafe.
One could make a parallel list of FDA-approved
pharmaceuticals that were subsequently pulled
from the market, such as Vioxx, Bextra, Baycol,
Propulsid, Rezulin, Lotronex, Trasylol and many
others.307 But this is a report about food, so we
will keep our focus there.
Agene (nitrogen trichloride) was a widely
used bleaching agent for wheat flour between
1924-49.308 In 1948, according to the New York
Times, 90% of all white flour was agenized.309
307 See, for example, “Update on Withdrawals of Dangerous
Drugs in the U.S.” Worst Pills, Best Pills, Public Citizen Health
Research Group, January 2011.
308 Clyde E. Stauffer, Functional Additives for Bakery Foods. (New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990) p. 7.
309 Jane Nickerson, “News of Food.” New York Times, March 18,
1948. U.S. Right to Know 54
Agene was banned in 1949,310 after it was
discovered to have caused “running fits” and
“hysteria” in dogs.311
Cinnamyl anthranilate was an artificial flavor.
It produces an imitation grape or cherry flavor.
It was found to cause liver in mice,312 and was
banned in 1985.313
Cobalt salts were added to beer as a foam
stabilizer. In 1966, cobalt salts were linked to
thirty-seven deaths due to cardiomyopathy,314
and later that year the FDA banned them.315
Coumarin is a vanilla flavoring, a product of
the tonka bean. According to the New York
310 “Stop Order Is Put on Bleaching Flour.” New York Times,
November 3, 1948.
311 Edward Mellanby, “Diet and Canine Hysteria: Experimental
Production by Treated Flour.” British Medical Journal,
December 14, 1946; 2(4484): 885–887.
312 International Agency for Research on Cancer, monograph on
cinnamyl anthranilate.
313 21 CFR 189.113.
314 Jane E. Brody, “A Heart Ailment is Linked to Beer.” New York
Times, July 26, 1966.
315 21 CFR 189.120.
Times, it was “widely used in ice creams, candy,
baked goods, soft drinks and products using
chocolate, for many years.”316 It is toxic to the
liver, and was banned by the FDA in 1954.317
Cyclamates are a class of artificial sweeteners.
They were popular; about 15 million pounds
were used in 1967, mostly in soft drinks.318 The
FDA banned them in 1969, following evidence
that they caused bladder tumors in rats.319
Diethyl pyrocarbonate (DEPC) was a
fermentation inhibitor and preservative used
in wine, beer and fruit drinks. Researchers
discovered that it reacts with ammonia to
create urethane, a well-known carcinogen.320
316 “Coumarin Withheld as a Danger in Foods.” New York Times,
May 23, 1953.
317 21 CFR 189.130.
318 Douglas W. Cray, “Battle Over Sweeteners Turns Bitter.” New
York Times, June 1, 1969.
319 Harold M. Schmeck, “Government Officially Announces
Cyclamate Sweeteners Will Be Taken Off Market Early Next
Year.” New York Times, October 19, 1969.
320 Jane E. Brody, “Drink Preservative Found to Produce a
Carcinogen.” New York Times, December 21, 1971. www.usrtk.org 55
The FDA banned it in 1972.321
Dulcin was an artificial sweetener. The FDA
banned it in 1950,322 because of evidence that it
caused liver and bladder cancer in rats.323
Green 1 was an artificial color approved for
food use in 1922. It was delisted in 1966.324
Monochloroacetic acid was a preservative for
alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages. It was
banned in 1941325 because it is highly toxic.
Nordihydroguaiaretic acid (NDGA) is an
antioxidant. The FDA banned it in 1968326
because it caused renal cysts and other kidney
damage.
Oil of Calamus is a flavoring agent. The FDA
banned it in 1968.327
Orange 1 was an artificial color approved for
food use in 1907. According to the FDA, in
1953 it was “probably the most widely used
of all food colors, going into soft drinks,
confectionary and baking.”328 According
to the New York Times, “In 1950, many
children became ill after eating Halloween
candy containing Orange No. 1 dye, and the
F.D.A. banned it after more rigorous testing
suggested that it was toxic.”329 It was delisted
(banned) in 1956.
Orange 2 was an artificial color. It was delisted
(banned) in 1956.330
Orange B was an artificial color approved
for food use in 1966, for dying hot dog and
sausage casings. It was found to be toxic in
rats. The FDA proposed banning it in 1978, but
the manufacturer stopped producing it, and
the ban was never finalized.331
321 21 CFR 189.140.
322 21 CFR 189.145.
323 A. Wallace Hayes, ed. Principles and Methods of Toxicology.
(New York: Informa, 2008), p. 669.
324 S. S. Deshpande, Handbook of Food Toxicology. (New York:
Marcel Dekker, 2002), p. 227.
325 21 CFR 189.155.
326 21 CFR 189.165.
327 21 CFR 189.110.
328 “U.S. Orders Hearings on 3 Food Colorings.” Associated Press/
New York Times, December 19, 1953.
329 Gardiner Harris, “F.D.A. Panel to Consider Warnings for
Artificial Food Colorings.” New York Times, March 29, 2011. See
also Deborah Blum, “A Poisoner’s Tale of Halloween.” Wired,
October 31, 2012.
330 Deborah Blum, “A Poisoner’s Tale of Halloween.” Wired,
October 31, 2012.
331 Sarah Kobylewski and Michael F. Jacobson, “Toxicology
of Food Dyes.” International Journal of Occupational and
Environmental Health, July-September 2012, 18(3):220-46.
doi: 10.1179/1077352512Z.00000000034. S. S. Deshpande,
Handbook of Food Toxicology. (New York: Marcel Dekker,
2002). p. 227.
P-4000 is an artificial sweetener about 4,000
times sweeter than sucrose. The FDA banned it
in 1950332 due to toxicity in rats.
Red 1 was an artificial color approved for use in
food by the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
It was delisted in 1961, because it is a liver
carcinogen.333
Red 2 was an artificial color approved for use in
food by the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. It
was delisted in 1976, after studies showed that
it is a probable carcinogen in rats.334
Red 4 was an artificial color approved in 1929
for dyeing butter and margarine. It was delisted
in 1976 after it was found to be toxic to dogs.335
Red 32 was an artificial color approved for food
use in 1939. It was delisted in 1956, after it was
shown to be toxic to rats.336
Safrole was a flavoring derived from sassafras
used in foods and beverages such as root beer.
The FDA banned it in 1960 because it causes
liver cancer in rats.337
Thiourea was an antimycotic preservative. The
FDA banned it because it causes liver cancer in
rats.338
Violet 1 was an artificial color approved
for food use in 1950. It was delisted in 1973
because it was a suspected carcinogen in
rats.339
Yellow 1 was an artificial color approved for
food use in 1907. It was delisted in 1959.340
Yellow 2 was an artificial color approved for
food use in 1939. It was delisted in 1959.341
Yellow 3 and 4 were artificial colors approved
for food use in 1918 for coloring margarine.
They were found to be toxic to the livers of rats
and dogs. They were delisted in 1959.342
332 21 CFR 189.175.
333 S. S. Deshpande, Handbook of Food Toxicology. (New York:
Marcel Dekker, 2002). p. 231.
334 S. S. Deshpande, Handbook of Food Toxicology. (New York:
Marcel Dekker, 2002). p. 231.
335 S. S. Deshpande, Handbook of Food Toxicology. (New York:
Marcel Dekker, 2002). p. 234.
336 S. S. Deshpande, Handbook of Food Toxicology. (New York:
Marcel Dekker, 2002). p. 234.
337 “U.S. Food Unit Bars Safrol Flavoring.” New York Times,
December 2, 1960. 21 CFR 189.180.
338 21 CFR 189.190.
339 Richard J. Lewis, Sr., Food Additives Handbook. (New York:
Chapman & Hall, 1989). p. 16.
340 S. S. Deshpande, Handbook of Food Toxicology. (New York:
Marcel Dekker, 2002). p. 227.
341 S. S. Deshpande, Handbook of Food Toxicology. (New York:
Marcel Dekker, 2002). p. 227.
342 S. S. Deshpande, Handbook of Food Toxicology. (New York:
Marcel Dekker, 2002). p. 238.U.S. Right to Know 56
#15: A few other things
the agrichemical
industry doesn’t want
you to know about
them: crimes, scandals
and other wrongdoing
The agrichemical industry’s six major firms,
Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, DuPont, Bayer
and BASF, have been involved on so many
reprehensible activities that documenting
them all would require an entire book in itself.
In fact, entire books have been devoted to the
wrongdoing of two of these companies, while
an extensive website documents the misdeeds
of a third one.343
Following is a brief sketch of the crimes,
wrongdoing and other reprehensible acts of
these companies.
343 Jack Doyle, Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic
Century. (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004).
Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto:
Pollution, Corruption and the Control of our Food Supply. (New
York: New Press, 2010). Regarding Bayer, see the Coalition
Against Bayer Dangers website.
BASF
BASF is the world’s largest chemical company.
On September 21, 1921 a BASF fertilizer silo in
Oppau exploded, killing at least 550 people.344
It was one of the worst chemical disasters in
history.345
The companies BASF, Bayer, Hoescht and
three smaller companies founded IG Farben
(Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie
AG) in 1925. The war crimes of IG Farben are
so heinous as to be impossible to capture in a
short space. Following the Nuremberg Trials,
thirteen of its executives were imprisoned
for Nazi war crimes, for producing Zyklon B,
the asphyxiating gas used to kill countless
Jews and others during the Holocaust, and
the use of tens of thousands of slave laborers
at Auschwitz, and conducting involuntary
“medical” or “scientific” experiments on
prisoners.346
On July 28, 1948, an explosion at the BASF
plant in Ludwigshafen killed more than 200
people, and injured up to 3,000.347
In 1999, BASF pled guilty to a criminal
conspiracy charge and agreed to pay a $225
million fine for helping to coordinate cartels to
illegally fix prices of vitamins in the 1990s.348
Joel Klein, then chief of the antitrust division of
the U.S. Department of Justice, called it “the
most pervasive and harmful criminal antitrust
conspiracy ever uncovered.”349 Gary Spratling,
head of criminal enforcement of antitrust laws
344 Werner Abelshauser, Wolfgang von Hippel, Jeffrey Allan
Johnson and Raymond G. Stokes, German Industry and Global
Enterprise: BASF: The History of a Company. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 195-8.
345 See, for example “Chemical Cock-Ups: The 1921 Oppau Disaster
and its Aftermath.” BBC. BASF web page on its corporate
history, 1902-24
346 See, for example, Joseph Borkin, The Crime and Punishment of
I.G. Farben. (New York, Pocket Books, 1978). Diarmuid Jeffreys,
Hell’s Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler’s War Machine.
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008.) F. López-Muñoz, P.
GarcÃa-GarcÃa and C. Alamo, “The Pharmaceutical Industry
and the German National Socialist Regime: I.G. Farben and
Pharmacological Research.” Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and
Therapeutics, February 2009. 34: 67–77. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-
2710.2008.00972.x
347 Werner Abelshauser, Wolfgang von Hippel, Jeffrey Allan
Johnson and Raymond G. Stokes, German Industry and Global
Enterprise: BASF: The History of a Company. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 351.
348 “F. Hoffmann-La Roche and BASF Agree to Pay Record
Criminal Fines for Participating in International Vitamin Cartel.”
U.S. Department of Justice news release, May 20, 1999. USA v.
BASF Aktiengesellschaft plea agreement, May 20, 1999. “Four
Foreign Executives of Leading European Vitamin Firms Agree
to Plead Guilty to Participating in International Vitamin Cartel.”
U.S. Department of Justice news release, April 6, 2000.
349 David Barboza, “Tearing Down The Facade of ‘Vitamins Inc.’”
New York Times, October 10, 1999.www.usrtk.org 57
at DOJ, explained “Simply put, the vitamin
cartel was as bad as they get. Nothing was
left to chance — or, more accurately, to
competition.”350 In 2001, the European Union
fined BASF $260 million for the same price
fixing scheme. “This is the most damaging
series of cartels the commission has ever
investigated,” said Mario Monti, who was the
EU’s competition commissioner at the time.351
In 1997, another BASF subsidiary, Knoll
Pharmaceutical, paid $98 million to settle a
class-action lawsuit from approximately five
million patients over suppressing publication
of a study about its drug Synthroid. The study
“concluded that health-care costs could be cut
by $356 million a year if cheaper equivalents
were used instead of Synthroid.”352
Bayer
In 1898, Bayer began selling a new medicine
called “Heroin.” Bayer promoted it as a cold,
cough and “irritation” remedy for children
as late as 1912.353 According to Kenaz Filan’s
history of the poppy, “Believing (incorrectly)
that heroin produced less respiratory
depression than codeine, Bayer presented
heroin as a safer children’s cough suppressant.
It was also touted as a cure for morphine
addiction and a panacea against, among
other things, depression, bronchitis, asthma,
tuberculosis and stomach cancer.”354
The companies BASF, Bayer, Hoescht and
three smaller companies founded IG Farben
(Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG)
in 1925. See BASF profile above.
In the early 1970’s, Bayer’s fungicide Baycovin
(diethylpyrocarbonate) was used as a
preservative for wine, beer and fruit juices.
However, Baycovin was found to produce a
potent carcinogen, urethan.355 The FDA banned
350 Naftali Bendavid, “Vitamin Price-fixing Draws Record $755
Million in Fines.” Chicago Tribune, May 21, 1999.
351 Paul Meller, “Vitamin Producers Fined $752 Million.” New York
Times, November 22, 2001.
352 Meredith Wadman, “$100m Payout After Drug Data Withheld.”
Nature, August 21, 1997. See also Thomas H. Maugh II, “Drug
Firm Suppressed Test Data for Years, Doctors Say.” Los Angeles
Times, April 16, 1997. “BASF Unit To Pay $98 Million To Settle
Synthroid Suit.” New York Times, August 6, 1997.
353 See, for example, Jim Edwards, “Yes, Bayer Promoted Heroin
for Children — Here Are The Ads That Prove It.” Business
Insider, November 17, 2011. See also Ian Scott, “Heroin: A
Hundred-Year Habit.” History Today, Vol. 48, Issue 6, 1998.
354 Kenaz Filan, Power of the Poppy: Harnessing Nature’s Most
Dangerous Plant Ally. (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2011), p.
86.
355 Jane E. Brody, “Drink Preservative Found to Produce a
Carcinogen.” New York Times, December 21, 1971.
Baycovin in 1972.356
In April, 2003, Bayer pled guilty to a criminal
charge and agreed to pay $257 million in fines
and damages for defrauding Medicare in a
scheme to overcharge for its antibiotic, Cipro.
At the time, it was the largest Medicaid fraud
settlement in history.357
Bayer is a major producer of neonicotinoid
pesticides that have been linked to the decline
of bee populations. These pesticides were
banned for two years in Europe.358 Bayer has
mounted a massive campaign to keep its
pesticides on the market, in part by using the
classic tobacco industry strategy of pretending
to care. “Bayer is strictly committed to bee
health,” a Bayer spokesperson told the New
York Times. Hans Muilerman of Pesticide Action
Network Europe explained that Bayer does
“almost anything that helps their products
remaining on the market. Massive lobbying,
hiring P.R. firms to frame and spin, inviting
commissioners to show their plants and their
sustainability.”359
Dow Chemical
In 1957, a catastrophic nuclear meltdown nearly
occurred at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons
facility, near Denver. At the time, Dow Chemical
operated the facility for the U.S. Department of
Energy.360 The DOE has ranked Rocky Flats as
the “most dangerously contaminated site in the
nation’s nuclear weapons complex.”361
In the 1960’s, as many as 70 inmates at
Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia were given
large doses of dioxin, a highly toxic chemical,
in experiments for Dow Chemical. The dioxin
was spread on the inmates’ skin.362 Nearly 300
inmates sued Dow and others, but courts found
356 21 CFR 189.140.
357 Melody Petersen, “Bayer Agrees to Pay U.S. $257 Million in
Drug Fraud.” New York Times, April 17, 2003. “Bayer Agrees to
Biggest Medicaid Fraud Settlement.” Reuters/USA Today, April
16, 2003.
358 David Jolly, “Europe Bans Pesticides Thought Harmful to Bees.”
New York Times, April 29, 2013.
359 Danny Hakim, “Accused of Harming Bees, Bayer Researches a
Different Culprit.” New York Times, December 11, 2013. See also
Danny Hakim, “European Agency Warns of Risk to Humans in
Pesticides Tied to Bee Deaths.” New York Times, December 17,
2013.
360 Andrew Cohen, “A September 11th Catastrophe You’ve
Probably Never Heard About.” The Atlantic, September 10,
2012.
361 Tamara Jones, “U.S. Vows to Lift 30-Year Veil of Secrecy at
Weapons Plants.” Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1989.
362 William Robbins, “Dioxin Tests Conducted in 60’s on 70
Philadelphia Inmates, Now Unknown.” New York Times, July
17, 1983. See also Allen M. Hornblum, Acres of Skin: Human
Experiments at Holmesburg Prison. (London: Routledge, 1988).U.S. Right to Know 58
that the statute of limitations had expired.363
In 1965, Dow Chemical Co. began producing
the incendiary agent napalm for use during the
Vietnam War. Napalm is akin to jellied gasoline.
It sticks to skin, and often burns its victims to
death in great pain. For years, Dow was the
sole supplier of napalm to the Department
of Defense.364 Photos and other descriptions
of the impact of napalm horrified Americans,
and in response to nationwide protests and
boycotts, the company stopped producing
napalm in 1969.365
In 1995, Greenpeace released a report arguing
363 Joann Loviglio, “Albert M. Kligman, Dermatologist Who
Patented Retin-A, Dies at 93.” Associated Press/Washington
Post, February 22, 2010.
364 See, for example, “Dow Chemical and the Use of Napalm.” PBS,
September 22, 2005. Robert M. Neer, Napalm: An American
Biography. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2013)
365 “Dow Declares It Has Stopped Production of Napalm for
U.S.” Associated Press/New York Times, November 15, 1969.
See also Jack Doyle, Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and
the Toxic Century. (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press,
2004). Charlie Cray, “Dow: Stealing Our Future.” Institute for
Agriculture and Technology Policy, April 27, 1997.
that Dow is the “world’s largest producer of
chlorine and chorine-based products” and that
it is “likely the world’s largest root source of
dioxin,” which is a highly toxic chemical.366
In 2001, Dow Chemical acquired Union
Carbide,367 which was responsible for the
Bhopal poison gas disaster. On the night
of September 2-3, 1984, a Union Carbide
pesticide plant exploded in Bhopal, India,
releasing over 40 tons of methyl isocyanate
gas. It was the world’s worst industrial disaster.
According to Philip Bowring in the International
Herald Tribune, the disaster “immediately
killed some 2,250 people, and affected as
many as 500,000 more. Of that number, it is
estimated that between 15,000 and 30,000
people subsequently died as a consequence
of the accident and tens of thousands of
others remain sick.”368 Much of the toxic waste
remains in Bhopal, despite the profitability of
Dow Chemical.369 For the last thirteen years,
Dow has rejected any responsibility for the
survivors and victims of the Bhopal disaster. It
has repeatedly failed to appear or to respond
to Indian court summons for legal proceedings
about the Bhopal disaster.370
In 2005, DuPont Dow Elastomers, a subsidiary
of both Dow Chemical and DuPont, pled guilty
and paid an $84 million criminal fine for an
“international conspiracy to fix the prices of
synthetic rubber.”371
DuPont
In 1995, Federal District Court Judge J. Robert
Elliott fined DuPont $115 million for concealing
evidence in a 1993 trial about damage to plants
from its fungicide, Benlate. “‘Put in layperson’s
terms,’ Judge Elliott wrote, ‘Du Pont cheated.
And it cheated consciously, deliberately and
with purpose. It has committed a fraud against
this court.’”372
366 Jack Weinberg, ed.,“Dow Brand Dioxin: Dow Makes You Poison
Great Things.” Greenpeace, 1995.
367 Union Carbide Corporation web page on its corporate history.
368 Philip Bowring, “Remembering Bhopal.” International Herald
Tribune, June 16, 2012.
369 Somini Sengupta, “Decades Later, Toxic Sludge Torments
Bhopal.” New York Times, July 7, 2008. See also Suketu Mehta,
“A Cloud Still Hangs Over Bhopal.” New York Times, December
2, 2009.
370 P. Naveen, “Dow Chemical a No-show in Court Hearing over
Bhopal Disaster.” Times of India, November 13, 2014.
371 “DuPont Dow Elastomers to Plead Guilty and Pay $84 Million
Fine for Participating in a Synthetic Rubber Cartel.” U.S.
Department of Justice news release, January 19, 2005.
372 “Judge Fines Du Pont $115 Million for Concealing Trial
Evidence.” New York Times, August 22, 2995.www.usrtk.org 59
In Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, a DuPont
munitions plant “left behind a trail of lead and
mercury, contaminated soil and water and a
plume of toxic vapor still capable of leaking
into at least 450 houses.” According to John
Sinismer, a former mayor of Pompton Lakes,
“DuPont will try to get away with as much as
they can get away with anytime they can.”373
In 2005, DuPont Dow Elastomers, a subsidiary
of both Dow Chemical and DuPont, pled guilty
and paid an $84 million criminal fine for an
“international conspiracy to fix the prices of
synthetic rubber.” 374
On September 3, 2014, the U.S. Department of
Justice announced that DuPont and Atlantic
Richfield Co. would pay about $26 million to
clean up lead and arsenic contamination of
the Calumet residential neighborhood in East
Chicago, Indiana.375
Monsanto
The list of reprehensible conduct by the
Monsanto Corporation is the subject of a booklength
treatment by Marie-Monique Robin, The
World According to Monsanto.
376 What follows
is merely a brief recounting of a few key events.
Monsanto began producing the pesticide
DDT in 1944, along with about fifteen other
companies. In 1962, Rachel Carson released
Silent Spring, her seminal book on DDT. Carson
told the story of how DDT decimated some
bird species such as bald eagles and peregrine
falcons, because it made the birds’ eggshells
too thin, so they would break prematurely. EPA
banned DDT in 1972, because of its impacts on
the environment and human health. With minor
exceptions, in 2004, it was banned worldwide
by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent
Organic Pollutants.
Monsanto has thrice been found to have
produced false advertising related to Roundup
and its genetically engineered crops. In
2009, France’s highest court upheld two
lower French courts convicting Monsanto of
373 Peter Applebome, “Old Story of Pollution; New Urgency This
Time.” New York Times, January 31, 2010.
374 “DuPont Dow Elastomers to Plead Guilty and Pay $84 Million
Fine for Participating in a Synthetic Rubber Cartel.” U.S.
Department of Justice news release, January 19, 2005.
375 “U.S. and Indiana Enter into Settlement for $26 Million Cleanup
in East Chicago, Indiana.” U.S. Department of Justice news
release, September 3, 2014. See also Lauri Harvey Keagle,
“Health Concerns at Center of EC lead, Arsenic Cleanup.” The
Times of Northwest Indiana, September 4, 2014.
376 Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto:
Pollution, Corruption and the Control of our Food Supply. (New
York: New Press, 2010).
falsely advertising that its herbicide Roundup
is “biodegradable” and that it “left the soil
clean.”377 In 1999, the UK Advertising Standards
Authority condemned Monsanto for issuing
“wrong, unproven, misleading and confusing”
claims in its advertising.378 In 1996, the Attorney
General of New York State fined Monsanto
$50,000 for false advertising regarding claims
that Roundup is “environmentally friendly” and
biodegradable.379
In 1999, in a notable instance of public relations
trickery, Monsanto helped to pay protesters to
conduct a counter-demonstration in support
of genetically engineered food. The protest
was held in Washington DC, in front of an FDA
hearing on genetically engineered crops.380
Recent articles by the Associated Press raised
questions about the health risks of Monsanto’s
Roundup as it is used in Argentina. According
to AP, Argentine “doctors are warning that
uncontrolled pesticide applications could be
the cause of growing health problems…”381 In
response, Monsanto “criticized the AP report
as lacking in specifics about health impacts,”
the Associated Press reported, “though
the story cited hospital birth records, court
records, peer-reviewed studies, continuing
epidemiological surveys, pesticide industry
and government data, and a comprehensive
audit of agrochemical use in 2008-11 prepared
by Argentina’s bipartisan Auditor General’s
Office.”382
Syngenta
Syngenta produces atrazine, one of the most
widely used pesticides in the United States.
Atrazine was banned in the European Union in
October 2003, over concerns about whether it
is carcinogenic and an endocrine disruptor.383
According to the New York Times, atrazine
“has become among the most common
377 “Monsanto Guilty in ‘False Ad’ Row.” BBC, October 15, 2009.
378 John Arlidge, “Watchdog Slams Monsanto Ads.” Guardian,
February 27, 1999.
379 “In the Matter of Monsanto Company.” Attorney General of the
State of New York, Consumer Frauds and Protection Bureau,
Environmental Protection Bureau, 1996.
380 Melody Petersen, “Monsanto Campaign Tries to Gain Support
for Gene-Altered Food.” New York Times, December 8, 1999.
381 Michael Warren and Natacha Pisarenko, “Argentines Link
Health Problems To Agrochemicals.” Associated Press, October
20, 2013.
382 Michael Warren, “Monsanto Calls Glyphosate ‘Safe’ After AP
Report.” Associated Press, October 22, 2013.
383 See, for example, Jennifer Beth Sass and Aaron Colangelo,
“European Union Bans Atrazine, While the United States
Negotiates Continued Use.” International Journal of
Occupational and Environmental Health, July/September 2006,
12(3): 260-7.U.S. Right to Know 60
contaminants in American reservoirs and other
sources of drinking water” and “Recent studies
suggest that, even at concentrations meeting
current federal standards, the chemical may be
associated with birth defects, low birth weights
and menstrual problems.”384
Syngenta is also a major producer of
neonicotinoid pesticides, which have been
blamed for sharp declines in bee populations
across the planet. Europe has banned
these pesticides for two years due to their
destruction of bee populations.385 According
to a 2014 study by the International Union for
the Conservation of Nature, neonicotinoids are
“causing significant damage to a wide range
of beneficial invertebrate species and are a key
factor in the decline of bees.”386
Syngenta’s predecessor, Ciba-Geigy,387
produced a pesticide called chlordimeform
which was withdrawn from the market because
it was a suspected carcinogen.388
Syngenta’s predecessor, Ciba, paid a $62
million fine, including $3.5 million in criminal
penalties, for “illegally dumping laboratory
wastes, polluting groundwater and filing false
reports.” In 1992, in a much-polluted state,
the head of New Jersey’s environmental
prosecutions unit said “This is the biggest
environmental case we’ve ever had.”389 A New
York Times op-ed by Robert Hanley described
the “plume of poisons, about a mile square and
between 30 and 100 feet deep” produced by
Ciba-Geigy near Toms River, New Jersey.390
Ciba-Geigy’s promotion of the drug Ritalin, for
which it was the main manufacturer, for use
in children with attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, was questioned in a 2013 New York
384 Charles Duhigg, “Debating How Much Weed Killer Is Safe in
Your Water Glass.” New York Times, August 22, 2009.
385 David Jolly, “Europe Bans Pesticides Thought Harmful to Bees.”
New York Times, April 29, 2013. “Bee Survival in Europe.” New
York Times, October 25, 2013.
386 “Systemic Pesticides Pose Global Threat to Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services.” International Union for the Conservation
of Nature, June 24, 2014.
387 In 1996, Ciba and Sandoz merged to form Novartis. In 2000,
Novartis and AstraZenca merged their agrichemical businesses
to create Syngenta. See Syngenta’s web page describing its
company history.
388 See, for example, “2 Companies Will Stop Sales of Pesticide
Used on Cotton.” New York Times/Associated Press, September
8, 1988. Third World Network and Monitor staff, “Trouble
Again” and “The Rap on Ciba-Geigy.” Multinational Monitor,
1988.
389 Joseph F. Sullivan, “Ciba to Pay New Jersey For Illegal Waste
Dumping.” New York Times, February 29, 1992.
390 Robert Hanley, “Toxic Levels For an Aquifer Worry E.P.A.” New
York Times, October 10, 1989.
Times article on the “Selling of Attention Deficit
Disorder.”391
In 2005, EPA fined Syngenta $1.5 million
for “selling and distributing seed corn that
contained an unregistered genetically
engineered pesticide called Bt 10.”392 In 2004,
The U.S. Department of Agriculture fined
Syngenta $375,000 for selling the unapproved
genetically engineered corn seed, Bt 10.393
Conclusion
The agrichemical industry has enjoyed an
unusual ability to shape its environment – and
our environment – in so many meanings of the
word: political, legislative, economic, public
opinion, legal, regulatory, and, of course, the
natural environment, which now hosts vast
quantities of its genetically engineered crops
and the pesticides that accompany them.
Only time will tell what the long-term effects
of the agrichemical industry and its GMOs
and pesticides really are, whether they are as
shining and stellar as the industry’s PR machine
would have us believe, or whether that PR is
obfuscating something darker.
The history of this industry — and of PR
campaigns like the one it is carrying out –
suggests that the truth may well be closer to
the latter than the former.
There is no basis for entrusting our children,
families, other loved ones, and a fair portion
of our nation’s food supply, to agrichemical
companies whose rapsheets are so extensive
and appalling that you need entire books to
begin to describe them, and whose business
models have depended on concealing their
impact on human health and the environment.
As parents, consumers and citizens, we have a
right and a duty to demand the truth. We have
the right to know what is in our food, and how
it affects our health.
391 Alan Schwartz, “The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder.” New
York Times, December 14, 2013.
392 “EPA Fines Syngenta $1.5 Million for Distributing Unregistered
Genetically Engineered Pesticide.” U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency news release, December 21, 2006.
393 Tom Wright, “U.S. Fines Swiss Company Over Sale of Altered
Seed.” New York Times, April 9, 2005.www.usrtk.org 61
NAME OF CONTRIBUTOR NO ON 37
(CA)
NO ON 522
(WA)
NO ON 105
(CO)
NO ON 92
(OR)
TOTAL
CONTRIBUTIONS
Monsanto Company $8,112,867 $5,374,411 $3,351,276 $5,958,750 $22,797,304
E.I. Dupont De Nemours & Co./Dupont
Pioneer $5,400,000 $3,880,159 $3,000,000 $4,518,150 $16,798,309
Pepsico, Inc. $2,485,400 $2,352,966 $1,650,000 $2,350,000 $8,838,366
Coca-Cola North America $1,690,500 $1,520,351 $1,385,000 $1,170,000 $5,765,851
Dow AgroSciences LLC $2,000,000 $591,654 $300,000 $1,157,150 $4,048,804
Kraft Food Group $2,000,500 $1,030,000 $870,000 $3,900,500
General Mills, Inc. $1,230,300 $869,271 $820,000 $695,000 $3,614,571
Nestle USA, Inc. $1,461,600 $1,528,206 $2,989,806
Conagra Foods $1,176,700 $828,251 $250,000 $350,000 $2,604,951
Bayer Cropscience $2,000,000 $591,654 $2,591,654
BASF Plant Science $2,000,000 $500,000 $2,500,000
Grocery Manufacturers Association $2,002,000 $2,900 $169,190 $2,174,090
Syngenta Corporation $2,000,000 $2,000,000
Land O’lakes, Inc. $151,535 $144,878 $900,000 $760,000 $1,956,414
Kellogg Company $790,700 $322,050 $250,000 $500,000 $1,862,750
Hershey Company $518,900 $360,450 $380,000 $320,000 $1,579,350
The J.M. Smucker Company $555,000 $349,978 $345,000 $295,000 $1,544,978
Mondelez International $181,000 $210,336 $720,000 $1,111,336
Bimbo Bakeries USA $422,900 $137,460 $270,000 $230,000 $1,060,360
Campbell Soup Company $598,000 $384,888 $982,888
Smithfield Foods, Inc. $683,900 $200,000 $883,900
Del Monte Foods Company $674,100 $125,677 $799,777
Abbott Nutrition $234,500 $185,025 $190,000 $160,000 $769,525
Hormel Foods Corporation $467,900 $76,803 $85,000 $85,000 $714,703
Flowers Foods, Inc. $182,100 $205,099 $250,000 $637,199
Cargill, Inc. $233,236 $143,133 $135,000 $111,000 $622,369
Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. $409,100 $80,295 $80,000 $35,000 $604,395
Bumble Bee Foods, LLC $420,600 $52,365 $50,000 $45,000 $567,965
Mccormick & Company, Inc. $248,200 $148,369 $130,000 $526,569
Biotechnology Industry Organization $500,000 $15,085 $10,750 $525,835
H.J. Heinz Company $500,000 $500,000
Mars Incorporated $498,350 $498,350
Unilever $467,100 $467,100
Pinnacle Foods Group LLC $266,100 $175,425 $441,525
Dean Foods Company $253,950 $174,553 $428,503
Council For Biotechnology Information $375,000 $12,827 $387,827
Bunge North America, Inc. $248,600 $137,896 $386,496
Hillshire Brands Company $85,900 $282,775 $368,675
Appendix A:
Agrichemical and food company spending on GMO campaigns
Since 2012, the agrichemical and food industries have spent more than $103 million to defeat
state ballot initiatives in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington for labeling of genetically
engineered foods. U.S. Right to Know 62
NAME OF CONTRIBUTOR NO ON 37
(CA)
NO ON 522
(WA)
NO ON 105
(CO)
NO ON 92
(OR)
TOTAL
CONTRIBUTIONS
Sara Lee Corporation $343,600 $343,600
Rich Products Corporation $243,537 $34,911 $30,000 $308,448
Welch Foods, Inc. $167,000 $41,893 $35,000 $30,000 $273,893
Knouse Foods Cooperative, Inc. $160,309 $20,946 $25,000 $20,000 $226,255
Sunny Delight Beverages Company $134,496 $30,547 $25,000 $25,000 $215,043
Mead Johnson Nutrition Company $80,000 $50,000 $50,000 $180,000
Dole Packaged Foods Company $171,262 $171,262
Clement Pappas & Company, Inc. $99,478 $30,547 $130,025
Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company $116,866 $116,866
Tree Top, Inc. $110,600 $110,600
Shearers Foods Inc $0 $36,656 $35,000 $30,000 $101,656
Hero North America $79,074 $79,074
Faribault Foods, Inc. $76,000 $76,000
Solae, LLC $59,215 $59,215
Clorox Company $39,015 $17,455 $56,470
McCain Foods USA, Inc. $50,593 $50,593
Bruce Foods Corporation $38,500 $4,364 $42,864
Godiva Chocolatier, Inc. $41,788 $41,788
Starlite Media LLC $41,785 $41,785
B&G Foods, Inc. $40,000 $40,000
Goya De Puerto Rico, Inc. $35,400 $35,400
Michael Foods $30,000 $30,000
Bush Brothers & Company $23,565 $23,565
C. H. Guenther & Son, Inc. $23,402 $23,402
Goya Foods Great Lakes $21,300 $21,300
Morton Salt $20,275 $20,275
Hirzel Canning Company $14,687 $14,687
Reily Foods Company $13,215 $13,215
Colorado Farm Bureau $11,298 $11,298
Inventure Foods, Inc. $10,846 $10,846
Nutrition Edge Communications $10,300 $10,300
Niagara Bottling $10,000 $10,000
Snack Food Association $10,000 $10,000
Croplife America $9,500 $9,500
Moody Dunbar, Inc. $5,000 $2,619 $7,619
Sargento Foods, Inc. $7,185 $7,185
Idahoan Foods, Llc $7,182 $7,182
Colorado Corn Growers Assn. $5,870 $5,870
Post Foods, LLC $5,150 $5,150
Betaseed Inc. $5,000 $5,000
Snyder’s-Lance, Inc. $5,000 $5,000
Colorado Legislative Services $3,125 $3,125
Rocky Mountain Food Industry Assn. 2376 $2,376
Appendix A (continued)www.usrtk.org 63
NAME OF CONTRIBUTOR NO ON 37
(CA)
NO ON 522
(WA)
NO ON 105
(CO)
NO ON 92
(OR)
TOTAL
CONTRIBUTIONS
PCS Administration (USA) Inc. (Also
Known As ‘Potashcorp’) Pac (Out Of State
Pac)
$2,000 $2,000
House-Autry Mills, Inc. $1,077 $1,077
Four K Farms $1,000 $1,000
JMR Farms, Inc. $1,000 $1,000
Tri-Cal Inc. $1,000 $1,000
TOTAL $103,816,800
Appendix A (continued)
While industry expenditures on state ballot initiatives are well-disclosed (thanks, in part, to legal
action by the Washington State Attorney General), the total cost to industry is less clear for other
aspects of their campaigns to defend GMOs.
Agrichemical and food companies do not report – nor are they required to by law to report – how
much of their federal lobbying or campaign contributions are directly attributable to their interests
in any particular issue, such as any issues related to GMOs or the labeling of them. The same
problem exists for state lobbying and campaign finance disclosures. However, the Environmental
Working Group found that companies opposed to GMO labeling “have disclosed $27.5 million
[in federal lobbying expenses] in the first half of 2014 that made reference to GE labeling– nearly
three times as much as they disclosed in all of 2013.”394
Similarly, the agrichemical and food companies keep secret their PR spending on defending
GMOs. The same is true for what the agrichemical industry has spent on its GMO Answers
PR campaign. However, Reuters reported that the Council for Biotechnology Information has
“committed to spending millions more annually for several more years on this campaign,” and that
it is a “multimillion-dollar campaign.”395
Then there are litigation fees. At this time, it is unknown how much the industry will spend in its
lawsuit to defeat the Vermont GMO labeling law. USA Today estimated that Vermont’s legal fees
would be $5-8 million if it lost the litigation,396 and that may be a reasonable estimate for industry
litigation costs as well.
394 Libby Foley, “The Anti-Label Lobby.” Environmental Working Group, September 3, 2014.
395 Carey Gillam, “U.S. GMO Crop Companies Double Down on Anti-labeling Efforts.” Reuters, July 29, 2014.
396 Elizabeth Weise, “Vermont’s GMO Labeling Rule Likely Won’t Affect Stocks in the Near-Term.” USA Today, April 24, 2014. U.S. Right to Know 64
Acknowledgements
I’ve had the benefit of the best colleagues anyone could imagine. For this report, I’d especially like
to thank Charlie Cray and Stacy Malkan for their excellent ideas and suggestions. Thanks, too, to
Stewart Fist, Lisa Graves, Cheri Johnson, Zack Kaldveer, Calliope Ruskin and Juliet Schor.
About the author
Gary Ruskin is the co-founder and executive director of U.S. Right to Know, a new nonprofit
organization working on food issues. We expose what food companies don’t want us to know about
our food. We stand up for the right to know what’s in our food. We bring accountability to Big Food
and its compliant politicians.
In 2012, Gary was campaign manager for Proposition 37, a statewide ballot initiative for labeling
of genetically engineered food in California. For fourteen years, he directed the Congressional
Accountability Project, which opposed corruption in the U.S. Congress. For nine years, he was
executive director and co-founder of Commercial Alert, which opposed the commercialization of
every nook and cranny of our lives and culture. Gary was also director of the Center for Corporate
Policy. He has often been quoted in major newspapers across the country and has appeared
scores of times on national TV news programs. He received his undergraduate degree in religion
from Carleton College, and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s John F.
Kennedy School of Government.
Except where otherwise noted, the contents of this report is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
Graphic design: Cheri Johnson
