The GM industry’s latest PR drive includes a new website aimed at combating mounting opposition to GM foods.

You need to register to be able to post comments. Go to www.GMOAnswers.com to do so and challenge each of their misleading entries, so members of the public who check out the site get a better picture of reality. (e.g., include links to studies like Jack Heinemann’s recent one, etc.) Time to match their PR and outreach! A good resource for doing this:http://earthopensource.org/index.php/reports/gmo-myths-and-truths

1.’GMO Answers’ Website Launched By Monsanto, DuPont, More
2.GMO Re-Education: Monsanto, Dow and Biotech Firms Unite to Launch Disinformation Site

EXTRACT: Biotech is on the defensive now – they have been backed into a corner by activists who insist that the GMOs in our food supply, at the very least, be labeled, so that we can make an informed decision about what we feed our families. This false transparency is their last ditch effort to head off pro-labeling legislation and to keep their toxins hidden in our food supply.

…they’ve invited us to “Be skeptical. Be open. We want to hear from you.” Let’s give them what they asked for, shall we? (item 2)
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1.’GMO Answers’ Website Launched By Monsanto, DuPont, More
Carey Gillam
Reuters, 29 July 2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/gmo-answers-website_n_3671483.html

A group of biotech seed companies on Monday launched an online forum to combat mounting opposition to genetically modified foods among consumer groups and activists.

The website, www.GMOAnswers.com, is designed as a “central online resource” for information on genetically modified organisms and their use in agriculture and food production, the Biotechnology Industry Organization said.

The website is backed in part by Monsanto Co, DuPont , Dow AgroSciences, a unit of Dow Chemical Co, and other companies whose products include seeds that have been genetically altered to improve food production.

The website is part of a broad campaign by the biotech industry to beat back growing calls for GMO food labeling and for tighter regulation of the biotech seed industry in the United States. European opposition to GMOs is so strong that Monsanto this month said it would withdraw all pending requests to grow new types of GMO crops.

As part of the multi-year, multimillion-dollar campaign, the biotech seed companies will also open some of their fields and offices to visitors and will host face-to-face forums around the country with consumers, according to Cathleen Enright, spokeswoman for the website.

Paul Schickler, president of DuPont Pioneer, the agricultural unit of DuPont, said anti-GMO forces have been using the Internet very effectively to get their message out, and industry wants to use the same strategy to combat what he said were notions “not always based in fact.”

“This … is an effort to increase the dialogue. That is all we want,” said Schickler. “Dialogue is good. Over time I think we’ll come to a common understanding.”

Critics predicted the industry effort to change consumer skepticism would fail, saying there is ample scientific evidence that GMO foods can contribute to health problems in animals and humans, and hurt the environment.

“This latest effort will likely do little to stop the consumer backlash against genetically engineered foods that has been brewing for years,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, a consumer organization.

The most popular gene-altered crops withstand dousings of weed-killing chemicals and produce their own insect-killing toxins. Biotech corn, canola, soybeans, and other crops are used in human food and animal feed around the world, and biotech companies say they are heavily regulated and thoroughly tested.

Last year, Monsanto and other industry members spent $40 million to defeat a ballot initiative in California to require labeling of GMO food. Similar initiatives are under way in several other U.S. states and at the federal level.

Grocery retailer Whole Foods said this year it would require suppliers to label any product made with genetically modified ingredients. And the Natural Products Association, which represents 1,900 food industry players, has called for a uniform national standard for GMO labeling.

Burrito chain Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc recently became the first major U.S. restaurant chain to disclose GMO ingredients and is moving to remove such products from its supply chain.
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2.GMO Re-Education: Monsanto, Dow and Biotech Firms Unite to Launch Disinformation Site
Daisy Luther
The Organic Pepper, July 29 2013
http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/gmo-re-education-monsanto-dow-and-biotech-firms-unite-to-launch-disinformation-site-07292013

If you had a question about how to protect yourself from a criminal known to break into houses in your neighborhood, would you ask him how to protect your home and then take his suggestions, or would you be suspicious he might be answering them in a way that would make your home even easier to encroach?

If you had a question about the honesty and integrity of a person in an authority position, would you ask that person to investigate himself and then accept his findings? (I mean, if you were a normal person, not if your name is Barack or Eric.)

If a company came out with a new medication that promised to cure your ills overnight, would you ask the company that produced it whether it was safe and trust them to be honest, or would you feel that their answer might be colored by their urge to make a buck?
So why on earth would anyone possibly believe that the likes of Monsanto, Dow, and Dupont would be spreading anything but sales-driven propaganda on their new website GMOAnswers?

Are they serious or is this some kind of big public relations joke being played out on a national platform?  Are we being punked?

What kind of person would look up their answers on a website SPONSORED by the very people who are putting out the toxic garbage they’d like us to believe is food?
Welcome to the compendium of disinformation!

In the most outrageous, blatant case of the foxes being put in charge of the henhouse that I have ever seen, the big biotech companies got together and launched their propaganda site GMOAnswers today. It is run by the Council for Biotechnology Information, whose members include Monsanto, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Syngenta, Bayer CropScience and BASF. The site contains a heavily moderated question and answer forum and a complete compendium of disinformation in the section called “Explore GMOs”.

They purport that the website is an acknowledgement that they need to change:

*Genetically modified organisms — GMOs — are a major topic of discussion today. Across our society, media and the Internet, a growing number of people have shared a wide range of questions and emotions on the topic – ranging from excitement and optimism to skepticism and even fear.

*GMO Answers was created to do a better job answering your questions — no matter what they are — about GMOs. The biotech industry stands 100 percent behind the health and safety of the GM crops on the market today, but we acknowledge that we haven’t done the best job communicating about them – what they are, how they are made, what the safety data says.

*This website is the beginning of a new conversation among everyone who cares about how our food is grown.

*Join us. Ask tough questions. Be skeptical. Be open. We look forward to sharing answers. (source)

And they tout these 5 principals:

*Respecting people around the world and their right to choose healthy food products that are best for themselves and their families;
*Welcoming and answering questions on all GMO topics;
*Making GMO information, research and data easy to access and evaluate and supporting safety testing of GM products;  including allowing independent safety testing of our products through validated science-based methods;
*Supporting farmers as they work to grow crops using precious resources more efficiently, with less impact on the environment and producing safe, nutritious food and feed products;
*Respecting farmers’ rights to choose the seeds that are best for their farms, businesses and communities and providing seed choices that include non-GM seeds based on market demands.

The most notable things that I saw about the “discussions” there is that the “experts” are all pro-GMO.  There is a very subtle bias against those with concerns, despite the fact that many of them are quoting real statistics and genuine peer-reviewed studies. How many “experts” that are anti-GMO are being moderated right out of the discussion using the “House Rules“?

This website, sadly, is nothing more than an indoctrination vehicle for furthering the myths that Monsanto wants you to believe.

Biotech is on the defensive now – they have been backed into a corner by activists who insist that the GMOs in our food supply, at the very least, be labeled, so that we can make an informed decision about what we feed our families. This false transparency is their last ditch effort to head off pro-labeling legislation and to keep their toxins hidden in our food supply.

What can we do?

I’ve created my own profile over there so that I can “join the discussion.” If you decide to join me, please follow the House Rules to the best of your ability and additionally, remember that you want to garner respect, not scorn, so:

*Be courteous – we are in the right and we should take the high road in conversations
*Don’t be threatening
*Don’t use foul language
*Don’t be abusive towards others, even when you disagree or when they are abusive towards you
*Use facts and cite sources
*If you are censored unfairly, take screen shots and let those tell your story

If other people who don’t know a lot about GMOs come to the forum and see anti-GMO activists scrapping it out in an uncivil fashion, it will close their eyes to the message we are trying to share. Don’t be afraid to be passionate, but please remember that you are representing all of us who say no to GMO.

Do you remember when Cheerios launched the Facebook App that allowed consumers to share what they really thought about the toxin-laden cereal? That was a PR move that backfired dramatically when users bombarded the company’s page with anti-GMO messages.

Biotech must have missed that, because they’ve invited us to “Be skeptical. Be open. We want to hear from you.”

Let’s give them what they asked for, shall we?

About the author:

Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor.  Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at<a ‘+path+’\”+prefix+’:'+addy43508+’\'=”">’);document.write(addy43508);document.write(‘<\/a>’);</SCRIPT>daisy@theorganicprepper.ca

http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2013/14882-seralini-validated-by-new-efsa-guidelines-on-long-term-gmo-experiments

Food Safety Authority’s guidelines on long-term GM feeding studies validate Prof Seralini’s study, which found serious health effects from NK603 maize.

Seralini validated by new EFSA guidelines on long-term GMO experiments
Comment by Claire Robinson of GMWatch and Earth Open Source, 31 July 2013

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has issued guidelines for two-year whole food feeding studies to assess the risk of long-term toxicity from GM foods.
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3347.htm

This is a fascinating document which largely validates the methodology and choices of Prof GE Seralini in his 2012 study on GM maize NK603 – methodology and choices that EFSA and countless other critics previously attacked him for.

Particular points to note:

1. EFSA admits that “no standardised protocol or guidelines exist for this type of study and [industry] applicants have to adapt protocols” – as Seralini did, too.

2. EFSA says the same strain of rat that was used in the 90-day study on the GM food should be used in the longer study – thus vindicating Seralini’s use of the Sprague-Dawley rat, which Monsanto used in its 90-day study on the same maize.

3. EFSA says animals should be fed ad libitum, which Seralini did, but which critics complained made it impossible to measure individual food and water consumption.

4. EFSA admits that you do not necessarily need a narrow and fixed hypothesis and that such a study can be “exploratory”, in spite of its previous claim that Seralini’s experiment was flawed because it (according to EFSA) didn’t have a clear hypothesis or objective.

5. EFSA recommends against using the extra control or “reference diet” groups commonly included by Monsanto in its 90-day studies and fed a variety of supposedly non-GM diets, on the grounds that the concurrent controls are the valid controls AND what is being tested is the difference between the GM variety and the non-GM comparator. Seralini was criticised by many for not including these spurious extra control groups and for thus having “inadequate controls”.

6. EFSA cautions strongly AGAINST relying on historical control data and if it is used, restricts it to within 5 years of the current experiment and to the same testing facility. This is a much stricter requirement than industry ever applies; industry uses ancient data from a wide variety of sources.

EFSA says: “The use of historical control data should be considered with caution. The historical controls might not be useful because the incidences of neoplastic (or non-neoplastic) lesions would possibly be from control animals kept on different diets than the diet applied in whole food/feed study, and because the diet itself (high/low fat, type of fat, % of carbohydrate, type of carbohydrate, etc.) can influence the formation of neoplastic or non-neoplastic lesions. Where the diet formulation used in the experiment for the control groups cannot be demonstrated to be equivalent to that used for the generation of historical control data, the inclusion may be considered of an additional control group (as similar as possible to the historical controls), in addition to the concurrent control group(s).”

It’s unfortunate that in rightly condemning the use of historical control data, however, EFSA allows in those extra control or “reference” groups that it rightly condemned in point (5) above.

7. EFSA recommends a minimum of 10 animals per sex per group for the chronic toxicity phase, the same number that Seralini used.

8. EFSA recommends housing animals in pairs, as Seralini did, so individual food consumption cannot be measured.

9. EFSA requires an a priori power analysis to ensure appropriate sample size, depending on the effect size that is being looked for. We’ve never noticed the GM industry doing one of these, resulting in experiments that are virtually guaranteed not to find anything. For Seralini’s team’s comment on this, see:
http://www.ijbs.com/v05p0706.htm

Overall, we’re pleased to see EFSA taking on board our cautionary lessons on spurious “reference” control groups and historical control data (even if in the same document EFSA subsequently allows the use of both!), as well as validating the aspects of Seralini’s experiment that he was most criticised for.

1. Scientists from Brazil’s GMO regulatory agency protest dismissal of Seralini study
2. Monsanto’s NK603 corn safety meets no consensus in Brazil
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1. Scientists from Brazil’s GMO regulatory agency protest dismissal of Seralini study
GMWatch comment
21 May 2013

The outrageous behaviour of government GMO regulatory bodies around the world in trying to discredit the 2012 Seralini study continues to be exposed. The latest episode concerns CTNBio, the Brazilian commission that regulates GMOs.

Seralini’s study found that a Monsanto GM maize, NK603, and Roundup herbicide caused organ damage and increased rates of tumours and premature death in rats.

In Brazil, four pro-GM scientists, two of whom were members of CTNBio, criticized Seralini’s study in a report of October 2012. Their report was published as the view of CNTBio as a whole, in combination with Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation:
http://www.ctnbio.gov.br/upd_blob/0001/1752.pdf (in Portuguese)

But now it’s clear that no consensus existed in CTNBio. In March 2013, 15 scientist members and former members of CNTBio wrote a detailed scientific counter-report which debunks the arguments of the four pro-GM scientists’ report and supports the validity of Seralini’s findings.

The counter-report, addressed to the president of CTNBio, says that the four pro-GM scientists’ report “cannot be considered to be the position of the Commission, given that it was not evaluated by a plenary session. Even if it had been, the opinion issued by these doctors does not represent a consensus in this Commission.”

The counter-report concludes, “The study that is the object of this letter raises pertinent scientific questions about the chronic toxicity of a certain transgenic corn, NK603… In our understanding, the statistical analysis of the biochemical and biological data is sufficient to support the finding of what is called a situation of risk. Moreover, it supports the conclusions and title of the article [by Seralini et al], corroborating the clinical and anatomopathological observations and those with optical and electronic microscopy. In addition to the toxicological data provided about the long term consumption of NK603 corn, with or without the associated herbicide, the article by Seralini et al. (2012) supports questionings about the biosecurity and risk evaluation of the transgenic plants.”

CTNBio in a plenary session subsequently voted in favour of the original critique of Seralini and against the counter-report. But CTNBio and its president, Flavio Finardi Filho, stand accused by the landless peasant farmers’ movement MST of having strong ties to the biotech industry:
http://bit.ly/14sndwc (Google translation)

The Brazilian counter-report on Seralini’s study, signed by ten current members of CTNBio and five former members, is available in Portuguese here:
http://aspta.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/parecer-NK-603.pdf

The English translation of the counter-report is here:
http://aspta.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/NK603-20may2013.pdf

The Brazilian episode reflects what happened in Belgium, where an expert panel consulted by the Belgian Biosafety Advisory Council issued a nuanced opinion on Seralini’s study, with a dissenting minority opinion:
http://gmwatch.org/latest-listing/52-2013/14674

The arguments against Seralini’s study have been answered by Seralini’s team (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23146697) as well as on the public information website, gmoseralini.org.
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2. Monsanto’s NK603 corn safety meets no consensus in Brazil
Official body rejects French study but decision was reached by vote, researchers complain
Press release
Grupo de Estudos em Agrobiodiversidade GEA, May 20 2013
http://aspta.org.br/campanha/press-release-nk603/
[Slightly edited by GMWatch; original at link above]

On September 2012, another study associating the consumption of genetically modified crops with health risks appeared in the scientific literature. Food and Chemical Toxicology published a study headed by Gilles-Eric Seralini, from the French University of Caen, showing that rats fed GM maize NK603 tolerant to glyphosate herbicides (Roundup), as well as rats exposed to Roundup alone, showed higher propensity to develop tumours. The authors thus concluded that “All treatments in both sexes enhanced large tumor incidence by 2–3-fold in comparison to our controls but also for the number of mammary tumors in comparison to the same Harlan Sprague Dawley strain”.

The study provoked furor among official biosafety bodies. Besides demonstrating serious problems caused by a product already on the market, it highlighted major flaws in the risk assessment criteria used by regulators. The first large tumours, for instance, appeared in the 4th and 7th months of the study, in males and females respectively, though regulators never ask for tests longer than 3 months.

It was no different in Brazil. The Foreign Affair Ministry (MRE) asked CTNBio – National Biosafety Commission to report on the issue. Its president replied that he had nominated a special committee to answer MRE’s demand. The document produced was signed by four experts and repeats criticisms already answered by Seralini and colleagues in several interviews and in a letter to the editors published by the same journal, Food and Chemical Toxicology.

The CTNBio president’s paper was only discussed by CTNBio’s other members in April. After a hot debate, four members voted against it, stating that, given the way the rapporteurs were chosen, the document failed to consider contradictory views that emerged inside the Commission. Fourteen members were in favour of the document, although one knows that science is not made on a vote base.

On the same occasion a vote was taken on a request presented by the National Consumers Forum (FNEDC) demanding CTNBio to reassess the decision which released NK603 for commercial cultivation in the country and asking for the suspension of all seed containing this GM event. Also by a 14 to 4 vote the Commission refused the consumers’ petition.

A third debate still on NK603 took place. Fourteen members and former CTNBio members [this now seems to have grown to 15, judging by the signatures on the counter-report] presented a counter-report citing studies in support of the French group and their data and contesting the critiques they received. The counter-report also mentions different levels of rigour [applied to studies supportive and critical of GMOs], which could be understood as double standards, since a great deal of the criticism of the original study would perfectly fit the data submitted to CTNBio by the company that developed NK603. Experts say they would welcome the same rigorous standards being applied to all applications examined by CTNBio. Unless, that is, only studies showing negative impacts of GMs should be reviewed with such care. Again the debate ended with a 14 to 4 vote [against the counter-report].

The refusal to repeat a study correcting its methodological failings is a symptom of the prevalence of a belief that overcomes the scientific method, sounding more like a desire to support the technology and a dismissal of the opportunity to better understand the risks posed by GM crops.
…
An English translation of the Brazilian document in support of Séralini’s et al study can be found here: http://aspta.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/NK603-20may2013.pdf
- Media contacts:
Paulo Kageyama (English) - 

pkageyama@usp.br

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Antonio Andrioli (German) – 

antonioandrioli@yahoo.com.br

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Gilles Ferment (French) – 

gferment@hotmail.com

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1. 프랑스 세라리니 교수팀의 연구 결과

 2. 세라리니 교수팀의 장기 독성 연구 배경

 3. 세라리니 교수 연구팀의 연구결과에 대한 산업계 및 과학계의 반응

-비판과 반박

4. 이제는 GM 곡물의 장기 독성에 대한 과학적 규명에 나서야 할 때

The following article by Jonathan Matthews of GMWatch was called “the definitive analysis of the Séralini affair” by John Vidal, environment editor of The Guardian, on Twitter.
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Smelling a corporate rat
Jonathan Matthews
Spinwatch, 12 December 2012

Article/pdf with links to sources: http://bit.ly/TOZ3Fo
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14514:smelling-a-corporate-rat-seralini-attackers-exposed

A new study suggesting a Monsanto GM maize and the company’s Roundup herbicide may pose serious health risks has been widely attacked, not just by scientists and commentators but also by scientific bodies and regulators. This article by Jonathan Matthews of GMWatch looks at the role of industry-linked scientists and lobbyists in a campaign aimed at getting the paper retracted. Spinwatch also plans to publish a separate piece looking at some of the study’s European critics, including science academies and the European Food Safety Authority.

At the end of November Reuters ran the headline Science Journal Urged to Retract Monsanto GM Study and New Scientist also reported the growing pressure for retraction. These articles marked the latest stage in a campaign that kicked off the moment the study was published in mid-September, when researchers led by Prof. Gilles-Eric Seralini at the University of Caen in France announced their findings of serious health problems in rats that had been fed a Monsanto maize genetically engineered to be resistant to the company’s herbicide Roundup, as well as in rats just fed low doses of the herbicide itself. In both cases the rats fed with the GM maize and/or minute amounts of the herbicide in water were several times more likely to develop lethal tumours and suffer severe liver and kidney damage when compared to the controls.

Science Media Centre spearheads the attack

Although the publication of the results of the long-term feeding trial in Food and Chemical Toxicology made front page news in France, it got a very different reception in the English-speaking world. This was thanks to the rapid rebuttal efforts of the London-based Science Media Centre (SMC), which almost as soon as the study was published began spoon-feeding journalists with ready-made quotes from scientists savaging the study.

The SMC’s director Fiona Fox was subsequently reported as saying that she took pride in the fact that the SMC’s “emphatic thumbs down had largely been acknowledged throughout UK newsrooms: apart from the Mail, only the Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times covered the story in their print editions – and both used quotes supplied by the Science Media Centre.” She added that several television news programmes had also rejected the story after reading the quotes

The SMC’s quotes were pumped out internationally via its clones, like the Australian Science Media Centre, with like-minded local experts layered on the top. The quotes were also circulated to the media by Monsanto and other GM lobby groups. As a result, the quotes ended up in a lot of media coverage worldwide. One even popped up in the New York Times along with the scathing comments of Bruce M. Chassy, professor emeritus of food science at the University of Illinois.

Retraction campaign kicks in

Another key player in whipping up hostility to the paper was the American business magazine Forbes. In the ten days following the study’s release, Forbes published no less than six separate attack pieces targeting not just the research but also the researchers. The first two pieces drew extensively on the quotes from the Science Media Centre and ran with them, but the Forbes piece that grabbed the most attention, particularly on social media, was one that kicked off with a headline that labelled the paper a fraud. The article went on to accuse Prof. Seralini not just of “gross scientific misconduct” but also of having “a long and sordid history” of “activism”. The article concluded by bluntly telling the editors of Food and Chemical Toxicology that the only “honorable course of action for the journal would be to retract the paper immediately”.

The retraction campaign was by then well under way. An online petition was up and running, demanding in the name of “the scientific community” that Seralini hand over all his raw data. The petition was aggressively promoted via social media, often with the implication that the researchers had something to hide. The assertion that the study was “fraudulent” obviously played well into this campaign, which culminated in the Reuters and New Scientist pieces reporting the retraction calls. Both these articles reported on the petition, as well as containing lacerating comments from two UK scientists – comments once again provided by the Science Media Centre.

One of the published comments – from Prof. Maurice Moloney – said it was “appalling” that such a study should ever have been published in a respected journal. And a researcher from the UK’s John Innes Centre demanded to know whether it was not “time for Food and Chemical Toxicology to retract the manuscript?” The only other scientist quoted claimed the publication of the paper was more than just “a dangerous case of failure of the peer-review system.” It represented a threat to not just the credibility of the journal but “the scientific method overall”. This apocalyptic claim was backed up by the news that hundreds of outraged scientists had signed the online petition.

Who’s behind the retraction petition?

Writing in The Guardian at the end of September, John Vidal described the attacks already raining down on Seralini and his team as “a triumph for the scientific and corporate establishment which has used similar tactics to crush other scientists”. These included, Vidal said, “Arpad Pusztai of the Rowett Institute in Scotland, who was sacked after his research suggested GM potatoes damaged the stomach lining and immune system of rats, and David Quist and Ignacio Chapela”, who studied the flow of genes from illegally planted GM maize to Mexican indigenous maize.

The vociferous attacks on Quist and Chapela resulted in the apparent retraction of their paper by the journal Nature, even though such a move was not supported by the majority of its reviewers and subsequent research confirmed the paper’s main finding. But, as the French journalist Benjamin Sourice has pointed out, the simplest way to definitively discredit a study and nullify its impact is to pressurise the journal that published it to retract it from its list of publications.

In the case of Quist and Chapela, an investigation that I undertook with the journalist and author Andy Rowell of Spinwatch revealed how the campaign of retraction had been carefully orchestrated from the start by Monsanto’s PR people. It used proxies to whip up feeling against the lead author by branding Dr Chapela an “activist” rather than a scientist and by maintaining his findings were bogus and arrived at through collusion with environmental NGOs. Our research, which was widely reported in both print and broadcast media, suggested that at the heart of that retraction campaign sat Monsanto’s former chief internet strategist and director of corporate communications. Jay Byrne had gone on to found his own internet PR company v-Fluence, based like Monsanto in the corporation’s home town of St Louis.

Although Byrne appeared to be the campaign’s chief architect, its principal conduit was the lobby group AgBioWorld, overseen by the GM scientist CS Prakash.  The “ipetition” on Seralini contains no information as to who sponsored it, but its first signatory is CS Prakash. Prakash also seems to have set up an earlier more primitive version of the petition, which clearly identifies him as its sponsor.

Some time after GMWatch flagged up the likely role of Prakash and AgBioWorld in the ipetition, the organisation acknowledged its authorship in a press release which asserted that “the petitioning scientists are calling on the publishing journal editors to retract the Seralini study” if he failed to give in to their demand that he hand over all his data.

The AgBioWorld press release contained a quote by Bruce Chassy, who was also the first signatory of the earlier Seralini petition. Chassy was also the co-author of the Forbes piece accusing Seralini of fraud.

The article’s other author was Henry Miller, a darling of the rightwing press who operates out of the Hoover Institution, among other industry backed lobby groups. Miller, like Chassy, has long been associated with Prakash’s AgBioWorld. Miller recently co-authored another vitriolic piece on GM for Forbes, denouncing the “fear profiteers” of the anti-GM “protest industry”. Miller’s co-author on that occasion was none other than former Monsanto PR boss Jay Byrne of v-Fluence. Tellingly, Michael Pollan, the renowned New York Times food writer and professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, described the piece by Byrne and Miller as a breathtaking example of “the Big Lie”.

Byrne hasn’t published any media pieces on Seralini. But it is apparent from Byrne’s Twitter account that he was almost solely preoccupied with discrediting the Seralini study from the day of its publication for about the next month. Byrne describes himself on Twitter as v-Fluence CEO and  as “Contributing author, Let Them Eat Precaution”, a book on GM edited by Jon Entine. Entine, as it happens, is the author of probably more articles to date attacking Seralini than any other commentator.

Agribiz apologist

Entine’s book emerged out of an American Enterprise Institute conference overseen by Entine at which Byrne was an invited speaker. And Byrne’s v-Fluence turns up again in company with Entine at another AEI conference he oversaw – this one attacking corporate social responsibility (CSR). According to Business Ethics: “A second AEI conference featured AEI fellow Jon Entine – a long-time critic of SRI [socially responsible investing] – and Sarah Fuhrmann of v-Fluence Interactive Public Relations. Several v-Fluence employees are ex-public affairs staffers for Monsanto – where they honed skills fighting CSR initiatives that targeted genetically modified foods.”

Entine hasn’t just worked with Byrne and v-Fluence, but has also done paid work for Byrne’s company. In a piece about Entine by the food and farming commentator Tom Philpott, The Making of an Agribusiness Apologist, Entine denies being a hired gun for Syngenta in his work defending pesticides and downplays the fact that his company (ESG MediaMetrics) lists Monsanto as a client. This is how he explains it: “Nine years ago, I did a $2000 research project for v-Fluence, a social media company formed by former Monsanto executives. That’s the entirety of my Monsanto relationship.” Presumably Entine lists Monsanto and not Jay Byrne’s firm as his company’s paymaster because he recognises that what he does for v-Fluence he’s really doing for Monsanto.

Entine’s first attack on Seralini came out on Forbes within 24 hours of the paper’s publication. His second piece a few days later contained further attacks, not just on Seralini, whom he accused of steadfastly refusing to share his raw data, but on almost anyone who attempted to defend the study.  Entine also published a third more recent article which focuses particularly on letters to Food and Chemical Toxicology requesting Seralini’s paper be retracted. In this he notes, “More than two dozen scientists from around the world co-signed a stinging rebuke of the Seralini study, concluding: ‘We appeal to you to subject the paper to rigorous re-review by appropriate experts and promptly retract it if it fails to meet widely held scientific standards of design and analysis, as we believe it fails to do.’”

The letter Entine is referring to was signed by, among others, CS Prakash, Henry Miller and Bruce Chassy. Several of the other signatories also have connections to AgBioWorld. Entine’s book on GM, incidentally, also has contributions from CS Prakash and his AgBioWorld co-founder, Greg Conko of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Cancer-prone rat

Another signatory of this joint letter to Food and Chemical Toxicology is Prof. Anthony Trewavas. Trewavas was also one of the experts quoted by the SMC in their media release that had such an impact on the reporting of the Seralini study.

In his SMC comments, which ended up being quoted in well over 20 different publications worldwide, Trewavas accuses the researchers of using a cancer-prone rat and claims: “[A] line [of rats] which is very susceptible to tumours can easily bias any result.” This line of argument was also developed for the SMC by another expert, Maurice Moloney who says Sprague-Dawley rats frequently develop mammary tumours

It is this cancer-prone rat claim, which Trewavas and Moloney first set running, that more than any other underpins the Chassy-Miller allegation of fraud. The suggestion is that the study was deliberately designed to generate tumours, i.e. that Seralini and his team intentionally chose the Sprague-Dawley rat for their research in order to produce exactly the result they wanted – cancer!

But although variants on this claim have been widely reported, there are a number of problems with it. Not only is this line of rats the same one that Monsanto used for the study that underlies the regulatory approval of this GM maize (NK603), but Sprague-Dawley rats have also been used repeatedly in toxicology and carcinogenesis trials, including long-term ones. They were even used in industry’s own two-year research studies submitted to regulators to support the regulatory approval of glyphosate – the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, one of the two substances that Seralini’s team were researching.

And the fact that this strain of rat has a 30%-plus tendency to “spontaneous” cancers across its lifetime actually means it a good model for humans, who have a similar susceptibility to the disease. What’s more, even allowing for the Sprague-Dawley rats having a tendency to spontaneous tumours, Seralini’s team found the rats fed on either the GM maize or the herbicide suffered an increase in the number of tumours and they had an earlier onset when compared to those in the control group. The researchers also took account of the spontaneous tumour issue by comparing their results to the rates of similar types of tumour in other published studies using the same strain of rat.

This is not to say that the Seralini study does not have its shortcomings. It’s true that the study had fewer rats than are recommended for cancer studies, but Seralini did not set out to look for tumours. His study was a chronic toxicity one that unexpectedly found striking evidence of increased tumours in the treated rats. Given this finding, the onus should now be on Monsanto to fund a full-scale carcinogenicity study using larger groups of rats to prove that its products are safe – something it has so far failed to do.

Angelika Hilbeck of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) describes the “wrong rat” argument first put forward by Trewavas and Moloney as “absurd”. Hilbeck says, “Seralini chose the same strain of rat as Monsanto. Do we really think that a substance should be tested on an animal that is not sensitive to it? With these defamations they wanted to distract us from the fact that Seralini used the same methodology as Monsanto. Because if you take Seralini seriously as a researcher, you have to take seriously his study and the comparison with Monsanto’s study. That would put into question Monsanto’s study and hence the approval of GM maize.”

Double standards used to condemn studies showing risk

In fact, many of the charges that have been made against the Seralini study could be levelled against the studies that have been used to approve GM crops, which are less detailed than Seralini’s and typically shorter-term. This is why a report by the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER) concluded that a careful comparison of the Seralini rat feeding trial with Monsanto trials shows that if the Seralini experiments are considered insufficient to demonstrate harm, then those carried out by Monsanto cannot prove safety. This is because, whatever its limitations, Seralini’s study was conducted to generally higher scientific standards than the studies underlying GM food approvals.

ENSSER highlights the double standards whereby studies on GM crops like Seralini’s that show adverse effects are subjected to obsessive yet often poorly justified criticism of their experimental and statistical methods, while those like Monsanto’s that claim safety are taken at face value. In this way risk is assessed in an asymmetrical fashion so that the burden of proof is not on the biotech industry to provide adequate evidence of the safety of its products, but is on public researchers like Seralini to prove harm beyond any doubt. Other experts have echoed the charge of double standards, including around 140 French scientists who, in a public statement published in Le Monde, declared that it was contrary to scientific ethics to damn an experimental protocol when it gave results that were not wanted, while accepting it when it gave results that were.

These double standards can also be seen in the ipetition demanding that Seralini hand over all of his raw data to his critics. Those championing the petition have no history of demanding from Monsanto full public disclosure of all the raw data underlying its studies supporting safety (the industry studies on glyphosate, for example, are kept secret under ‘commercial confidentiality’ agreements between industry and regulators). This is why Seralini has said he will undertake full disclosure when the same level of disclosure takes place for all the studies underlying GM food approvals, so that like can be compared with like.

Public science and private interests

One of the early UK signatories of the ipetition, as well as a co-signatory, like Prof. Trewavas, of the letter to Food and Chemical Toxicology from Prakash, Chassy and Miller, is Prof. Chris Leaver. Leaver, like Trewavas,    is a GM scientist. He is also a former advisor to the Science Media Centre and a former consultant to the GM/agrochemical giant Syngenta. Since 1984 Prof. Leaver has also been on the Governing Council of the UK’s leading public plant biotech institute, the John Innes Centre – something else he has in common with Prof. Trewavas, who was also for several years on the JIC’s Governing Council.

The JIC has been a key player in the criticism of Seralini. This is apparent as soon as you look at the SMC’s three media releases on the study. The first quoted eight experts including a senior scientist at the JIC and a former member of its Governing Council (Trewavas). The second quoted just one expert, Cathie Martin of the JIC. The third quoted five experts, of which three, including Cathie Martin, were from the JIC.

What makes this predominance particularly revealing is that the scientists in question are not experts on toxicology or animal studies. Their expertise is in plant genetics and GM. What’s more, the JIC and its Sainsbury Laboratory have had tens of millions of pounds in investment from GM giants like Syngenta. In fact, they are so dependent on the public acceptance of GM that a previous acting director of the JIC confided to his local paper that any major slowdown or halt in the development of GM crops “would be very, very serious for us”.

These vested interests are personal as well as institutional. Cathie Martin, for instance, says in her JIC profile, “I am inventor on seven patents and I recently co-founded a spin-out company (Norfolk Plant Sciences) with Professor Jonathan Jones FRS, to bring the benefits of plant biotechnology to Europe and the US.” Jones, who is quoted along with Martin in one of the SMC releases, co-founded another biotech firm, Mendel Biotechnology, which has Monsanto as its “most important customer and collaborator”.

The failure of Jones, who is also an advisor to Mendel Biotechnology, to be more explicit about his industry links, has generated controversy. Yet journalists are given no indication of these kind of conflicts of interest by the SMC’s releases, as the journalist Joanna Blythman has noted: “The SMC introduced these experts to the media solely by listing the universities and public institutions that employ them, failing to give the full flavour of their interests.” And the problem goes much wider than the JIC, as Blythman notes with regard to the experts quoted in the SMC’s first media release: “seven out of eight are either evangelical advocates of GM food, or have received funding from, or worked with, prominent biotech corporations.”

Take, for instance, the very first expert quoted by the SMC, Prof. Maurice Moloney. This year, the SMC has featured Moloney in no fewer than four different media releases on GM. They typically identify him only as “Institute Director and Chief Executive, Rothamsted Research”, which is an independent charitable agricultural research centre. What journalists aren’t told is that Moloney is so enamoured of GM that he drives around in a Porsche with a GMO number plate, and has a CV to match. He is the inventor on more than 300 patents and his GM research underpins one of Monsanto’s main GM crops. He has also founded his own GM company in which the GM giant Dow AgroScience was an investor. The fact that Prof. Moloney’s career and business interests have long been centered around GM is not something the SMC seems to think journalists need to know.

Letters to journal fail to disclose conflicts of interest

This pattern of significant but undisclosed conflicts of interest is relevant to not only the majority of the SMC’s experts but also to many of Seralini’s other critics, including those responsible for the twenty or so letters published by Food and Chemical Toxicology in response to Seralini’s paper. Some of the letter writers are, in fact, exactly the same people that the SMC quotes. They are also often to be found amongst the earliest signatories of the AgBioWorld ipetition. Maurice Moloney, for example, not only turns up twice in the SMC’s media rebuttals of Seralini, but comes in at no. 11 on the list of ipetition signatories, and he wrote a letter to the journal.

Another letter writer demanding retraction is Prof. Mark Tester. Like Moloney and the JIC, Tester is a firm favourite with the SMC, featuring in three of this year’s SMC’s media releases and in many more over the years. He was already a favoured expert a decade ago when the SMC was accused of orchestrating a spin campaign to discredit a BBC drama on GM crops. The University of Adelaide staff directory broadens out Prof. Tester’s academic profile in a way the SMC never has: “His commercial acumen is clear from his establishment of private companies and successful interactions with multinational companies such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Pioneer-DuPont.”

Many other letter writers also have undisclosed industry links. Take, for instance, Martina Newell-McGloughlin. She identifies herself as the director of the International Biotechnology Program at the University of California/Davis, but fails to mention that the Program is funded by the likes of Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Bayer. Another letter writer and a colleague at UC Davis, Kent Bradford, has consulted for Monsanto. Lucia de Souza wrote to the journal with Leila Macedo Oda on behalf of ANBio – the Brazilian Biosafety Association, without mentioning that ANBio’s funders include Monsanto, Bayer, and DuPont.

Then there are the letter writers who fail to mention their previous employers, like Andrew Cockburn, Monsanto’s former director of scientific affairs (Europe and Africa); L. Val Giddings, former Vice President of the Biotechnology Industry Organisation; and Sivramiah (Shanthu) Shantharam, former Syngenta man and until recently head of the biotech industry’s main lobby group in India.

Even letter writers who at first glance seem like they must be entirely independent of the biotech industry can turn out to have links. Take, for instance, Erio Barale-Thomas, one of the few toxicologists to criticize the Seralini paper in the journal. Barale-Thomas, who says he writes on behalf of the Administrative Council of the French Society of Toxicological Pathology, takes Seralini to task for his failure to declare a conflict of interest in his paper, namely that Seralini is president of CRIIGEN, an independent research group with concerns about GM, which contributed funding to the research. Yet CRIIGEN’s contribution to funding the study was declared in the paper, while Barale-Thomas does not disclose in his letter his own biotech interests. He is not only principal scientist at Janssen Biotech, but immediately prior to that he worked for the GM crop and agrochemical giant Bayer CropScience.

Another French scientist among the letter writers is Prof. Marc Fellous, whose declared connections are academic posts in the sphere of human genetics. What he doesn’t mention is that he heads up the French Association of Plant Biotechnology, which lobbies for GM crops and has been so aggressive in its attacks on Seralini that last year he successfully sued Fellous for defamation.

Science or ideology?

Another letter writer is the pathologist Sir Colin Berry. Like Trewavas, Berry is an advisor to the Scientific Alliance, an organization which campaigns on environmental issues, particularly climate change, energy policy and agriculture. It is pro-GM, pro-nuclear, and sceptical about climate change. Its director, Martin Livermore, runs an agri-food PR consultancy, prior to which he did PR for the GM giant DuPont. The Alliance was established by the lobby firm Foresight Communication with money from right-wing business interests.

Trewavas is one of only a couple of scientists who not only signed onto the Prakash, Chassy, Miller letter but also sent their own letter of complaint to the journal. Trewavas concludes it like this: “this paper and this journal have dealt the value of evidence-based knowledge a serious blow and it can only be rectified if the paper is withdrawn by the authors with an apology for misleading the public and the scientific community alike… Ideology and politics must be kept out of scientific study or we all suffer.”

It is revealing that critics like Berry and Trewavas claim to champion an evidence-based approach while operating out of lobby groups that attack the scientific consensus on issues like climate change. Berry, incidentally, is also a shareholder in the company that owns the aggressively libertarian online magazine Spiked, which also promotes climate scepticism. Fiona Fox, the director of the Science Media Centre, was a long-time affiliate of the anti-environmental LM network that are behind Spiked.

The network around AgBioWorld also contains people with similar attitudes on environmental issues. These include Henry Miller, who co-wrote the article accusing Seralini of fraud, and AgBioWorld’s co-founder Greg Conko of the Exxon-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute, which specializes in denialist “straight talk on global warming.”

Given this, it is ironic that AgBioWorld’s Seralini petition was set up in the name of “the scientific community.” Similarly, Maurice Moloney says in his letter to Food and Chemical Toxicology that he thinks he can speak “for the vast majority of the biological sciences community.” But as we have seen, Moloney and many of the other letter writers link to a narrow and heavily commercialised sector of the biological sciences, albeit one with powerful backers. And some in this community have links to extremist lobby groups more concerned with ideology than evidence.

Peeling the GM onion

Identifying the real forces behind the front-men and carefully selected experts of “the scientific community” can be like peeling back the layers of an onion. Take Anthony Trewavas, the scientist who first helped get the cancer-prone rat claim into circulation. In 2001 Prof. Trewavas was named in the High Court in London as the source of a letter published in a Scottish newspaper that made libelous claims against GM critics (Greenpeace wins damages over professor’s “unfounded” allegations). Trewavas subsequently denied being the author of the libel letter published under his name, though he did admit circulating the material, which he said he had got from AgBioWorld. He said it had been written by a “lady in London” but “she” later turned out to be a front for the same Monsanto PR people who covertly directed the campaign that resulted in Nature’s apparent retraction of Chapela’s GM maize paper.

Trewavas, a long-time associate of Prakash and AgBioWorld, also played a notable role in that campaign. In that case, Trewavas encouraged people to demand Chapela be fired by the University of California, Berkeley, unless he handed over his maize samples for checking: “We should be asking Berkeley to request Chapela to release his samples so that they at least can be checked… Refusal to do so should then be used to request Berkeley to relinquish Chapella’s [sic] position.” Such calls to arms against Chapela were mostly posted on the AgBioWorld listserv. This use of the listserv eventually enabled Monsanto’s covert orchestration of the campaign to be exposed.

The attack dog in the night-time

Interestingly, as the attacks on Prof. Seralini and his paper spread across both mainstream and social media, AgBioWorld’s listserv went missing. In the two months following the publication of Seralini’s paper, not a single bulletin went out on the listserv that played such a pivotal role in achieving retraction of the Mexican maize paper.

AgBioWorld’s sudden silence calls to mind a famous exchange in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes:

Detective: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

Detective: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

With Seralini, it’s the curious silence of Monsanto’s attack dog that suggests that this time the covert PR war is being conducted by other means.

If the silence of AgBioWorld’s listserv is suggestive, so too is the attempt to silence GMWatch. Within days of the publication of the Seralini paper, our website came under major DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. The contours of the attacks followed the peaks of the controversy, with the two biggest and most debilitating attacks coinciding with days on which the major rebuttals of Seralini’s paper were published. The GMWatch website had by then become a clearing house for rapid responses in English to the attacks on Seralini. We have no proof as to who was behind the attacks – that’s hard to establish with DDOS. But oddly enough, an article in the Guardian about the retraction campaign against Quist and Chapela noted, “Just before the [Mexican maize] paper in Nature was publicly challenged, the server hosting the accounts used by its authors was disabled by a particularly effective attack which crippled their capacity to fight back.”

More than a decade later history seems to be repeating itself in the covert war over GM crops.


Jonathan Matthews is the founder and director of GMWatch and has written numerous articles on the politics and spin around GM crops. He’s a contributing author to Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy, eds Dinan and Miller (Pluto Press). Additional research: Claire Robinson, co-editor, GMWatch