SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
michael pollan
'Appalling': US Funded Secret Industry Network Targeting Pesticide Critics
"It's one thing to have an industry come after you after publishing a critical article. This happens all the time in journalism," said writer Michael Pollan, one of those featured in the corporate files. "But to have your own government pay for it is outrageous."
Sep 27, 2024
New reporting published Friday exposes how U.S. taxpayer money was used to fund an elaborate effort by pesticide industry insiders to create detailed dossiers on public critics and environmentalist activists opposed to the widespread pollution created by agrochemical corporations.
The investigation was spearheaded by the nonprofit outlet Lighthouse Reports in collaboration with numerous outlets from around the globe, including The Guardian, Le Monde, The New Lede, ABC News, and the New Humanitarian. It details how outspoken critics of the pesticide paraquat—described as "among the most toxic agricultural chemicals ever produced"—were targeted by an "influence machine that works to suppress opposition to an $78 billion global industry."
While use of paraquat is banned in the European Union, it is still actively sold and applied on fields and farms in much of the world despite the documented harms it produces.
The year-long investigation, according to Lighthouse,
managed to penetrate a PR operation that casts those who raise the alarm, from pesticide critics to environmental scientists or sustainability campaigners, as an anti-science "protest industry," and used U.S. government money to do so.
The U.S.-based PR firm, v-Fluence, built profiles on hundreds of scientists, campaigners and writers, whilst coordinating with government officials, to counter global resistance to pesticides. These profiles are published on a private social network, which grants privileged entry to 1,000 people. The network's membership roster is a who's-who of the agrochemical industry and its friends, featuring executives from some of the world's largest pesticide companies alongside government officials from multiple countries.
These members can access profiles on more than 3,000 organisations and 500 people who have been critical of pesticides or Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). They come from all over the world and include scientists, U.N. human right experts, environmentalists, and journalists. Many of the profiles divulge personal details about the subjects, such as their home addresses and telephone numbers, and spotlight criticisms that disparage their work. Lawyers have told us this goes against data privacy laws in several countries.
The investigative team also released this video on Instagram detailing their findings:
Environmental writer and activist George Monbiot called the revelations "deeply shocking and appalling," and described the story as one which detailed how the U.S. government "funded attacks, denial, and outright lies to protect the pesticides industry from its critics."
The Guardian's reporting details how v-Influence—founded by former Monsanto executive Jay Byrne—received U.S. taxpayer dollars by subcontracting with another group that received a large USAID grant:
Public spending records show the USAID contracted with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a non-governmental organization that manages a government initiative to introduce GM crops in African and Asian nations.
In turn, IFPRI paid v-Fluence a little more than $400,000 from roughly 2013 through 2019 for services that included counteracting critics of "modern agriculture approaches"in Africa and Asia.
v-Fluence was to set up the "private social network portal" that would, among other things, provide "tactical support" for efforts to gain acceptance for the GM crops.
The reporting noted that prominent food writers, including Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman (both of whom have written critically of industrial agriculture), were among those listed in the private network to which industry heavyweights were given invite-only access.
"It's one thing to have an industry come after you after publishing a critical article. This happens all the time in journalism," Pollan told the Guardian. "But to have your own government pay for it is outrageous. These are my tax dollars at work."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Food Industry Giants to Wage Legal Battle to Defeat Vermont's Landmark GMO Labeling Law
The GMA wasted no time in announcing its lawsuit to defeat the pro-labeling legislation
May 09, 2014
As pro-labeling advocates were cheering Vermont's passage of a GMO labeling bill on Thursday, a powerful food industry lobbying group announced its plans to file a federal lawsuit to overturn the law.
Governor Peter Shumlin's signature yesterday marked a landmark moment as Vermont became the first state to enact a no-strings attached law mandating the labeling of genetically modified food and preventing GMO foods from being labeled as "natural."
In response, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents food and beverage industry giants like Pepsico and Cargill and poured millions into defeating measures in California and Washington, said it would sue the state -- likely an unsurprising development to Vermont, which has already set up a Food Fight Fund site to "mount a powerful defense" against legal battles.
The GMA issued a statement on Thursday cheering GMO crops as having "important benefits for people and our planet" and calling Vermont's law "critically flawed and not in the best interests of consumers."
The statement also included an announcement from the group that it would be starting a legal battle against Vermont, saying that government "has no compelling interest in warning consumers about foods containing GM ingredients, making this law's legality suspect at best."
"In light of this fact, in the coming weeks GMA will file suit in federal court against the state of Vermont to overturn the law."
The GMA statement urges support instead for labeling legislation from Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo, which has been dubbed the Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act and criticized as a "Monsanto, Koch Brothers alliance."
The GMA is also investing current efforts to discredit the film Fed Up, which opens in theaters on Friday, and is described as "the film the food industry doesn't want you to see."
According to reporting on Friday by Christina Wilkie in the Huffington Post:
Days before the film's release, a new website appeared that at first looks nearly identical to the official "Fed Up" site. But instead of featuring the movie trailer and showtimes, the site adopts the popular online quiz format, luring people in with a challenge: "Think you know the facts about 'Fed Up?' Take the quiz."
The "quiz," it turns out, is nine "true or false" questions. Six of them are statements made by doctors and food policy experts in "Fed Up," such as, "Food companies have caused the obesity rate to skyrocket." If you click "true," you'll get a big, fat "incorrect," and below that, some selectively edited figures about obesity rates. The other three questions are about the food industry, and the steps it claims to have taken to combat obesity. The correct answer for these is "true."
As for who is behind this propaganda page for the food processing industry, say hello to the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), the primary lobbying group for the nation's largest food and beverage companies.
The lobbying group launched the dummy website, called FedUpFacts.com, on Wednesday, the same day it purchased Google ads for search terms related to the documentary, including its title. The ads direct back to the quiz site, where there is a disclosure notice at the bottom of the page: "FedUpFacts is brought to you by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, representing the makers of the world's favorite food, beverage and consumer products."
The filmmakers, however, hope to put a spotlight on the fact that "far more of us are sick from what we are eating than anyone has ever realized," and to call out the "decades-long misinformation campaign orchestrated by Big Food and aided and abetted by the U.S. Government."
You can watch the trailer for the film below:
FED UP - Official TrailerNOW PLAYING. FOR THEATERS AND INFO VISIT: fedupmovie.com facebook.com/fedupmovie Twitter: @fedupmovie This is the ...
________________________________
Keep ReadingShow Less
Big Food vs. Big Insurance
Sep 10, 2009
To listen to President Obama's speech on Wednesday night, or to just about
anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest
problem with health care in America is the system itself - perverse
incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of
competition, and greed.
No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care
industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States
spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health
care can be substantially explained, as a study
released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient
health care system that the administration could hope to devise would
still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.
That's why our success in bringing health care costs under control
ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will
to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food
industry.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
three-quarters of health care spending now goes to treat "preventable
chronic diseases." Not all of these diseases are linked to diet -
there's smoking, for instance - but many, if not most, of them are.
We're spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion
to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat
cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been
linked to the so-called Western diet. One recent study
estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over
the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a
condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on
health care.
The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in
the debate over health care. The president has made a few notable
allusions to it, and, by planting her vegetable garden on the South
Lawn, Michelle Obama has tried to focus our attention on it. Just last
month, Mr. Obama talked about putting a farmers' market in front of the
White House, and building new distribution networks to connect local
farmers to public schools so that student lunches might offer more
fresh produce and fewer Tater Tots. He's even floated the idea of
taxing soda.
But so far, food system reform has not figured in the national
conversation about health care reform. And so the government is poised
to go on encouraging America's fast-food diet with its farm policies
even as it takes on added responsibilities for covering the medical
costs of that diet. To put it more bluntly, the government is putting
itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of
treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn
syrup.
Why the disconnect? Probably because reforming the food system is
politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system.
At least in the health care battle, the administration can count some
powerful corporate interests on its side - like the large segment of
the Fortune 500 that has concluded the current system is unsustainable.
That is hardly the case when it comes to challenging agribusiness.
Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and
environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There's
lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the
diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the
American food industry has become patients for the American health care
industry.
The market for prescription drugs and medical devices to manage
Type 2 diabetes, which the Centers for Disease Control estimates will
afflict one in three Americans born after 2000, is one of the brighter
spots in the American economy. As things stand, the health care
industry finds it more profitable to treat chronic diseases than to
prevent them. There's more money in amputating the limbs of diabetics
than in counseling them on diet and exercise.
As for the insurers, you would think preventing chronic diseases
would be good business, but, at least under the current rules, it's
much better business simply to keep patients at risk for chronic
disease out of your pool of customers, whether through lifetime caps on
coverage or rules against pre-existing conditions or by figuring out
ways to toss patients overboard when they become ill.
But these rules may well be about to change - and, when it comes to
reforming the American diet and food system, that step alone could be a
game changer. Even under the weaker versions of health care reform now
on offer, health insurers would be required to take everyone at the
same rates, provide a standard level of coverage and keep people on
their rolls regardless of their health. Terms like "pre-existing
conditions" and "underwriting" would vanish from the health insurance
rulebook - and, when they do, the relationship between the health
insurance industry and the food industry will undergo a sea change.
The moment these new rules take effect, health insurance companies
will promptly discover they have a powerful interest in reducing rates
of obesity and chronic diseases linked to diet. A patient with Type 2
diabetes incurs additional health care costs of more than $6,600 a
year; over a lifetime, that can come to more than $400,000. Insurers
will quickly figure out that every case of Type 2 diabetes they can
prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line. Suddenly, every can of soda
or Happy Meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a
threat to future profits.
When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of
treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to
reform the food system - everything from farm policy to food marketing
and school lunches - will acquire a powerful and wealthy ally,
something it hasn't really ever had before.
AGRIBUSINESS dominates the agriculture committees of Congress, and
has swatted away most efforts at reform. But what happens when the
health insurance industry realizes that our system of farm subsidies
makes junk food cheap, and fresh produce dear, and thus contributes to
obesity and Type 2 diabetes? It will promptly get involved in the fight
over the farm bill - which is to say, the industry will begin buying
seats on those agriculture committees and demanding that the next bill
be written with the interests of the public health more firmly in mind.
In the same way much of the health insurance industry threw its
weight behind the campaign against smoking, we can expect it to
support, and perhaps even help pay for, public education efforts like
New York City's bold new ad campaign
against drinking soda. At the moment, a federal campaign to discourage
the consumption of sweetened soft drinks is a political nonstarter, but
few things could do more to slow the rise of Type 2 diabetes among
adolescents than to reduce their soda consumption, which represents 15
percent of their caloric intake.
That's why it's easy to imagine the industry throwing its weight
behind a soda tax. School lunch reform would become its cause, too, and
in time the industry would come to see that the development of regional
food systems, which make fresh produce more available and reduce
dependence on heavily processed food from far away, could help prevent
chronic disease and reduce their costs.
Recently a team of designers from M.I.T. and Columbia was asked by
the foundation of the insurer UnitedHealthcare to develop an innovative
systems approach to tackling childhood obesity in America. Their
conclusion surprised the designers as much as their sponsor: they
determined that promoting the concept of a "foodshed" - a diversified,
regional food economy - could be the key to improving the American diet.
All of which suggests that passing a health care reform bill, no
matter how ambitious, is only the first step in solving our health care
crisis. To keep from bankrupting ourselves, we will then have to get to
work on improving our health - which means going to work on the
American way of eating.
But even if we get a health care bill that does little more than
require insurers to cover everyone on the same basis, it could put us
on that course.
For it will force the industry, and the government, to take a good
hard look at the elephant in the room and galvanize a movement to slim
it down.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular