Charity guide criticised for not declaring GM interests

I should start by declaring that I too was consulted and contributed in a very small way to the SAS publication. I have also 'confessed' to growing two varieties of maize which were bred to be resistant to the European Corn Borer using genetic modification. I am also a member of The CropGen Panel but this group does NOT ( as far as I aware) receive any funding from the biotech industry and we give our time and expertise free of charge in the interests of providing information on this contentious issue to the wider public. If you look at he arguments that we put forward they are all based on scientific evidence as opposed to poiltical dogma and I know that all my colleagues only wish to put forward the evidence in a rational and logical way. Prof Vivian Moses is after all retired and has absiolutely no axe to grind in terms of seeking funding. I do act as a consultant for various individuals and groups in the food supply industry but if anything the introduction of GM crops would obviate the need for my advice not increase it. If one is in favour of 'conventional' plant breeding, and I presume that nobody can be against this, it seems to me that it is irrational to be against GM. After all it was Charles Darwin who when referring to his work on natural selection first came up with the phrase 'Descent with Modification'. If anyone wants to argue with Charles Darwin then please do so on your own planet.

1) Why are you concerned with the question of commercial connections? 2) Would you consider questioning the commercial motives of the Organic Movement and therby imply that they can not be trusted to speak the truth? Remember they are the people who are wheeled out to speak against GM. 3) I hope you will allow the debate about GM to get under way. 4) I also hope that you will give the charity "Sense about Science" the opportunity to put their side of the story about affiliations.

Hang on Zoe, who funds GMWatch??......nobody knows.....?

Who are Sense about Science? They are a pro industry front group that supports various Technologies such as GM, nuclear, phone masts and WiFi, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, etc. As the tide of scientific studies showing the very real harm caused by electromagnetic radiation has become overwhelming, showing health effects at emission levels far below the limits currently applied in the UK, the sheer desperation on the part of the Mobile Phone Industry lobby have turned to the such organisations to peddle their dis-information. They recently published a very one-sided report entitled "Making Sense of Radiation" on the associations between EMFs and health. Not only did this report only present one side of an argument that has multiple conflicting opinions (both of which are based on peer-reviewed science), but it also contained a number of factual errors and omissions. It is ironic that such a one-sided argument is presented by a charitable trust that aims to dispel misleading representation of science. Claiming that they "work with scientists and civic groups to promote evidence and scientific reasoning in public discussion", they show a consistent trend of not mentioning scientific evidence that highlights a serious health issue and stating areas of considerable uncertainty as absolute fact. There is a web of such organisations all linked together and bizarrely run by ex-members of the Revolutionary Communist Party. These organisations include, the Science Media Centre, Sense About Science, Genetic Interest Group, the Institute of Ideas.

Corbyn's article was a disreputable use of space by a journal that claims to be about education. Years back I was told no doubt by the same individual who now turns up in Genewatch that i was funded by industry. When I asked the basis of this I was told that I had attended a general biology meeting at the University of York away from my University of Edinburgh to which industry had donated £100. When Antinou and Genewatch and other similar unqualifed and uninformed groups are reduced to slur and innuendo it merely indicates to the public at large a total paucity of thought, argument and sense. I presume on the basis of Corbyn's silly article that if I suggest to my wife she should take an aspirin for a headache I become an advocate for the drug industry and thus my recommendation is entirely suspect. How many members of Genewatch are employed by industry of various kinds? No doubt Mr Antinou recieves government money most of which of course comes from industry. Yes some industry can be corrupt because of excessive desires for profit and wealth but the other side that of Genewatch and others can be ideologically corrupt and this article is perhaps a good example of it.

Of course it's perfectly valid for Zoe Corbyn to flag up the industry connections of Sense about Science and of the authors of this report. Over and again these people pretend that they are honest scientists seeking to tell the truth about GM and having to contend with emotional and irrational opponents. Well, their "truth" is a very selective truth, promoted with the blessing of the GM industry. Many of those who oppose them are scientists too -- and they do not like what they discover about the health effects of GM foods and the environmental effects of GM crop plantings. And when they report their findings they have to put up with the vilification of a number of well-known GM apologists who seem to specialize in the crude business of "shooting the messenger." The truth of the matter is that the Sense about Science report was written by a group of scientists and technologists who have made their careers in the GM industry and in academic institutions at least partly dependent on GM industry funds. Many of the authors of the report are desperate to keep their jobs -- so there is more than a little self-interest here too.

Jonathon Harrington says he is part of CropGen and that it does not, as far as he's aware, receive any industry funding. This is from CropGen's home page: "CropGen receives limited support from the biotechnology industry..." It continues "but acts entirely independently." However, the 2001 version of its website stated that "while ultimately funded by industry, CropGen's panel members are free to express such views as they consider appropriate. The funding companies cannot veto the panel's position on any issue." That's good to know. There is no indication that it is now funded by anyone other than the biotech industry, and other members of the CropGen panel have in the past admitted being paid an "honorarium" for their services by the industry. The domain name for the group's website was registered by the PR company Countrywide Porter Novelli. The behind the scenes running of CropGen is now undertaken by Lexington Communications who perform the same task for the biotech industry's official lobby group the Agricultural Biotechnology Council. Curious that Mr Harrington knows so little about who he's working for.

All that is being asked for is that factual information about commercial interests be made plain. What's so wrong with that? It's no more than is required of authors by any decent journal. The scientific evidence clearly shows that those with a vested interest in the adoption of a particular product or technology tend to assess its safety more favourably than those without such interests. That may be unpalateable but as Richard Smith, the former editor of the British Medical Journal has pointed out, "These competing interests are very important. It has quite a profound influence on the conclusions and we deceive ourselves if we think science is wholly impartial." And some of the authors of this publication connect to institutions which have done deals worth millions with the big GM firms. That deserves a mention.

Sense About Science gets off lightly in the article. It is referred to simply as a "charity". A quick glance at the last accounts it lodged with the charity commissioners shows all the substantial sums from named donors come from life science, pharma, big oil and mobile phone companies, ie pretty much the industries whose interests it defends against their critics. As for Prof Trewavas's comments about people being "ideologically corrupt" - has he looked into the backgrounds of the director and managing director of Sense About Science? As mentioned by others, they're part of the LM group which promotes climate change scepticism, euologises GMOs, human cloning, nuclear power and the like, while vilifying their critics as Nazis. George Monbiot's article 'Invasion of the Entryists' is a good starting point for anyone wanting to understand what they're about. It is no coincidence that the one time that SAS, which claims to be all about defending science, did anything on climate change, it lead to headlines about the danger of exaggerating the problems! Its chair Lord Taverne has also commended the report on climate change by the House of Lords - the one authored by people like Nigel Lawson to promote a sceptical viewpoint.

Jonathon Harrington - again you expose yourself as a fake and a fibber (to put it politely). You are well aware that CropGen is funded by the biotech industries. Iin fact, according to the companies involved it is owned by them (specifically, by ABC- a consortium of biotech players). By bringing yourself plus reputation into the debate you cast further doubt on this whole dubious connection between your so-called independent advice and the bullying tactics of the Biotech industry. I can understand that you have nothing to lose (certainly not a reputation) but why is a Professor risking his hard-earned reputation by supporting this thuggish industry? There are so many scientists that have had their stomachs turned by their behaviour, and that's a motivation to rival even your financial motivation. Are the Universities that Moses deals with aware of this conflict of interest? Do they really support the use of young children in experiments, contrary to International Convention? Are Cropgen/ ABC or whatever pseudonym the big biotech players use even aware that they are BREACHING CARTEL LAWS by co operating together in this way? That's a big problem. Oh, Oh, Oh, Professor Moses and Jonathon Harrington.....now what....??

Pierre ask that factual information about commercial interests be made plain. I agree. Consider GM cotton in India. This has been a great success: the US has been pushed from second place in global cotton production by India. But cotton is a heavily traded product globally. As Indian production goes up steeply, global prices are held back and countries growing cotton for export suffer financial damage. Thus there is a major - but never declared - financial interest to attack Monsanto (who are promoting Indian cotton production at huge cost to the US). Yet NGOs in India attacking Monsanto never reveal that they receive funds from various sources in the US. And remember that both Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth started life as North American NGOs. If they can stop us growing GM crops by intense and expensive lobbying, then we in Europe will have to import more from the US. The current Greenpeace attacks on GM soy in South America are transnational Luddism: an attempt to wreck farming in another country to the benefit of the US farmers. This commercial interest in attacking GM crops production - of far greater value than seed sales - should be declared but never is.

There is widespread opposition to GM cotton in India that goes well beyond Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth (the latter don't even seem to operate in India) Read, for instance, the reports of the award winning development journalist P Sainath about the impact of Monsanto hyping GM cotton to poor debt-ridden dryland farmers in cotton growing states like Maharashtra. And the idea that this is all part of some economic masterplan hatched in the West is fanciful, to say the least, as is the claim that concerns about the very real environmental and social problems being wreaked by GM soy in South America are really an attempt to boost US farming interests! The funding of Prof Moses' lobby group by the biotech industry, by contrast, is not part of some mythical conspiracy theory but a simple matter of fact.

Prof Trewavas says critics of SAS's failure to disclose conflicts of interest have been reduced to "slur and innuendo". Is this the same Prof Trewavas who has described Greenpeace as "controlled by extremists/nihilists and other subversives... whose only interest is in destroying business/damaging trade and who have no solution to world population problems except to let people die"? He's also described critics of GM as "bloody minded, anarchist and frankly merely destructive" and advised pro-GM scientists to alert the likes of racist US congressman Jesse Helms, "that a subversive organisation directed from europe is attempting to destroy US agriculture and US farming." Now who was it who said resorting to slurs indicates "a total paucity of thought, argument and sense"?

Also worth noting that Moses, as well as heading up the biotech industry lobby group CropGen, is also part of the Scientific Alliance, as are Trewavas and one or two of the other contributors to this GM booklet. The Scientific Alliance openly campaigns against the acceptance of man-made climate change. It was set up and funded by an industrialist with an agenda so far to the right that even the Tories labelled his political faction "fascist". The Director of the Scientific Alliance is Martin Livermore. He used to be the PR man for GM for Dupont. He's also been listed as a funder by Sense About Science. There also seems to be quite a bit of overlap between those on the boards of Sense About Science and the Scientific Alliance.

SAS claims to be the word of true science. They heavily support the so called Evidence Based Medicine as against Natural Therapies. I suppose they took into consideration the latest issue about suppressed clinical studies of AstraZeneca showing it increased the risk of diabetes. Was Celbrex,Vioxx,Thalidomide all EBM also. I would like to know how EBM kills over 100,000 in the UK annually and over 740,000 in the USA compared to the national statistics of America,UK,New Zealand and Canada that prove no-one has ever died from vitamins. Because of their funding they are automatically biased against anything that defies their paymasters.

Sue: Back to the issue of paid lobbyists. Robin's anti-Monsanto film was paid for (in part) by the National Film Board of Canada. Canada has 84% of its maize GM; Canada exports over 80% of its crop production. Could it be possible that Canada does not want farmers in Europe (or Africa) competing on a level (GM) playing field with Canadian farmers - and is prepared to pay a French lady to boot Monsanto? Remember that Monsanto is exporting advanced North American agricultural research in the form of seed (much against the interest of North American farmers). Farmers elsewhere are buying this seed when they have a choice - this is how Monsanto makes all that money. Europe would be better off growing GM crops rather than importing them, as we do now (all that animal feed).

According to the current issue of Private Eye (20 March - 2 April, Books and Bookman section), Monsanto's controversial former director of scientific affairs helped author this GM guide. They've seen a draft of the guide which acknowledges his contribution but they say this was removed from the final published version of the guide.

There's a fundamental problem with Dave Wood's imaginative suggestion that the Canadian Film Board is backing a film highly critical of Monsanto in order to put European farmers off growing GM crops. The Canadian Film Board paid for the N. American rights so that it could broadcast and distribute the film and dvd in N America. As a result, it's been on TV and in cinemas in Canada, and the dvd's available for sale courtesy of the Canadian Film Board in the US as well as Canada. Bit of a convoluted way of sabotaging European farming.

Pierre: You claim "The funding of Prof Moses' lobby group by the biotech industry, by contrast, is not part of some mythical conspiracy theory but a simple matter of fact." Yet you avoid my factual claim that "Robin's anti-Monsanto film was paid for (in part) by the National Film Board of Canada" with the comment that the National Film Board of Canada paid for the N. American rights to the film. This may be true but is not the whole truth. NFB Canada is listed as a producer (on the NFB web-site) or co-producer of the film (various places): this is a fact and of far more significance in NFB's role in controlling content than distribution rights. Hiding this is a deception far worse than those supposedly uncovered by the huffing and puffing of the Corbyn article. I repeat my argument. At a sensitive time in the adoption of GM crops in Europe, Canada, producing and exporting masses of GM crops, funded and produced a propaganda film attacking Monsanto. The obvious and presumably intended impact of which on public and politicians in Europe (where the film is widely available) was to prevent or delay the introduction of advanced agricultural technology to European farmers. Why are you hiding the `factual information' you require of others (British academics helping the British bioscience industry to deliver cost-saving technology to British farmers)? You are living in a glass house. It requires neither fancy nor much intelligence to see the future benefits to Canadian farmers and crop exports of reduced agricultural competition from Europe. And I challenge you to link me to the biotech industry, which seems to be your main ad hominem criticism of others. My driving force is seeing people starving in African famines during eight years work in tropical agriculture in Africa (and a further total of 12 years in Latin America and Asia).

Pierre: Canada grows 5.1 million ha GM oilseed rape (87% of crop); 1.17 million ha GM maize (84% of crop); 688,000ha gm GM soybean (62.5% of crop); and is starting on GM sugarbeet. Canada is a GM nation that has climbed the Monsanto technology ladder and is now trying to pull the ladder up to prevent competitors following. Farmers in Canada growing GM crops are going to shrug off the film. Excitable public and politicians in Europe may believe it and continue to oppose growing GM (we already are obliged to import GM crops, including GM canola). Share of the EU market is not the issue: the price Canada gets for its exported canola very much is the issue. Canada exports 5.9 million t. worth about US$2billion. But this income varies depending on the market price of canola - could be a billion dollars up or a billion down, depending on production elsewhere (and demand). The EU at present produces 50% more canola/oilseed rape than Canada but imports and exports little. BUT if GM oilseed rape took off in the EU production could increase hugely from an already large base, exports would bound up, and the global price of canola would fall. Canadian income - national and farm-level - could plummet. This export bounce has happened with GM cotton in India (cotton production doubling in 5 years) and GM soybean in Brazil and especially Argentina. And note that soybean price impacts on canola - both produce edible oils. Paying a few thousand dollars for a film to knock Monsanto is a small price to pay for reducing competition (even by a small percentage). As to the National Film Board: you just need to look at the list of very fine films produced by NFB Canada to see that `The World According to Monsanto' sticks out like a sore thumb. It is propaganda and an attempt at economic sabotage of competitors. The film is far more underhand than any mild attempts by British academics to top up their pensions. Canada does not have a good track record on economic interference. RAFI-Canada (now ETC Group) has tried for decades to scupper the Green Revolution that feeds a billion or two people. When RAFI saw that `Terminator' GM technology was applicable to wheat there was the mother-of-all PR fuss to get it stopped to prevent damage to a Canadian major export. And you do not need a conspiracy: just two or three people on key Boards of Directors.

Dave: I think you should name names. Who are the oilseed rape farmer infiltrators directing the Film Board in this cunning manouver to protect canola prices? Or could they be fifth columnists? Because this stuff about GM massively boosting canola production seems a bit fanciful. When recently they ran carefully controlled trials of GM and non-GM canola in the Australian state of Victoria, they found that the GM canola was outperformed by the conventional canola. And the joke is of course that the GM canola seed is much more expensive to begin with, so just to break even with GM canola, you need a significant yield increase. The whole thing's just a giant confidence trick that's putting money in the pockets of Monsanto. Even the US Dept of Agriculture commented in one of its reports that when you looked at the actual results farmers got with GM crops, it was hard to understand the reason for their rapid adoption. But with all the interested parties and technophiles wading in in their support, the "silver bullet" hype goes on. It's just another bubble like the dot comes and the banking fiasco that's now dragging us all down.

Pierre: I was at a conference some years ago when Vandana Shiva was trying to link GM crops to mad cow disease. You are trying to link GM crops to the banking crisis. You are saying that you know better than all those farmers growing GM crops: that farmers are making a stupid choice. Indeed, that farmers are stupid. Not so. And you cherry pick - reporting a trial in Australia that didn't work. But that is what trials are for: if they all worked all of the time we wouldn't need trials. GM crops are about increasing farm profits. This is not just yield. Management costs of not spraying insecticides or having herbicide tolerant varieties make profits. Farmers are happy to pay Monsanto for this but only when Monsanto delivers. You cannot and should not try to stop this choice. Anti-GM is an attempt by the technological haves - especially in North America - to prevent others joining the club.

I'm with Pierre on this. Even USDA reports have raised questions about the logic of some GM crop adoption. To quote Donald White, a University of Illinois plant pathologist, on the uptake of GM corn, "What happens is there is a herd mentality. Everyone has to have a biotech program." And White's view chimes in with an Iowa State University study on why farmers were growing GM soya. Its study of approximately 800 farmers in Iowa revealed that most (53%) chose GM beans because they thought they produced higher yields than non-GM varieties but when actual data from their farms was analysed the opposite was found. "It is interesting to note....that increasing crop yields was cited by over half the farmers as the reason for planting GMO soybeans, yet yields were actually lower", reported the researchers. A study of GM cotton adoption in India by University of Washington researcher Glenn Davis Stone found the uptake of GM cotton was not down to the results they were obtaining but to the hype around GM seeds creating a fashion for adoption.

Has anyone else noticed that all the defences of what went on with this guide are either disingenuous or just downright bizarre? Tracey Brown of Sense about Science said in her letter to Times Higher that the contributors to this guide were closer to organic growers than the GM industry, but it turns out that some of the authors' employers did deals worth tens of millions with GM firms and one of the contributors is a former Monsanto director!! Another of the contributors, Jonathan Harrington wrote that although he and Prof Moses are part of the lobby group CropGen, it never had a penny out of industry, but it turns out that CropGen's owned lock, stock and barrel by the GM industry! Then Anthony Trewavas FRS, whose part of the Scientific Alliance who go in for climate change denial (!), says the criticisms of the guide are all just slur and innuendo, but it turns out he's written stuff that's the very mother of all slur and innuendo. Finally we have Dave Wood who says we shouldn't worry about a few professors topping up their pensions in this way because oilseed rape farmers are using the National Film Board of Canada for far more sinister purposes!!! Perhaps there's someone out there who'd like to defend this guide by reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

History has taught us that those with the deepest pockets controls the education of the youth. It is a sad day when the TES is so seriously and so easily corrupted. There is more than enough evidence to tell us to be warey of GM. It seems that it is only those who are fed by the GM paymasters that tell it any other way. A telling tragedy that the pro-lobby has given up trying to convert educated adults and have moved on to corrupting children. A sad day

Peter: This is the problem with anti GM activists: I did not say that Canadian canola growers are using the NFB Canada for sinister purposes. You and Pierre did. It is called putting words in peoples' mouths and is frowned on in rational debate (and is a sign you are not doing too well). Canola is a major and important Canadian export. It is of interest to the state (as with the US for cotton and soyabean exports) to dominate global markets and get a good price and claw back state subsidies. The use of GM in competing countries, potentially the EU for oil seed rape, is against the interest of the Canadian state, which can certainly do something though the NFB - it is, after all, national, with its own Board that can be influenced by goodness knows what state perks (do they still have knighthoods in Canada?). And what have the Protocols of the Elders of Zion got to do with global commodity prices? This is just a smear. The actions of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, both of North American origin, and both with anonymous donations, have a lot to do with crop commodity prices. While their foot-soldiers are trashing GM crop trials to save the world, their generals are keeping their eye on the price of cotton, soyabean and canola, blocking competition, and laughing all the way to the bank. And Bill, get real: cotton production has doubled in India in the past five years and is now hurting the US - no wonder US academics are trying to knock it (while others, e.g. Herring of Cornell, are far more upbeat). And all this is not about yields, but about productivity. USDA has never liked the private sector stealing their babies.

Wow. So it's not just the Canadian film board who are part of the covert effort to manipulate commodity prices by knocking GM crops, US social anthropologists are also part of the conspiracy, and the US Dept of Agriculture seems to be joining in too - just out of spite against the private sector. Erm... where exactly is the evidence for any of this stuff???? As I said before, the funding of Prof Moses' lobby group by the biotech industry is a simple matter of fact that can be verified by looking at the home page of CropGen's website (admittedly you have to go down to the bottom of the page to find it). The fact that the John Innes Centre has done deals worth tens of millions with GM firms is also part of the public record. These things seem pretty tangible. Let's stick to the facts.

Dave's world seems to be one where research that favours GM crops is utomatically assumed to be legitimate, and if there's any industry-supported pro-GM comment that's of minor significance. But research findings and comment critical of GMOs are invariably the result of vast corruption brought about by trade related pressures. To my mind the real world pressures on academics on both sides of the Atlantic are captured better in the following comments: "When we spliced the profit gene into academic culture, we created a new organism - the recombinant university. We reprogrammed the incentives that guide science. The rule in academe used to be 'publish or perish'. Now bioscientists have an alternative - 'patent and profit'." - Nobel Laureate, Paul Berg. "The universities are cheering us on, telling us to get closer to industry, encouraging us to consult with big business. The bottom line is to improve the corporate bottom line. It’s the way we move up, get strokes.... We can’t help but be influenced from time to time by our desire to see certain results happen in the lab. All of these companies have a piece of me. I'm getting checks waved at me from Monsanto and American Cyanamid and Dow, and it's hard to balance the public interest with the private interest. It’s a very difficult juggling act, and sometimes I don’t know how to juggle it at all." - John Benedict, Texas A&M entomologist. "A survey measuring attitudes toward biotechnology among Cornell University agricultural and nutrition-science faculty and extension staff (who advise farmers) found that nearly half have reservations about the health, safety, and environmental impacts of genetically engineered food crops and doubt they are the answer to global hunger. Though their numbers were fewer, the biotech promoters said they felt very comfortable publicly voicing their views, while the concerned majority did not express that sentiment." - Karen Charman, Spinning Science into Gold. "One in three scientists working for Government quangos or newly privatised laboratories says he has been asked to adjust his conclusions to suit his sponsor…. [Charles Harvey, spokesman, The Institute of Professionals, Managers and Specialists, said] ‘The piper is calling the tune and it raises worrying issues. We have seen the BSE crisis, food scares and the GMO debacle and the public is losing confidence in Government as an independent, fair-minded arbiter.’” - Scientists asked to fix results for backer, Daily Telegraph. "I think there is a very real problem from the point of view of university research in the way that private companies have entered the university, both with direct companies in the universities and with contracts to university researchers. So that in fact the whole climate of what might be open and independent scientific research has disappeared, the old idea that universities were a place of independence has gone. Instead of which one’s got secrecy, one’s got patents, one’s got contracts and one’s got shareholders." - Prof Steven Rose, Open University. "The independent scientist who conducts research for the public good 'barely exists any more,' according to one leading expert on technology and public policy. 'They get up and talk as if they are neutral. But they almost always have some share in the company or some self-interested gain for their work,' said Philip Bereano, a professor from the University of Washington in Seattle." - Courts last defence against scientific 'elite': professor, National Post. Doubtless Dave will tell us they only said those things because they'd been corrupted by national trade policy lobbyists!