Academics Review, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization launched in 2012, claims to be an independent group but documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know revealed it is a front group set up with the help of Monsanto and its public relations team to attack agrichemical industry critics while appearing to be independent.

Covert industry funding

The Academics Review website describes its founders as “two independent professors,” Bruce Chassy, PhD, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and David Tribe, PhD, senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Australia. As of May 2018, the website claims, “Academics Review only accepts unrestricted donations from non-corporate sources to support our work.”

However, tax records show that the primary funder of Academics Review has been the Council for Biotechnology Information, a trade association that is funded and run by the largest agrichemical companies: BASF, Bayer, DowDuPont, Monsanto and Syngenta.

According to CBI tax records, the industry-funded group gave Academics Review a total of $650,000 in 2014 and 2015-2016. Tax records for AcademicsReview.org report expenses of $791,064 from 2013-2016 (see 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016). The money was spent on organizing conferences and promoting GMOs and pesticides, according to the tax records.

Emails reveal secret origin of academic front group

Dr Thom Davies, Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick @ThomDavies

Many documentary photography projects attempt to reveal the structural violence that society has wrought. Monsanto: a photographic investigation by photographer Mathieu Asselin is more specific in its aim: it is a visual call for corporate responsibility. Drawing on the theme of temporality that pollution often creates, the photobook is a timeline that documents over 100 years of chemical harm. The book explains through word and image how the agrochemical company Monsanto has caused ecological, social, and health problems for countless people across the world.

“The book draws on a wide range of visual techniques to tell its dark story”

Biology Fortified Inc., known as “Biofortified,” is a nonprofit organization that works closely with the agrichemical industry and its allies on public relations and lobbying campaigns to defend genetically engineered foods and pesticides and try to discredit industry critics.

Biofortified partners with agrichemical industry

This internal Monsanto document identifies Biofortified as an “industry partner” in Monsanto’s public relations plan to discredit the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), to protect the reputation of Roundup weedkiller. In March 2015, an IARC expert panel judged glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, to be probably carcinogenic to humans.

The Monsanto PR document identified four tiers of industry partners the corporation planned to engage in its “preparedness plan” for the IARC cancer report. Biofortified is listed in “Tier 2,” along with Academics Review, AgBioChatter academics, Genetic Literacy Project and Sense About Science. These groups are are often cited as independent sources, but as the Monsanto plan and other examples indicate, they work behind the scenes with the agrichemical industry to protect corporate interests.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Justice formally announced today its approval of the Bayer-Monsanto merger, contingent upon divestments from the two companies.

Tiffany Finck-Haynes, senior food futures campaigner with Friends of the Earth, issued the following statement in response:

This toxic mega-merger is another Trump Administration handout to an industry that’s poisoning people and the planet. The Department of Justice is prioritizing corporate profits instead of listening to the 1 million Americans who spoke out against the merger. DOJ also failed to listen to more than 93 percent of polled farmers who are concerned about the merger.

Americans deserve better than corporate monopolies that drive up food prices and put family farmers out of business. The DOJ’s weak divestment requirements will do nothing to stop Bayer-Monsanto from controlling more and more of our food system. This merger will damage the bargaining power of family farmers, prevent farmers from accessing diverse seed varieties, and allow seed prices to rise.

Today, the U.S. Department of Justice approved the mega-merger of Bayer AG and Monsanto Co.

The Organization for Competitive Markets, which has fought on behalf of U.S. family farmers to block the mega-merger, issued the following statement:

“Today’s news makes it clear that our anti-monopoly laws are completely worthless and the U.S. Department of Justice merger review process is pointless. Economists have well established that there is a strong likelihood of market abuse when four companies control 45% of the market, and the fact that DOJ has now allowed one company to control 77% of all seed corn, 69% of all seed traits and 58-97% of the markets in cotton, soybeans, and canola, means DOJ has just authorized a monopoly.

America’s family farmers will pay the price for this action, and consumers will see fewer choices in the market. Where is the justice in the Department of Justice?”

It is clear to us that our laws don’t work for the people, and therefore our attention and our efforts must be focused on Capitol Hill to call on Congress to take action to stop agricultural mergers until stronger anti-monopoly laws are implemented.

For more information on U.S. farmers’ strong opposition to the merger, see our March 8, 2018 poll results.

Scientists working for the FDA have discovered significant levels of glyphosate in a number of common US foodstuff, including granola, crackers and corn, according to emails intercepted by The Guardian. Glyphosate, which has been in-use for nearly 40 years, has been the center of controversy since 2015, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) labeled the substance a “probable carcinogen.” A two-part report published by Le Monde last year revealed Monsanto’s major effort to suppress the IARC’s findings and other supporting science. According to the prize-winning report, the agrochemical manufacturer has employed methods ranging from ghost-writing glyphosate-friendly research papers to hiring undercover agents to infiltrate the IARC. Now, this most recent batch of intercepted emails could shed some light on the widespread nature of the glyphosate controversy.

Grocery stores may look a little different.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced their plan for rolling out mandatory labels for all food products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). So far they’ve only released potential prototypes for the labels and a proposed set of rules, both of which are subject to future changes, but they offer a preview of what we might all be seeing on cans and boxes come 2020, when the new regulations would go into effect.

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What will the labels say?

Somewhat confusingly, they won’t say “GMO.” The proposed labels use the terms “BE” and “bioengineered” instead to avoid the contentious connotations that GMO carries. They labels look quite friendly, which people in the pro-labeling camp have already criticized, and would only appear as a small icon on the final food product. You can check them out here—they’re mostly the letters B-E inside a happy green and yellow circle. But using those labels is just one of three options. The second is to write out the disclosure (for example: “contains a bioengineered food ingredient”). Companies could also opt to use a QR code that would link to the proper disclosure.

If the current proposal passes, that could mean companies who want to hide their GMO affiliations could easily obscure the information, at least from consumers who aren’t going to take the time to scour the small print or scan a QR code (or can’t). It’s open to comment from the public until July 3, and a final ruling will come out later this year (the USDA hasn’t said exactly when yet). Not much is likely to change at this point, though. Congress has already enacted the standard—this is just figuring out the nitty gritty of enforcement.

By 2020, many foods produced with genetic engineering will have to say so on their labels. Earlier this month, the USDA announced their proposal for the rules and accompanying logos, which cleverly sidestep the GMO labeling controversy by not using the letters G-M-O at all.

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“BE” stands for bioengineered, a term that has been occasionally applied to genetically engineered foods but that was basically unknown to most of us. Dictionaries mostly define the word bioengineering as having something to do with medicine, although Google has caught on and now directs searches for “bioengineered food” toward Wikipedia’s page on genetically engineered food.

The proposed logos go a step further and make bioengineering look appealing. One of the proposed logos is green and leafy, the universal symbol for eco-friendly stuff you should pay extra for. The others hint at smiley faces. Paired with the word bioengineering, you get the impression this is some ecologically conscious European sort of thing. (And in fact, some comments point out that it could be confused with the European version of the organic label.)

A California man dying of cancer will soon become the first person ever to take agrochemical giant Monsanto to trial over allegations that the company has concealed findings that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the company's popular weedkiller Roundup, causes cancer.

Before DeWayne Johnson, a 46-year-old father of three, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma at the age of 42, he worked for a school district in California, "where his responsibilities included direct application of Roundup and RangerPro, another Monsanto glyphosate product, to school properties," according to his "landmark" lawsuit.

"Monsanto does not want the truth about Roundup and cancer to become public," Johnson's attorney, Michael Miller, told the Guardian. "We look forward to exposing how Monsanto hid the risk of cancer and polluted the science."

Monsanto attempted to bar Johnson's experts from testifying and his legal team from using certain research to argue that Johnson's cancer is tied to his exposure to Monsanto's products. In an order issued last week, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Curtin Karnow granted some of Monsanto's requests, but will still allow Johnson's lawyers to use numerous peer-reviewed studies and expert testimonies during the trial, which begins June 18.

To feed the burgeoning human population, it is vital that the world figures out ways to boost food production.

Increasing crop yields through conventional plant breeding is inefficient – the outcomes are unpredictable and it can take years to decades to create a new strain. On the other hand, powerful genetically modified plant technologies can quickly yield new plant varieties, but their adoption has been controversial. Many consumers and countries have rejected GMO foods even though extensive studies have proved they are safe to consume.

But now a new genome editing technology known as CRISPR may offer a good alternative.

I’m a plant geneticist and one of my top priorities is developing tools to engineer woody plants such as citrus trees that can resist the greening disease, Huanglongbing (HLB), which has devastated these trees around the world. First detected in Florida in 2005, the disease has decimated the state’s US$9 billion citrus crop, leading to a 75 percent decline in its orange production in 2017. Because citrus trees take five to 10 years before they produce fruits, our new technique – which has been nominated by many editors-in-chief as one of the groundbreaking approaches of 2017 that has the potential to change the world – may accelerate the development of non-GMO citrus trees that are HLB-resistant.