Monsanto, PR Agencies & Captive Scientists Worked Together To Target 14-Year-Old GMO Activist

[hatrack]

At the time, Rachel Parent was 14 years old and had a growing social media following. Her message to label genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food was attracting attention – including from those who promote GMOs in the U.S. Their internal emails reveal they were discussing how they could counter her message. “To think at this point, I was on their radar and I had no clue,” Parent said.

EDIT

The documents show (Ed. - U Florida Professor Kevin) Folta wrote articles, blog posts, contributed to industry website GMOAnswers.com, attended public hearings, forums and events to explain and defend GMO technology; he also lobbied Congress and other government agencies. During these appearances and in his writings Folta has repeatedly referred to himself as an “independent scientist.”

The documents reveal that Monsanto, the Biotechnology Industry Organization and Ketchum reimbursed Folta’s travel costs. After the emails were released, Folta admitted as much in his blog posts. In August 2014, Monsanto also gave Folta an unrestricted $25,000 grant telling him in a letter it “may be used at your discretion in support of your research and outreach projects.”

EDIT

Later that year, while attending a roundtable in Washington, D.C., Folta was asked by public relations firm Ketchum to make a video about Parent. The email request to Folta read, “How do you agree/disagree with 14-yr old GMO Labeling activist Rachel Parent, who is, in her own words ‘not anti-science’ but ‘for responsible science and ethical progress?’” But, the email added, “we try to refrain from personally attacking folks, so don’t worry too much about Rachel specifically.” Nine days later, a video appeared online that was quite specific, entitled, “How do you agree/disagree with 14 year old GMO Activist?” The video discussed Parent’s activism, her belief that all GMO food products should be labelled, and addressed her apparent lack of scientific knowledge.

EDIT

http://globalnews.ca/news/2414720/documents-reveal-canadian-teenager-the-target-of-gmo-lobby/

[TalkingDog]

1. Nobody is surprised

- or they are in denial.

[MisterP]

2. this sector got 30 tenured professors fired, nukes 30, oil like 50

even ball lightning saw like 20 careers ended (before quietly admitting it in 2015 and roundfiling the issue)
by now crushing experts is a bodily function for them

[NNadir]

3. In order to satisfy every 14 year old genius on the planet, I suggest we post the complete...

...genetic sequence of every organism used in every item of food directly on the package.

Since it is now possible to sequence - albeit at large expense - pretty much any living organism, including the more than 13,000 introduced species now present in the environment, I suggest that at the behest of 14 year old geniuses, we agree that no food be eaten unless the genome has been fully mapped.

This, of course, will involve a lot of packaging to print all those sequences, requiring that for instance that a package of tofu have a surface area of say, 15 square meters of "organic" cardboard, but it's worth it, especially because we don't wish to be anti-science, and because we want our 14 year olds to be able to address full professors on terms of being their peers.

At the very least, for example, before serving bread in any restaurant, or selling any in a supermarket, convenience store, or bodega anywhere on the planet, I suggest that people be required to show proof of age, and sign a release showing that they have read and fully understood all of the information contained in this paper: Science 18 JULY 2014 • VOL 345 ISSUE 6194, and of course, all of the papers it references.

Random pop quizzes should be given before food is sold.

If people starve to death waiting to get bread or while studying the genome in order to pass the pop quizzes, screw 'em. We want them to be "safe."

Oh yes, and any of the thousands of scientists with Ph.D's in genetics who work at Monsanto should be banned from tutoring people trying to pass the bread safety exam, since, well, they're from Monsanto.

To help us get started on understanding the wheat genome in order to eat bread, I would suggest that interested parties, including 14 year olds who as smart as professors begin with this graphic from this paper that I downloaded using my 16 year old's subscription to Nature:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7426/fig_tab/nature11650_F2.html

The paper, from which it comes, Nature 491, 705–710 (29 November 2012) actually doesn't require a subscription; it's open sourced, so that it is freely available to any 14 year old who wishes to address how grants to scientists are being utilized can read them for the purpose of confronting said scientists, especially if the scientists in question are evil Strangelovian types who may have trained graduate students who ended up working at, (gasp) Monsanto.

As the article points out, it appears that wheat was hybridized by human beings about 8,000 years ago from diploid goat grass, Aegilops tauschii, resulting in the tetraploid species we use to make bread today, Triticum dicoccoides. Probably the awful people who did this awful bit of genetic engineering 8,000 years ago were the awful ancestors of the awful people who grew up to work at Monsanto today.

[hatrack]

4. I don't think the horse is quite dead . . . please keep flogging!

.

[NNadir]

5. The horse, owing to genetic engineering using CRISPR technology, is immortal.

Apparently there is no way to kill it.

It has also been genetically engineered to feel no pain, so flogging is apparently useless.

From what I can tell, the horse has also been engineered to breed rapidly, rather like a virus, at viral speed.

[progressoid]

7. CRISPR!!!

Aiiiieeee!

Zombie GMO horses!!!11!

[progressoid]

6. Also, Folta did take complimentary mints and lip balm from the Monsanto booth at a trade show.!1

What are "Close Ties" to Monsanto? A FAQ.

What exactly are "close ties"? These claims were make by Keith Kloor in the August Nature article. The same claims are now reiterated in following articles, without justification, simply based on that initial statement. Of course, I never claimed to have a working relationship with Monsanto, because I don't have one. But let's clarify what this relationship is once and for all.

What are "close ties"? (Apologies to Keith Kloor, I did originally write this blog with "deep ties" and that's my mistake) Here is the extent of interaction with the Monsanto Corporation:

....


6. Email. Several dozen emails were seized in the FOIA request and are all related to the events above. These are perhaps 40 total emails of 90,000 total during the FOIA period.

7. Mints and Lip Balm. Folta took complimentary mints and lip balm from the Monsanto booth at a trade show.


http://kfolta.blogspot.ca/2015/09/what-are-deep-ties-to-monsanto.html

And the $25,000 wasn't used by Folta but donated to a campus food pantry.

[NNadir]

8. I visited a Monsanto booth at a trade show too. I also read several papers and a few book...

...chapters written by scientists at Monsanto, and I once went on a tour of their mass spectroscopy lab in Saint Louis.

I am, it would seem, even more guilty of "close ties," with Monsanto than the awful Dr. Folta, who sold out the future of life on the planet for a cheap lip balm trade show trinket.

Therefore everything I say can and should be used against me.

I am guilty.

[progressoid]

9. You don't want the lip balm anyway.

The balm is GMO.

[NNadir]

10. It depends on what the genes would have done for the lip balm formulating agents.

One genetic modification that's always interested me is the insertion of genes to produce PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids). These have the potential to greatly reduce incidence one of the biggest killers today, heart disease.

Seriously, thanks for the link to Dr. Folta's web page on this topic. While it was amusing on one level, it was disturbing on another, particularly since much of the controversy took place in Nature.

It's getting increasingly awful to be a scientist in this country, what with the funding cuts and the general public's contempt for important technologies.

It's not looking good for humanity or for the planet.

[progressoid]

11. I find it amusing that he is targeted for all the cash he supposedly gets from Monsanto,

While people like Vandana Shiva get $40,000 speaking fees to rail against something she isn't even qualified to address. Well, I don't find it amusing so much as sad.

To be clear, I have no love for many mega corporations. I'm not particularly fond of the business practices of pharmaceutical companies, yet I gladly take my life saving medications every day. And there are definitely problems with our agricultural system (I live in Iowa with polluted waterways from that system).

It's the rejection of science and discovery out of fear that bugs me.

Anyway...Happy New Year!

[NNadir]

12. Nature Biotechnology had a wonderful editorial on the subject.

Here's the link: Standing up for science (Nature Biotechnology 33, 1009 (2015))

I'm not sure if it's behind a firewall, but it's worth quoting:

...These headlines focused on Kevin Folta, a University of Florida researcher, because USRTK leaked his e-mails to three journalists. Two of them co-posted a PLOS blog (now removed), while the third wrote a front-page New York Times news story highlighting a $25,000 donation from Monsanto to Folta's institution. In both cases, the reporters cherry-picked sentences from several thousand e-mails, highlighting Folta's communications with Monsanto, often out of context, to insinuate that he is an industry shill—and thus presumably unfit to talk to the public.

Folta broke no laws. The Monsanto funds were a donation to his university's Foundation outreach program. They were tied neither to him directly nor to his research. His conflict of interest disclosures were wholly compliant with his university's rules. He never used industry funds for personal gain. Yes, he did have interactions with companies, and he is involved in a communications program that receives funding from industry (as well as from numerous private individuals, foundations, farmer bureaus and the US Pork Board, etc). None of this is shocking or, indeed, unusual.

What Folta didn't realize, however, is that compliance with legal requirements for transparency is still not enough to stay clean in the GM 'debate'. Industry has been blamed for everything from farmer suicides to lacing milk with growth hormone and pesticides and Monsanto has accrued more slung mud than most. Any association with Monsanto makes Folta dirty in the eyes of journalists and their public.

Folta is a gifted communicator—one of the rare scientists who has engaged the public, with over 12 years experience behind him. Not someone who merely discusses public engagement; but someone who actually communicates directly with non-expert audiences—at science fairs, in schools, at retirement homes, in blogs and podcasts. The tragedy is the harassment that he and his family have experienced in recent weeks will cause many potential researcher/communicators to duck back under the parapet.

This is how demagogues and anti-science zealots succeed: they extract a high cost for free speech; they coerce the informed into silence; they create hostile environments that threaten vibrant rare species with extinction.

The dominance and nature of online media undoubtedly contributes (>50% of Americans now get their science news online). Word-bites and click-bait mean less space and shallower coverage of anything scientific. Internet access has meant that science desks are apparently not needed in news organizations (except, oddly, in the UK). In truth, the public has never read science journals—but search engines and apps that prioritize content by popularity and immediacy mean that gravity in news is superfluous. Misinformed propaganda now floats unfettered across the globe at the speed of electrons.

The internet is an important tool for the communication of scientific research. I personally can no longer imagine living without it, it so speeds access to the literature and getting to the meat of information important scientific projects.

However access is not a substitute for thinking, particularly critical thinking.

I have been sorely depressed through my discovery of the internet and blogging to learn that many of my fellow Democrats are as ill informed, as given to rote rhetoric and sloganeering, as pernicious the the addressing of serious issues around dire human and environmental crises as are many of the worst on the far right. Ignorance knows no political boundaries, as much as we might like to think otherwise.

Two very depressing bugaboos are anti-GMO and anti-nuclear nonsense. They actually do enormous damage to the future.

For purposes of full disclosure, I have been associated with the pharmaceutical industry for more than thirty years. I have seen the transcendent, the excellent, the good, the not-so-good, the bad, the ugly and the unconscionable. The industry is no different than any other human activity. Still, if I was not on the front lines in the fight against AIDS, for instance, I was very much a soldier in the armies that struggled to translate the basic science into an available treatment that benefited and extended millions of lives.

It made my life worth living.

I personally won't live much longer, but I am really scared, really terrified at the world we are leaving for my sons and their generation. We are leaving them with a huge intellectual and moral hole that will be very hard to fill.

Thanks for your comments. Have a Happy New Year.