31/August/22

 

Recently the Genetic Literacy Project has targeted critics of the herbicide Roundup, now owned by Bayer, with a barrage of articles, podcasts, and tweets, in which the controversial University of Florida scientist Kevin Folta has been to the fore. It started when the Guardian published a piece by the award-winning journalist Carey Gillam on a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study showing the prevalence in urine samples in the US of Roundup’s ingredient glyphosate, which has been linked to cancer. Kevin Folta led the charge for the GLP with a piece that labelled the Guardian article “yellow journalism” (lurid, sensationalist reporting) by “scientifically illiterate journalists”. Folta also attacked Gillam personally. The GLP followed up Folta’s article with two pieces targeting Gillam, authored by the GLP’s founding executive director Jon Entine. But neither Folta’s GLP piece, nor Entine’s followups, mentioned that the GLP is directly funded by Bayer, the producer of Roundup, to the tune of $100,000. Folta’s own lucrative financial relationship with Bayer, which has earned him over $200,000 in consultancy fees, also failed to merit a mention. Following Bayer's takeover of Monsanto, a person high up in the company had told Gillam that it was not going to be funding – or engaging in – the front group misinformation and character assassination campaigns that Monsanto had. But this appears to be false. GMWatch

 

 

Paul D. Thacker, an award-winning investigative reporter, has published an article telling how the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) finally cancelled a grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for the dangerous virus gain-of-function research that could have been the cause of the pandemic, and how this major news story has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media and science writers. Thacker’s article also shows how the abject failure of science writers to check glaring conflicts of interest has allowed them to be played like puppets. And now, where their failure to do basic journalism is in danger of being exposed, they're choosing silence over reporting. GMWatch comment on article by Paul Thacker on his Substack blog, The Disinformation Chronicle

 

 

Ongoing reviews of the way we regulate the products of genetic engineering in agriculture have shone a light on the governance of GMOs, the limited pool of stakeholders that are generally consulted and the urgent need for wider and more meaningful stakeholder consultation. In the UK, the EU and elsewhere, citizen involvement remains peripheral and elusive. A free webinar on 10 October aims to explore the question of where citizen engagement fits into concepts of good governance and ask, if it is essential then how do we implement it? Register now for the webinar! A Bigger Conversation

 

 

The US Environmental Protection Agency says new rules enacted in 2020 have still resulted in thousands of off-target incidents for the herbicide dicamba. According to a draft ecological assessment on the EPA’s website, the agency has recorded 3,500 new incidents of off-target dicamba incidents in the 2021 growing season alone. The herbicide is generally used with GM crop plants that have been genetically engineered to tolerate dicamba. No-Till Farmer

 

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