by Carey Gillam
The Séralini study results were alarming. Treated rats had much higher death rates than the control group animals, and the exposed rats demonstrated an “unexpected increase in tumor incidence,” especially mammary tumors in female rats, along with damage to the animals’ livers and kidneys. The scientists said both the GMO corn and Roundup contributed to the health problems that developed in the experimental animals, and they said they found “unexpected low dose toxicity from Roundup” at levels 10,000 times lower than those permitted in drinking water in the United States.6 The study results “clearly indicate that lower levels of complete agricultural G [glyphosate] herbicide formulations, at concentrations well below officially set safety limits, can induce severe hormone-dependent mammary, hepatic, and kidney disturbances,” the study authors concluded.7 Séralini said his research gave credence to fears that Roundup contains ingredients more toxic than glyphosate and that Roundup formulations should be considered endocrine disruptors.
News outlets around the world published stories about the study findings, and regulators in many countries were understandably rattled. France’s prime minister at the time, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said that the country would consider a ban on GMO corn sprayed with glyphosate, and the European Commission said it would seek a review by the European Food Safety Authority. Russia temporarily suspended importing glyphosate-tolerant corn, and Kenya actually moved to ban all GMO crops, most of which were sprayed directly with glyphosate.
The announcement of the study results came at a particularly bad time for Monsanto, just two months before California residents were slated to vote on whether or not to require labeling of foods made with GMOs, an issue Monsanto adamantly opposed. Glyphosate residue on foods was one of the concerns that drove the labeling efforts, not just in California but in several other states as well, so any bad news about glyphosate’s impacts on health was a big problem. Just as they had done with other negative research reports and not unlike the attack they would later launch against the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), Monsanto and associated industry players railed against the Séralini study, telling journalists it was fatally flawed in many ways. The European Federation of Biotechnology industry association, which counts Monsanto and other agribusiness firms among its members, called for the paper to be retracted, saying it reflected a “dangerous failure of the peer-review system.” Other organizations and ultimately regulatory bodies weighed in, mimicking Monsanto’s claims that the research was flawed and not to be believed. California voters narrowly rejected the mandatory GMO labeling bill as the attacks on Séralini continued for well over a year and scientists around the world debated the perceived merits and shortcomings of the Séralini work.
About 130 scientists, scholars, and activists took Séralini’s side, weighing in with support in an open letter published in Independent Science News. The group noted the industry pressure on scientists whose findings were unfavorable and said the backlash against Séralini’s study raised “the profile of fundamental challenges faced by science in a world increasingly dominated by corporate influence.”8
And then Richard Goodman stepped in. Goodman, a trim, bookish-looking man who favored a neatly kept moustache and held a doctorate in dairy science, worked for Monsanto from 1997 to 2004. But by the fall of 2012, when the Séralini study was published, Goodman was working at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Records would reveal that despite his work at the public university, Goodman was still tightly entwined with Monsanto, relying on funding from the company and other agrochemical interests to run a food allergy research program at the University of Nebraska. In that role, he was happily touting the safety of agricultural biotechnology, training scientists from other countries in how to evaluate the safety of GMO crops that are sprayed with glyphosate, and issuing reports about how GMO crops, engineered to be sprayed with glyphosate or to repel pests, were not likely to trigger allergic reactions in people. And though Goodman’s job description listed him as a faculty member of the university’s Department of Food Science and Technology, it was the funding from Monsanto and other agrochemical and seed companies, such as Bayer, DuPont, and Syngenta, that kept Goodman afloat. A look at the sponsorship agreement for the allergen database for 2013 showed that each of six sponsoring companies was to pay roughly $51,000 for a total budget of $308,154 for that year. Goodman was also collaborating with Monsanto on efforts to turn back mandatory GMO labeling efforts and mitigate GMO safety concerns and was offered “media training” by the agrobusinesses. Records would reveal that roughly half of Goodman’s income came through industry funding.
When the Séralini study broke, Goodman was quickly in contact with Monsanto officials and eager to help in the response. Documents, again obtained by U.S. Right to Know, show that on the day the Séralini study was published—September 19, 2012—Goodman was e-mailing Monsanto toxicologist Bruce Hammond shortly before 10 a.m., asking for “talking points, or bullet analysis” that Goodman could use in discussing the study.9
By November, Goodman was doing much more: he was acting as associate editor of the FCT scientific journal—the very one that had just published the Séralini study and from which Monsanto was seeking a retraction. Goodman was placed in a role overseeing GMO-related research reports. It’s not clear if Monsanto had a hand in getting Goodman appointed, but e-mails do show a direct connection between Monsanto’s Hammond, Goodman, and FCT’s editor-in-chief, A. Wallace Hayes. Shortly after Goodman was named associate editor, Hayes told Hammond that he and Goodman were aware of the criticism of the Séralini paper and wanted Hammond and other critics to act as reviewers for the journal.10 Around the same time Goodman was signing on to FCT, he was also worrying about whether the industry money would keep flowing. In e-mails, he expressed concern about protecting his income stream as a “soft-money professor.”11
In late 2013, after Goodman had been on the journal’s editorial team for roughly a year, FCT abruptly retracted the Séralini study, saying it had decided the data were inconclusive and the conclusions unreliable. Critics were quick to link the retraction to Goodman, but he denied any involvement. Séralini saw a clear connection, however. In a statement defending his work, he declared the retraction the result of “pressure from the GMO and agrochemical industry to force acceptance of GMOs and Roundup.” Goodman’s appointment to the editorial team was a “most flagrant illustration” of agrobusiness’s influence and underscored how industry’s tight hold on what was considered acceptable science “puts public health at risk,” he said.12
“This episode illustrated the vulnerable position of dependent ‘science’ and the economic and political forces that move to defend Roundup and Roundup-contaminated crops,” Séralini said.13 The Séralini study was republished in another journal, Environmental Sciences Europe, in June 2014. Still, the heavy industry criticism left Séralini’s credibility deeply scarred.
Goodman’s affiliation with Monsanto was underscored by communications related to a second study, the Sri Lanka work that tied glyphosate to kidney disease.14 E-mails obtained show Goodman asked Monsanto’s Food Safety Scientific Affairs lead, John Vicini, in October 2014 for help evaluating what he called an “anti-paper.” Goodman said he needed someone at Monsanto to provide him with some “sound scientific arguments” for how to view the study’s findings.15 Monsanto actively campaigned to discredit the study, saying there was no evidence whatsoever that glyphosate contributes to kidney failure in humans or animals.
Another professor with close, but largely hidden, ties to Monsanto (who also called for a retraction of the Séralini study) is former University of Illinois food science professor Bruce Chassy. Prior to his retirement in 2012, Chassy touted a stellar academic reputation and decades of experience earned at the public university and as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. He has been an avid supporter of GMOs and glyphosate and an unforgiving critic of biotech detractors. He has traveled across the country, and the world, giving speec
hes, making presentations, and working to convince regulators that independent academics such as himself view GMOs and glyphosate herbicides as perfectly safe. Through it all, he has proclaimed himself free from corporate control. But Chassy’s veil of independence appeared quite thin when internal e-mails revealed multiple professional and financial links to Monsanto.
In one arrangement, Monsanto helped set Chassy up to run a website called Academics Review, which was designed to counter scientists, journalists, activists, and others who criticized GMOs and agrochemicals such as glyphosate. There was only one catch—Monsanto wanted to keep its involvement a secret. In a November 2010 e-mail laying out the plan, a period in which Chassy was still working at the university, Monsanto’s chief of global scientific affairs, Eric Sachs, wrote to Chassy: “From my perspective the problem is one of expert engagement and that could be solved by paying experts to provide responses…. The key will be keeping Monsanto in the background so as not to harm the credibility of the information.” In that same exchange, Sachs told Chassy that Monsanto had just “sent a gift of $10,000” to his university, “so the funds should be there.”
Jay Byrne, president of the v-Fluence public relations firm and former head of corporate communications for Monsanto, told Chassy in a separate 2010 e-mail exchange that he was trying to move the Academics Review project forward and that he had a list of industry critics ready for Academics Review to target. He suggested “we work on the money (for all of us).” He told Chassy that the topic areas “mean money for a range of well heeled corporations.”16
Chassy did not disappoint. Under his hand, the Academics Review site published several critical articles about individuals and organizations whose work did not support industry objectives, including the IARC working group that classified glyphosate as a probable carcinogen. No disclosure was made of Monsanto’s interests in, or support of, the website as it came out with the critical articles. But a look at tax filings makes the connections clear. Money was funneled through a nonprofit set up by the industry called the Council for Biotechnology Information (CBI), a group that states in government filings its goal is to “promote agricultural plant biotechnology through the exchange of information about its benefits.” CBI directors included Phil Miller, global regulatory affairs vice president for Monsanto, as well as Dow’s global affairs leader, Brad Shurdut, and DuPont’s Jerry Flint, also a vice president for regulatory affairs. Academics Review received $300,000 from the CBI in 2014 and $350,000 in 2015, the records show. That was only a small portion of the millions of dollars the group spread around annually for “education, advocacy and other means” to groups in the United States, Mexico, and Canada.17
In addition to the website, Chassy helped Monsanto in many other ways. He coauthored a long article about Séralini, calling the study “fraudulent” and saying the work raised questions of “scientific misconduct.”18 Several e-mails from 2011 show that Chassy and Monsanto’s Sachs, along with others in the industry, discussed ways to lobby the EPA against expanded regulation of biotech crops. And in a September 2011 e-mail exchange with people from Monsanto and industry, Chassy suggested how the biotech crop industry might “spin” a government report that found significant levels of glyphosate in air and water samples. Chassy referred to “anti-GM chemophobes” and told the group the “take home message” should be that the “mere presence of a chemical in an ecosystem or ecological niche is by itself meaningless. The antis always conveniently forget this.”19
Chassy even traveled overseas to do Monsanto’s bidding, in at least one case agreeing to a “mission” before he understood its objective, as seen in this excerpt from a January 2012 e-mail from Chassy to Sachs:
You originally asked if I would go to China and do what I did in Korea. You wanted to know if I was available and said you would explain later. One thing led to another and I am now going but we never did speak about the actual mission on China.
Where am I speaking? To whom? For how long? More importantly, what is the topic and is there an assigned title? What’s really going on and what are the between the lines issues? Knowing the [answers] to all of these questions would really help me plan a talk.
Can we talk sometime before I start putting a talk together?20
In other exchanges, Chassy, Sachs, and Monsanto’s John Swarthout, who led the company’s scientific outreach and issues management, discussed what Chassy’s China presentation should say, including changes made by Monsanto. Sachs instructed Swarthout to send slide decks to Chassy as material for him to use.
Monsanto’s Hammond also asked Chassy for help creating short videos about the “safety of GM crops.” In those e-mail exchanges, Chassy said he thought he could use university equipment to do the work and asked Hammond for a list of videos that “you think would be helpful.”21
Chassy also was a regular contributor to an industry-funded promotional website called GMO Answers, where he wrote that research linking glyphosate to illnesses was flawed, again failing to disclose his ties to Monsanto. At the same time that some of this was going on, Monsanto money was flowing in Chassy’s direction. It’s unclear exactly how much money was involved, but several e-mails discussed financial payments. In one, Chassy told colleagues at the university that Monsanto had promised him the company was going to make a “substantial contribution” to his biotech account at the university.22
In a different e-mail exchange, Chassy asked Sachs about a contribution for the university foundation biotech fund. The Monsanto executive responded that he would “make a gift to the foundation right away” if it had not already been made.23 Chassy said the check should be accompanied by a letter saying the check is “an unrestricted gift … in support of the biotechnology outreach and education activities of Professor Bruce M. Chassy.”24
Chassy didn’t disclose the financial relationships publicly. Instead, the payments were funneled through the University of Illinois Foundation, which does not have to report its funding, keeping the payments out of the public eye.25
Chassy said he did nothing unethical or improper in his work supporting Monsanto and the biotech crop industry. He said he was never asked to modify his independent views and was “never compensated in any way” for his expertise. Financial support from the private sector for public-sector research, education, and public outreach is not only appropriate, Chassy said, but needed. “As a public-sector research scientist, it was expected … that I collaborate with and solicit the engagement of those working in my field of expertise,” Chassy stated on the Academics Review website in September 2015, the same month his relationship with Monsanto was revealed in an article in the New York Times.26
Monsanto also said there was nothing improper about the arrangement. But critics have argued the public is being misled by these types of covert connections. “These revelations regarding the connections are very important,” said George Kimbrell, senior attorney with the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. “The basic disclosure that some academics and other ‘neutral’ commentators in the public sphere are actually paid operatives/working directly with the chemical industry rightly alarms the public, as they are being misled.”27
Another U.S. professor who became a member of the inner circle of Monsanto academic allies was Kevin Folta of the University of Florida. Folta, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology, was known as a strawberry expert, having helped lead a project to sequence the strawberry genome from 2007 to 2010. But Folta became a favored friend for Monsanto and its public relations teams around 2013 as they looked for people to help them combat GMO labeling efforts. Folta was eager and willing to assure the public that GMO crops were healthy and that glyphosate residues were not harmful.
Documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know revealed a series of arrangements between Monsanto and Folta to help Monsanto on its PR mission. In one e-mail, Folta told Monsanto he was “glad to sign on to whatever you like, or write whatever you like.”28 In fact, Folta was one of the nine profe
ssors Monsanto asked to write a policy brief in 2013. His assignment—to “provide examples of activist campaigns that spread false information that goes unchallenged.” Folta was supposed to push a narrative that critics of GMO crops were undermining “worldwide efforts to ensure a safe, nutritious, plentiful and affordable food supply using responsible and sustainable agricultural practices.”29 Folta did as asked, the record shows.30
Folta was then, and is as of this writing, associate professor and chairman of the Horticultural Sciences Department at the university, so his credentials carry a lot of weight. A top executive with the Ketchum public relations firm made it clear how important Folta’s work for the industry was, writing to him in May 2014: “Professors/researchers/scientists have a big white hat in this debate and support in their states, from politicians to producers. Keep it up!”31
Part of Folta’s work with the industry included the use of his name and likeness on a pro-industry website called GMO Answers, funded by Monsanto, Dow, and other agrochemical and seed companies. Ketchum designed the site as a Q&A forum where academics such as Folta would appear to be relying on their expertise to address frequently asked questions about GMOs and agrochemicals. Ketchum said in one e-mail to Folta that the website was “a new way to build trust, dialogue and support for biotech in agriculture.”32 But while the website stated that the answers came from Folta, they were actually written, at least in some cases, by the PR firm.33
Here is just one example of suggested text the PR firm wrote to post on the GMO Answers website attributed to Folta: “In the wild, the transfer of genes within and across species is fairly common, either through traditional reproduction (breeding) or through non-traditional means. Viruses and bacteria do this all the time, as do plants and animals. Human DNA, for instance, is full of viral genes.”34 The PR executive told Folta he was free to revise and use his own words. But in the public posting on the industry website, underneath a picture of a smiling Folta, not a word was changed.35