“Defend or be damned”

How a company linked to Monsanto uses government funds to suppress pesticide opposition around the world

Today I’m happy to share the results of months of reporting I’ve been doing in collaboration with the non-profit Netherlands-based newsroom Lighthouse Reports. The investigative report, which we have dubbed “Poison PR,” was published this morning at the outlet I manage, The New Lede and also in The Guardian. Several other international media partners are publishing their own related stories.

The New Lede (TNL) is also publishing a dedicated Poison PR page, where readers can scroll through many of the documents we used in reporting this story.

To many of my readers, the revelations may not seem ‘new’ at all - I mean, how many examples do we need to have to know that powerful companies often work hand in hand with academics and government officials to thwart policies that they see as threatening their profits?

But as revealed in today’s story, there is a new - and darker - twist. Not only did we find fresh evidence of meddling in foreign policy matters and secret maneuvering to discredit opponents, but we found evidence that US tax dollars are helping pay for some of it.

You can read about how a Missouri “reputation management” firm that has been helping a Chinese-owned company promote the use of a pesticide suspected of causing Parkinson’s disease is at the center of an effort to downplay pesticide dangers and undermine foreign policy actions harmful to the agrochemical industry,

That firm, v-Fluence Interactive, was founded and is run by former Monsanto executive Jay Byrne. Monsanto was an early client, and the company has had a 20-year+ relationship with Syngenta. Launched in 2001, v-Fluence provides self-described services that include “intelligence gathering”, “proprietary data mining” and “risk communications”.  

By Byrne by no means works alone. A cadre of other chemical industry allies are involved, as are officials within the US Department of Agriculture and other government agencies.

It’s jarring to read emails in which executives from companies such as Bayer, the German owner of Monsanto and the maker of glyphosate herbicides, participate in email chatter with a US government officer and industry allies that includes discussion of how to “neutralize” messaging they see as threatening their interests.

And it is alarming to see the hundreds of individuals secretly profiled by this group of chemical industry proponents. Personal details related to an individual’s marital problems, a past speeding ticket, identities of children and other relatives, personal phone numbers and home addresses are among the details included in the files created and shared with the members of a secretive

It all starts with a private portal called Bonus Eventus set up just for pesticide industry executives and their friends in government and academia.

The portal is used in a variety of ways, including to send out alerts on upcoming events and mobilize responses. The portal was used, for example, to attack our reporting on this story BEFORE our story was even published.

Earlier this week, days after we sent out emails asking Byrne and others for comment about the findings of our investigation, the portal was put to use to spread false allegations against Lighthouse Reports, myself, and others involved in the reporting.

In a screed written by a longtime industry ally, Bonus Eventus members were told our reporting project was “an ethical trainwreck with no concept of journalistic integrity”.

The attacks were amplified on social media.

All this before they even read our article.

“I don’t think most people realize the degree of corporate espionage and USDA’s complicity with it,” said Austin Frerick, who served as co-chair of the Biden campaign’s Agriculture Antitrust Policy Committee and recently authored a book about concentration of power in the food system. “The coordination here – the fact that USDA is part of this – is really scary.”

To read the investigation and see the emails, visit The New Lede. And please share!

See this video explaining it all.