Is the EU completely in the pocket of the biotech industry?
“In less than a fortnight, EU Member States will take a decision on re-approving glyphosate. Genius [lobby
firm] is working to get this toxic herbicide re-approved by
communicating the industry’s mantra that glyphosate is scientifically
proven safe, sponsored by Monsanto, Dow and Syngenta. At the same time,
they are being paid by German authorities and EU-funded projects to work
on issues that are closely related to glyphosate, and that are key to
the interests of the same corporations. Public authorities using the
same lobby consultancies as the corporations they are supposed to
regulate is highly problematic…” – Corporate Europe Observatory
Much of the following text is an edited version of key extracts
taken from the article referred to below from Corporate Europe
Observatory.
On 9 May, Corporate Europe Observatory posted an article on
its website that described how Genius, a lobby consultancy firm based
in Germany, has been employed to distort the debate on glyphosate in
favour the biotech industry.
Research linking the use of glyphosate to various diseases is well documented,
and the World Health Organisation has declared the substance as
“probably causing cancer to humans.” Despite this, the European
Commission is seeking to grant glyphosate re-approval for another ten
years. The re-authorisation is being sought by the Glyphosate Task Force
(GTF), an industry platform uniting producers of glyphosate-based
herbicides, whose members include Monsanto, Dow Agrosciences, Syngenta, and Barclay Chemicals. Genius was used to run its website.
In addition to the Glyphosate Task Force (GTF), Genius has been
hired by biotech lobby group EuropaBio, its German member organisation
DIB and individual corporations including Bayer, BASF, and Syngenta. It
also works for the Brussels-based corporate food think tank EUFIC
(European Food Information Council).
Monsanto, Syngenta, and Dow (all members of the GTF), as well as
BASF and Bayer coordinate a lot of their lobbying efforts via lobby
associations like EuropaBio. All of them share a deep commercial
interest in the re-approval of glyphosate and in the continued
production of glyphosate-tolerant GM crops, also via the sales of other
brands of pesticides used for the same crops.
In the case of glyphosate, Genius ‘translates’ the science on its
toxicity for its clients from the pesticide industry by writing on the
Glyphosate Task Force website that it does not cause cancer, and saying that the IARC “should withdraw the decision” to classify glyphosate as a Group 2A carcinogen.
However, Genius also lists public institutions as its clients, who
are in charge of regulating the industry’s products, including the
European Commission, the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) and 10
German federal and regional authorities, including the German risk
assessment agency Bfr. This is important because Germany is the
Rapporteur Member State for the re-approval of glyphosate, and Bfr is
the agency in charge of the renewal assessment report.
Genius takes part in several EU-funded research projects that
generally aim to help shape EU risk assessment requirements or increase
communication activities on the supposed benefits of the biotech
industry’s products.
An important example is GRACE (GMO Risk Assessment and
Communication of Evidence). Kristina Sinemus, Genius’ Managing Director,
and its co-founder Klaus Minol take part in this project. In fact,
about half of the experts participating in GRACE have close ties to
industry lobby groups like ILSI (International Life Sciences Institute),
PRRI (Public Research and Regulation Initiative) and/or to
industry-funded organisation ISBR (International Society for Biosafety
Research). Genius is not the only lobby consultancy participating in
GRACE; Belgium-based Perseus also works with companies aiming to get
deregulation for new techniques of genetic engineering.
