“The emails provide a rare view into the strategy and tactics of a lobbying campaign that has transformed ivory tower elites into powerful players. The use by both sides of third-party scientists, and their supposedly unbiased research, helps explain why the American public is often confused as it processes the conflicting information,” says the Times. “There is no evidence that academic work was compromised” as researchers became active in lobbying.
At present, the debate is not over the safety of GMO crops, but mainly over the safety of the herbicides used in conjunction with the crops, says the Times.
The biotech industry has underwritten travel and other “outreach” activity by scientists who believe GMO crops are safe, said the newspaper. One of the scientists, Kevin Folta of U-Florida, told the Times, “Nobody tells me what to say …. Every point I make is based on science.” Opponents of GMOs “have used their own creative tactics,” such as funding research projects and paying for travel expenses for its advocates, says the Times, but their spending was a fraction of the biotech companies.
“Big biotech companies like Monsanto and big food companies like General Mills and Pepsi have spun the science to fight our right to know what’s in our food and how it’s grown,” said the Just Label It campaign for GMO labeling. Gary Hirshberg, chairman of Stonyfield Farm, is head of Just Label It.