In this podcast episode, EWG President and co-Founder Ken Cook focuses on pesticides, specifically how the pesticide industry uses government funds to suppress opposition to the harmful chemicals around the world.
Cook speaks with Carey Gillam, managing editor of EWG’s independent journalism initiative The New Lede. They discuss her latest article on industry plotting, “‘Defend or be damned’ – How a U.S. company uses government funds to suppress pesticide opposition around the world,” which uncovers a government-funded pro-pesticide social network with worldwide reach.
The article, co-published with The Guardian and Le Monde, reveals how pesticide proponents rely on the network as part of a broad campaign – financed partly with U.S. taxpayers dollars – to downplay pesticide dangers, discredit opponents, and undermine international policymaking that threatens the industry.
Disclaimer: This transcript was compiled using software and may include typographical errors.
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Carey: We found government contracts, government money. We found the secret network, the secret portal that they had set up in which they could communicate directly with chemical industry executives and government officials. We had some, some currently 30 USDA members who are participating or were members of this portal.
You know, it just, it went on and on. And what you see were very real, very impactful examples of this network and these people working to suppress criticism and opposition in foreign countries of pesticides.
Ken: Hello everyone, it's Ken Cook and I'm having another episode. This one is brought on by a really stunning piece of investigative journalism, that pulls back the curtain on how the pesticide industry really operates to affect public policy and affect all our lives. And I'm not just talking about the United States, but how they operate to nefarious purposes and ends globally.
This is an investigation that was published in The Guardian, Le Monde, and The New Lead. And The New Lead is a publication of EWG's independent journalism program. And we're going to be talking to the woman who leads that. It revealed the inner workings of a U.S. government funded private social network that's designed and operated to attack critics of pesticides, and this is exactly the reason why EWG established a journalism initiative.
To have great reporters have the time and space to dig deep into some of these stories. The piece is called defend or be damned how a U.S. company uses government funds, that means your funds, to suppress pesticide opposition around the world. And my guest today is my colleague and friend, and I think, hands down, the best reporter on the pesticides beat.
I'm talking about Carey Gillam. She's the managing editor of The New Lede, EWG's, journalism initiative. And Carey is the person who spearheaded this investigation with colleagues from around the world. So Carey, I like to think I'm cynical enough that I can't be shocked. But once again, you shocked me with this investigation.
The fact that the pesticide industry's PR firm had the chutzpah to find a way to get support from The U.S. government, from U.S. taxpayers for some of these activities, was genuinely shocking to someone who prides himself as beyond shock on what pesticide companies are capable of doing. So I'm excited to learn more about how this investigation unfolded.
Who else was involved? Welcome to the show, Carey Gillam.
Carey: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah. I mean, this, this was many, many months of work, a collaboration from a number of news organizations around the world, the New Lead, as you mentioned, which is our, you know, little news outlet that was started up at the initiative of the Environmental Working Group.
And, uh, we worked hand in hand with lighthouse reports, which is a European based reporting sort of coalition, if you will, that works to gather information and then help spread that around the world through other news outlets. And we work with reporters at Le Monde and the humanitarian and different outlets in different countries.
So there were 9 partners in total. I was the lead for the U.S. focus. And, yeah, I mean, what we found, much like you, I've covered the agrochemical industry since 1998 and I find it hard to be surprised, I guess, by many things, but I was again, you know, shocked, shocked to see. U.S. government, and it's not really U.S. government money, it's our money, right?
It's taxpayer money going to these companies, one company in particular called V Fluence, which we profile and which is at the heart of all of this and V. fluence is run by a man who used to run the public relations operation at Monsanto and he started up this company called V. Fluence and they do intelligence gathering and monitoring of targets people that they think threaten the pesticide industry or threaten genetically modified crop adoption around the world.
It's, it's really doing the Work of the companies like, you know, Bayer Monsanto, which is now owned by Bayer and Syngetna, B.A.S.F., all of these different companies that sell chemicals and seeds and, uh, find opposition in many cases to their products, as evidence is mounted over the years that these products can do environmental harm, or, you know, cause human health harm, or maybe there are concerns in certain countries about, you know, just the, their own protection of seeds and, you know, native elements and control of the food supply, et cetera.
And yeah, so we found government contracts, government money. We found the secret network, the secret portal that they had set up in which they could communicate directly with chemical industry executives and government officials. We had some currently 30 members who were participating or were members of this portal.
You know, it just it went on and on and what you see were very real, very impactful. examples of this network and these people working to suppress criticism and opposition in foreign countries of pesticides and GMOs and, and shutting down funding for a conference in Africa. You know, it gets very specific and very aggressive in their tactics.
Ken: That was a shocking element of the story. Some of their successes have been very worrisome, right? And, um, I mean, my goodness, the fact that it's our taxpayer money that's helping some of this, the fact that they're not just going after the substantive, reasonable people can disagree about whether we should regulate pesticides, use less of them.
They're also going after people. They're going after scientists. They're going after journalists like yourself. They built dossiers in this private social network, right? That really stepped over the boundaries, I thought, in many cases. Can you, can you say a little bit about that, including what they said about you?
You, you had quite a, quite a presence in their social network.
Carey: Yeah. So as part of this and, and, an operation that did receive what we've been able to find in the contracts and did receive government funding specifically to create these profiles or these, these dossiers on these different individuals. Some 500 people from around the world are profiled inside this secret portal.
And when we say profile, you know, some people have several pages on them, some people just have short mention. So it really does, you know, range pretty widely, but these are people seen as opposition targets and they have. You know, everything from your details about your professional career to details about a person's marriage, you know, there's a scientist in London, there's quite a bit in this file about interactions with his wife and potentially he had an affair and maybe she had depression and that she killed herself.
And like, there's all of this sort of information, names of children, locations, home addresses, cell phone numbers. Yeah,
Ken: way beyond the normal. PR battles that we see publicly exposed where it might be a press release here, an op ed there in opposition. This is, this is really digging in and looking for potential vulnerabilities and sharing it on a network, I suppose, in the hope that someone would find it valuable.
Why would you put it in there if, um, if it was considered to be out of bounds or irrelevant?
Carey: Exactly. It looks like what This is designed to give people, first of all, to discredit these people in some way. But also to give sort of talking points or information that can be used in a public forum to so not only to sway the minds of the people participating in this network, but also to be used publicly against these individuals to discredit them or otherwise harass or intimidate them what we found from legal experts.
While it doesn't seem that this would be illegal in the United States, it does seem that it is illegal. Perhaps in many different countries, particularly in Europe and some other countries. So, you know, it seems like it really is crossing the line to do this without an individual permission without their knowledge to be putting all of this information together.
They had in my profile. I see information, you know, not only about about a horse that my daughter had, you know, when she was very young and about a situation that my husband was involved in in 1999, which is actually before I. met my husband well before, you know, things like that. And then there are crazy sort of allegations, you know, that people are involved as collaborators with Russia.
You know, they have that for multiple people. I'm one of the Russian collaborators, according to this file on me and just a whole range of things. And particularly putting someone's home address in there, a cell phone number.
Ken: Yeah, no, I mean, to me, when I read the story, I thought, Oh, so this is, I thought I knew.
how the world worked with regard to pesticide company and pesticide lobby advocacy. But this is a completely new dimension. This is sort of the deep state does pesticides. And the deep state to my view is mostly the part of the government that's controlled or strongly influenced by corporate interests by the, you know, the powerful, by the leaders of major corporations who are very concerned whenever there's a threat that might have a policy dimension to their interests.
And clearly here, this was the case and there was an earlier controversy, I think in France, wasn't there, where Monsanto was caught hiring a PR firm? You, you know a lot about that, I think, or at least have written about it. Well, say a little bit about that as kind of a precursor, because I saw this as an extension and deepening of that kind of strategy.
Carey: Yeah, I mean, we definitely saw that and I don't know that I'm going to recall all the details, but it very much was, yeah, Monsanto had firms that were doing essentially the same thing compiling these potentially illegal. And there was an investigation into this and bear, which bought Monsanto, you know, we're not doing that.
We wash our hands from this. We will not have nothing to do with that kind of behavior. More activity. But certainly Monsanto, you know, they went out and investigated farmers, right? And threatened farmers and sued farmers. And they sort of pulled out all the stops in terms of harassment and intimidation tactics against people all around the world.
And this very much does seem to be in that vein. And this operation itself has multiple connections back to Monsanto, not just through this Jay Byrne who founded VFluence. But through a group called Academics Review that Monsanto helped start, which became a, a publicly identified, you know, it was independent of Monsanto, supposedly that they wanted it to be independent, but they also were a forum for attacking critics of chemical and genetically modified seed products.
An academics review actually got rolled into a lot of the profiles started sort of what the academics review and it got rolled into this bonus event is portal so you have that tie back to Monsanto as well into all roads, maybe leave back Monsanto.
Ken: Yeah, kind of an. Nixonian enemies list approach to taking on your, your adversaries.
And they were also fairly active. I don't know how successful they were pushing back against the European initiative, the farm to fork initiative. Can you say a little bit about that? I think that was LeMond's, uh, contributions focused some on that, right?
Carey: Yeah. So you saw this, This effort in Europe, Farm to Fork, to sort of move to a more regenerative, you know, environmentally friendly way of growing food, right?
This is sort of what we're looking at here in the U. S. and sort of all around the world as people have become more aware of the environmental harm of the extensive use of pesticides and other chemicals in farming. Moving towards that, and you see this group that's, this is part of what they talk about, that they need to, you know, Quash that and they have been successful and they take credit in these documents that we obtained.
They, they take credit for, um, slowing that down. It's not dead, uh, by any means in Europe, but it's certainly, uh, Is a much weakened initiative and does not move forward at the pace and the success that the proponents hope. And, you know, part of that, certainly, at least if you take them at their word, uh, is due to the work of these people involved in this secret network
Ken: now, if, if you step back, let me just not, not really devil's advocate, but I think the other side might say, well, you know, organizations, um, in the civil society collaborate internationally, EWG, for example, or beyond pesticides, NRDC, all kinds of, uh, environmental groups that are engaged on pesticide policy here in the U S we might collaborate with, uh, Groups in Europe from time to time, maybe even other parts of the world, Africa, Latin America, Mexico, uh, on Monsanto issues.
EWG doesn't happen to do that very often on pesticide, but it's not unthinkable. So, how do you, how do you sort of come to conclusions about this is just the normal way of doing business. This is just, you know, uh, like minded interests. Finding a way to work together, share information, just like civil society might do.
What, what's wrong with that equivalency? I'm trying to, I'm doing my best.
Carey: Well, and come to think of it, I mean, if EWG and friends of the earth or whoever are involved in, you know, in getting government money and you have a secret portal set up and you're profiling, you know, pesticide industry executives, I might want to write a story about that.
Ken: Yeah. Yeah. I think you should, um, that, you know, that, that doesn't happen. I mean, I don't, Uh, you know, we, we certainly see leaks of corporate information that tell us what they're thinking and, and from time to time, obviously you have, uh, been, been very active in trying to look behind the curtain and see what the companies are really up to.
And you've done it with Paraquat. You've done it with the Monsanto papers. And there's a lot to learn when we find out what the companies knew and when they knew it. But you know, on, on the public interest side, we don't really have anything like that. You know, we, and we don't, we wouldn't publish the name and address of a pesticide executive or a pesticide industry lobbyist. We wouldn't share that with a network in the hopes of weaponizing it in some fashion, you know, unleashing creativity.
Carey: Or a list of their children or where their children live. Yeah. Or, you know, their children's hobbies or You know, a personal issue with a marriage.
I mean, that really crosses the line, I think, and obviously, because of the legal issues in other countries, it's seen that way as well, and to have taxpayer money. Going in that direction, you know, and there is also a question and I don't think that readers necessarily have to see something as I see it, or as you see it, you know, there may be very many readers who look at the story and say, fine by me, you know, I'm, I'm fine with my money being spent that way.
And, and I think chemicals are the way to feed the world, you know, and that that is fine. I mean, you know, the job of journalism is to bring information to light. That people can use and either find interesting or maybe it informs how they vote or what they want to do and maybe there's a sense of outreach.
Maybe there isn't, but you know, our job is to bring facts to light that are being hidden and very much there was an effort to hide this clearly. This is not something that you could go on the Internet and you can Google
Ken: That's right
Carey: And and get a link and go in and look for it yourself. This was private, this was not searchable on Google, even if you did somehow stumble across it, you couldn't get into it without, you know, a member password and all of that to get into it.
And there's discussion, they can have conversations in here because nobody can FOIA these conversations, you know, so rather than do these on government emails. They can just go into this portal and have these conversations. So there very much was an element of secrecy. And when you couple that with the efforts to undermine the sovereignty of, you know, communities in Africa, where a lot of this was going on, you know, the, the food sovereignty and their own ability to determine their path forward in terms of agricultural production and how to feed their people and what they want their environment to look like.
Undermining that for the gain of these very large and powerful companies that sell these chemicals, you know, it just hits some people as an injustice. Yeah. At the very least, it should be known and should be transparent what's going on and who's behind it.
Ken: Yeah, that's right. And now the U. S. government employees that were part of this network were able to determine that they were actively involved in making use of this information to use it against initiatives to regulate pesticides or move in a direction that was from a policy standpoint, less reliant on pesticides. Did you see that?
Carey: For certain. Yeah. You can definitely see that. And particularly in Africa, in our stories, we highlighted some things that were going on in Africa.
That was, there were really good examples of that. We had a lot of information about that, but There were many other countries targeted as well throughout Asia. And then, of course, in Europe, as you discussed, but this isn't necessarily surprising to you or to others who know this industry, but it very much has been sort of the policy of the US government to support.
Genetically modified crops and, and the adoption of those around the world and to support use of pesticides,
Ken: you know, yeah, no, I mean, this information that's exchanged, you know, in sight of with supportive engagement with the U. S. Government employees is really worrisome. We're supposed to have these conversations about policy in a transparent and open fashion.
And I think we've all been aware for some time that the State Department and other agricultural attachments, other, you know, tentacles of the U.S. government, other parts of the U.S. government aggressively promote genetically modified crops, pesticides that have been developed and are sold by U.S. companies, or U.S. controlled companies in whole or in part.
We really do have this sort of shadow conversation in some ways going on in international circles amongst government officials and policymakers that runs contrary, I think, to what most Americans would think should be the case, which is, you know, just because it's a U.S. company doesn't mean we should be promoting the sale of pesticides.
If the nation that wants to cut back on pesticides or grow food in a different way, be more independent of these chemicals and these farming systems. Why should we be supporting that as taxpayers in a way that undermines what they're trying to do in those countries just so that private interests in the U.S., pesticide interests, can, can profit?
Carey: Exactly. Well, and if you look at it, you know, Syngenta, which is a big client and, and sells, you know, Paraquat, which we've been talking about, and we talk about here in this story, V. Fluence is actually being sued, J. Byrne and V. Fluence, the, the company that created this secret network, one of their biggest clients for more than 20 years has been Syngenta.
Which sells paraquat, which has been associated with causation of Parkinson's disease. And Syngenta also sells a number of seeds. Syngenta is not a U. S. company. Syngenta is a Chinese owned company. Its main headquarters is in Switzerland. It is not by any means a U. S. company. And yet, money is being funneled, you know, to an organization that is doing the work of Syngenta.
Similarly, Monsanto is no longer and and not a U. S. company. It is Bayer, which is a German company. So these U.S. taxpayer dollars are going to work. That is benefiting companies that are not based in the U.S. by any means, but. Yeah, I mean, our government is very much a supporter of genetically modified crops and pesticides, and there are a lot of people that have a problem with that.
And I think that's where the policy work, right, that EWG and many other organizations have worked on for quite some time.
Ken: Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, it's, it's always a sort of a shock to me, and this relates back to an earlier investigation you did, and that was also published in the Guardian in addition to being published by the New Lead.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. on Paraquat, a notorious weed killer, so toxic, just a sip or two can actually kill a person, banned in many, many countries. But you know, the thing that stands out to me in some ways is why, why don't these revelations about what the company's doing when they knew it, or in this case, How pesticide industry lobbyists really operate, identifying individuals, going after their families, talking about their daughter's horse, um, how can government officials who are responsible for managing our policy on these chemicals ignore this internal information that really makes it clear they're gaming the system and trying to, uh, obviously, use the system to promote pesticides in a way that's, you know, at minimum questionable.
I think for many Americans, it would be against what they would think of as public interest. We want to try and move away from toxic pesticides. We don't want more of them. We don't want to maintain them. Especially ones like Paraquat that have been on the market. They're decades old. They're really primitive in the way they act in the environment, the way they kill plants.
We've tried to move on from that. Why do you think that, that this kind of context has so little impact on the regulatory process?
Carey: Well, clearly, as you know, and we've seen written about and, and we've heard from whistleblowers, you know, the EPA is a captured agency, right? There's very little doubt or question about that.
I think anymore, at least in the minds of people who pay attention, uh, it just is. And there are efforts. You know, address that. Certainly in this area on pesticides.
Carey: but if you look at the Office of Inspector General reports, you know, the most recent one that came out and prior ones and you look at different whistleblowers who have come out and testified to Congress, you know, they're very much is a real and intensive effort to get the products that these chemical companies want to sell out to market as quickly as possible and to downplay or ignore or otherwise Push to the side, scientific evidence of harm that these chemicals cause and, you know, better than than I would know, I guess the why behind that, you know, and the money that flows into Washington and the way the lobby works and all of that sort of thing.
I think when it comes to the question about why would they ignore, like, reporting that reveals these sorts of things, you know, I don't, not everybody does, right? I mean, we have lawmakers who are pushing for bans on pesticides. We have, you know, letters that are circulating right now in the halls of Congress to be sent to the EPA.
Demanding that they ban paraquat for all the reasons that have been reported. They're very interested in this story. They're very interested in the money and the secrecy behind it all, you know, and this portal is just sort of 1 portion of the much larger universe of how government coordinates with industry.
You know, we've seen in the past and we saw in this investigation where you have companies or organizations working with the companies that are writing the talking points. For our elected officials to speak to the world on policy matters, you know, um, when they're, when they're out there and how to address things like this, we're very interested in, in perhaps pilot a for you to see what communications have been going on between the U.S. government and the fluence since our story came out, right? To see if they're helping them figure out what to say about it. You have companies writing speeches, companies that aren't in the White House. Outside companies writing speeches for our U. S. officials to give. So it's not even just talking points, but whole speeches about these issues.
So it's much more captured or coordinated or inclusion, whatever the word is you want to use, then maybe most people.
Ken: Yeah, I mean, to me, this is, you know, this is really if there's a deep state, this is what it looks like that there's a powerful control that's not driven by democratic processes, but driven by access, driven by money, driven by revolving doors where people working for government go into pesticide companies and chemical companies and then they go back into government and so forth. And that revolving door is in itself a real phenomenon. Carey, thank you for this investigation. I, once again, you've, um, you've surprised someone who prides himself on not being surprisable, but there you go.
This is really eye opening. Defend or be damned how a U.S. company uses government funds to suppress pesticide opposition around the world. Carrie, thanks for this investigation.
Carey: We've put a lot of the documents that we relied on, freedom of information documents and others into a Poison PR media library on the new lead website, and so people can go there and they can download the documents for themselves.
They, perhaps will find information that we missed, but we have already been hearing from people around the world and in legislative offices and others that they're finding this very useful. So I would encourage people to look at The New Lede The Poison PR.
Ken: Great. Thanks for putting that together and sharing that there's nothing like a little bit of sunshine to disinfect a toxic situation like this.
Sure. Thank you, Ken. Thank you, Carey Gillam, for coming on the show and for all the important reporting that you do for The New Lead. Ends up in the Guardian and lots of other places. And I want to thank all of you out there for listening. As Carey mentioned in the past, I protect my sources. So if you have a hot tip or maybe a box of documents or something kind of juicy that pulls back the curtain on how the world really works when it comes to corporate influence and behavior.
That affects your health and the environment. Get in touch with Carey. If you enjoyed this episode with Carey, you might also want to listen to episode number four of this podcast. We spoke to Carey then about pesticides, their links to health issues, like Parkinson's, non Hodgkin's lymphoma, childhood leukemia, and how corporations conceal the dangers of toxic weed killers from consumers and even from regulators.
It's a great episode. She's a star reporter. You can't go wrong. So if you'd like to learn more and particularly read this brilliant article and Carey's books on the pesticide industry, her exposes on Monsanto, be sure to check out our show notes for additional links to take a deeper dive into today's topics.
Make sure to follow our show on Instagram at Ken Cook's podcast. And if you're interested in learning more about EWG, what we do and how we do it, head on over to EWG. org or check out the EWG Instagram account at Environmental Working Group. If you liked this episode, send it to a friend who you think would like it too.
Environmentalism to us is all about meeting people where they're at. And if you're listening to this, you probably know someone who might be interested in today's episode. They just don't know it yet. My ask is that you send it to that person or to as many people as you see fit. Today's episode was produced by the amazing Beth Rowe and Mary Kelly.
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