"US taxpayers funded a covert campaign to downplay the risks of pesticides and discredit environmentalists in Africa, Europe, and North America", 27 September 2024

...A year-long investigation managed to penetrate a PR operation that casts those who raise the alarm, from pesticide critics to environmental scientists or sustainability campaigners, as an anti-science “protest industry,” and used US government money to do so.

The US-based PR firm, v-Fluence, built profiles on hundreds of scientists, campaigners and writers, whilst coordinating with government officials, to counter global resistance to pesticides. These profiles are published on a private social network, which grants privileged entry to 1,000 people. The network’s membership roster is a who’s-who of the agrochemical industry and its friends, featuring executives from some of the world’s largest pesticide companies alongside government officials from multiple countries.

These members can access profiles on more than 3,000 organisations and 500 people who have been critical of pesticides or Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). They come from all over the world and include scientists, UN human right experts, environmentalists, and journalists. Many of the profiles divulge personal details about the subjects, such as their home addresses and telephone numbers, and spotlight criticisms that disparage their work. Lawyers have told us this goes against data privacy laws in several countries...

Our investigation reveals that the US government funded v-Fluence as part of its program to promote GMOs in Africa and Asia. Between roughly 2013 and 2019, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) channelled over $400,000 to v-Fluence for services including “enhanced monitoring” of critics of “modern agriculture approaches” – and to build Bonus Eventus...

In a written statement, Jay Byrne described v-fluence’s role as “an information collection, sharing, analysis, and reporting provider” to “promote understanding of all the various stakeholders, positions, research… impacting food and agriculture”

[...]“there is no unethical, illegal, or otherwise inappropriate outreach, lobbying or related activities by our organization of any kind.”

v-Fluence denies having held government contracts now or in the past, but said that the US government was a “funder of other organizations with whom we work”...