Conflicts of interest are nothing new, but these days they have become more or less routine — an integral part of how entire industries operate.

The industries making the heaviest use of the “third-party approach,” in which front groups, academics, and “independent” researchers are used to promote an agenda, tend to be industries that are more inherently harmful to the public.

Notorious examples include the tobacco, chemical, food additives, and biotechnology industries.

A previous article¹ in Take Part lists nine industry-funded groups that promote an industry’s selfish agenda, even though you’d be hard-pressed to realize it based on names like Center for Food Integrity, and the US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance.

Monsanto, lobbies for and shapes public opinion through an entire network of front groups, including the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), the American Council on Science and Health, and the Center for Consumer Freedom, just to name a few.

Kevin Folta — Poster Boy for Industry-Funded Third-Party Experts

One of the most recent conflict-of-interest scandals involving Monsanto and University of Florida professor Kevin Folta, a vocal advocate of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), was recently highlighted by Nature² and The New York Times.^3,4

Folta, who has vehemently denied ever receiving any money from Monsanto, was caught having been less than forthright about his connections to the company when his email correspondence was released in response to a freedom of information (FOIA) request by US Right to Know.⁵

In August of last year, Folta did in fact receive a $25,000 unrestricted grant from Monsanto, and Folta wrote back to a Monsanto executive saying: “I am grateful for this opportunity and promise a solid return on the investment.”

However, despite a rare flurry of media attention, none of the mainstream media outlets have addressed the most flagrant piece of evidence against Folta, showing that not only did he solicit these funds from Monsanto, he appeared to do so with intent to hide the financial connection between them.

Keith Kloor, who initially broke the story about Folta’s connections to Monsanto in Nature,⁶ may in fact have been trying to soften the scandal.

As revealed by US Right to Know,7 Kloor is looked upon as an ally of Monsanto’s propaganda machine, and it appears Folta or the University of Florida were the ones who released the emails to Kloor in the first place, likely as a form of media preemption.

They probably did so because they knew it would soften the blow to have an industry advocate break the story.

The New York Times⁸ posted a long list of emails between Folta and Monsanto, obtained through the FOIA request. I encourage you to read these emails to see for yourself how Monsanto’s PR firms use “independent” scientists to further the industry’s version of science.