Debating changing the headline on this one, but read for yourself:
- After receiving a FOIA request from US Right to Know—a nonprofit dedicated to exposing “the failures of the corporate food system“—the University of Florida notified Folta, a food and agricultural science professor at the university, that he would have to turn over all of his e-mails relating to correspondence with 14 different firms involved in agribusiness. His options: Submit all of his emails and allow lawyers to sift through them independently, or spend hours doing it himself alongside legal counsel.
- Ruskin, USRTK’s executive director, spearheaded California’s failed Proposition 37 for the mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods. And he’s the author of a recent report, Seedy Business: What Big Food Is Hiding With Its Slick PR Campaign on GMOs, which accuses some of the targeted scientists of being “untrustworthy” and “shills.”
- When journalist Keith Kloor wrote about the USRTK’s FOIA request at Science Insider, Ruskin asserted that the scientists had been selected for FOIA requests due to their involvement with GMO Answers, an industry sponsored website that posts answers to public questions about the safety of GMOs, or genetically modified organisms.
After it was pointed out that some of the scientists had no involvement with GMO Answers, Ruskin apologized for the error and stated that some scientists had also been targeted for making public statements against California Proposition 37.
I posted an article on facebook recently with the title: "Is monsanto evil?" It was posted by the Skeptics guide to the universe facebook page. It was short, well referenced, logical. Now I know I have many anti-GMO people in my stream. I am part of the goa-scene in Israel and Germany. Some people don't like facing the facts. Same situation with my aunt who is an anti-vaxxer. She doesn't like it when I question her beliefs and when she feels cornered she says that the industry is paying universities to teach wrong things at lectures. Imagine that. The university teaching false things because the industry is financing it. I think I lost my aunt...