Bayer Aktiengesellschaft (PK)【BAYRY】株式ニュース

As Bayer sinks further into a morass of lawsuits centered on its deadly Roundup herbicide, the company is getting a much-needed makeover from a Green Party apostate determined to position it as the antidote to climate change.

The beleaguered corporation, plagued with lawsuits from cancer-stricken customers ever since it acquired Monsanto last year, hired former German Green Party MP Matthias Berninger as senior vice president for public and government affairs in January. The erstwhile environmentalist has wasted no time in his effort to save Bayer by positioning it as the answer to our climate change prayers. Pivoting the discussion away from Roundup’s potentially deadly effects on humans, Berninger has been making the media rounds to promote the herbicide’s environmental benefits.

What environmental benefits, you say?

“The data prove” that glyphosate - the chief chemical in Roundup - is good for the climate, Berninger told German outlet Handelsblatt last week, explaining that while “the production of glyphosate is quite CO2-intensive,” its “use saves three times more CO2” compared to farming land with a tractor and plow, a process which he explains would spew out CO2 through its internal combustion engine and release the gas from the soil. In fact, Berninger really has it in for plows.

“It would be an illusion to believe that American or Brazilian agriculture would return to plowing,” he said, setting up and knocking down his rhetorical straw-man with ruthless efficiency. Nor would organic farming sustain a meat-hungry world - to hear him tell it, humanity must either dramatically expand farmland at the expense of biodiversity, or put its faith in crop science, a.k.a. Bayer.

Farmers stricken with cancer after prolonged RoundUp use might view the matter differently. While fewer living humans does mean a smaller carbon footprint for the species, and fewer living farmers in particular means less emissions produced by farming, it would take a real sociopath to stretch the idea of a “benefit” to include less market competition for farmers whose neighbors have died of Roundup-induced non-Hodgkins lymphoma. But whether this is what Berninger has in mind when he describes glyphosate’s nebulous “benefits” to farmers and the planet is unclear - despite repeatedly referencing scientific evidence for glyphosate’s virtues, the former politician has remained mum on specifics of how the chemical benefits the environment, merely insisting in various ways that “independent regulatory authorities” have rated glyphosate “safe around the world for more than 40 years.”

Which independent authorities? Monsanto has been caught ghostwriting “independent” reviews touting the safety of its products in the past. The World Health Organization declared glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic” in 2015, while the state of California declared the chemical “known to cause cancer” in 2017. And the US Environmental Protection Agency, which recently reaffirmed “glyphosate is not a carcinogen” despite court verdicts piling up to the contrary, has long been accused of being “in bed with” Monsanto - even (especially) by scientists previously employed by the agency, who claim it bent the rules to greenlight the popular herbicide. Regulators haven’t weighed in on whether glyphosate is toxic to plants because that’s the whole purpose of an herbicide - indeed, Monsanto has made billions selling genetically-engineered “Roundup-ready” seeds so that farmers can grow crops that won’t die when they’re sprayed with the weedkiller. It would take serious logical gymnastics on Berninger’s part to paint this absence of regulatory condemnation as a seal of approval.

But the ex-Green wants the world to know that Bayer is more than just glyphosate. Touting the company’s “unique potential to help achieve the UN sustainability goals,” Berninger hinted that “by promoting the comprehensive digitalization of agriculture,” the company could eventually move toward the use of fewer “crop protection products.” But not too few, he stressed - “we also hope that politicians are open to the approval of the next generation of crop protection products that are effective in even smaller

“We don’t have to apologize for making money,” Berninger - once the youngest member of the Bundestag - told Germany’s Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger earlier this month, insisting Bayer could expiate past environmental sins through achieving “sustainability goals.” The company’s presentation of those goals on its website is enormously vague, promising that environmental sustainability is a priority (its CEO will take on the additional title of Chief Sustainability Officer in January!) and pledging that Bayer will eventually achieve 100 percent carbon neutrality. The corporation has also pledged to provide 100 million “smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries” with “holistic solutions” to “grow crops more sustainably” and increase both yields and incomes.

That last bit sounds quite noble, but one must ask: where do the (carbon-neutral) agrochemicals fit in with sustainable or holistic farming methods? Smallholder farmers from India, where Monsanto has been blamed for hundreds of thousands of suicides triggered by debts incurred by the high price of the company’s seeds and pesticides, to Brazil, where the company double-dips by collecting royalties from the sale of crops grown with its heavily-regulated seeds, are trying hard to move away from Monsanto products. Bayer might think its assistance will “help more people thrive within planetary boundaries,” but even its PR people know the Monsanto name is as toxic as its products - “partnerships with public, private and local organizations are key to address smallholder farmers’ needs holistically,” it admits.

Under Berninger’s direction, Bayer joined an alliance of over 200 companies called the Brazilian Coalition for Climate, Forest and Agriculture, wrapping itself in concern for the Amazon rainforest (perhaps as a distraction from the murmurs of discontent among Brazilian farmers, who lost out last month on a $2 billion payout after a court reversed a ruling to favor Monsanto). This heterogeneous group has appealed to the Brazilian government to seize control of the destruction of the Amazon, claiming some 90 percent of the logging is illegal - though their goal is less to end the devastation than to put Brasilia in charge. Indeed, Bayer isn’t remotely interested in ending the clear-cutting of rainforest land to make way for the soybean cultivation that fuels the world’s skyrocketing meat consumption. According to Berninger, Bayer’s role will instead involve driving “innovation” in “sustainable intensification” - i.e. growing more soybeans per hectare on ex-rainforest land, presumably with the help of glyphosate, in the hope that less land is ultimately needed.

Rainforests aren’t the only thing Bayer has pledged to rescue in its own special way. After getting caught secretly financing two German studies on glyphosate in October, the company flipped the script and announced it had begun campaigning for transparency in lobbying. Berninger has since called for a lobby transparency law “such as those that exist in the US” - the country where lobbying is so disastrously unregulated a novice congresswoman exposing the industry’s lawlessness can go viral - repeatedly - and where a long-running joke calls for politicians to wear the logos of their biggest sponsors on their clothing in the manner of race-car drivers.

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Tasked with the seemingly-impossible task of greenwashing a company widely considered one of the most evil on the planet, Berninger is nevertheless rising to the occasion, framing Bayer as a defender of the rainforest and a standard-bearer of modern farming practices. But it’s anyone’s guess whether the corporation currently being sued by farmers from Canada to Australia? will be able to pass itself off as their savior, especially with entire countries - Austria recently became the first in the EU - kicking its star glyphosate weedkiller to the curb. And even if Berninger is able to summon enough climatebabble to convince the relevant authorities that Roundup is a noble soldier in the fight against global warming, Monsanto has enough skeletons in its closet to keep even the slickest PR man running in circles until the glaciers melt.

Monsanto paid Google to change its search result on its cancer causing products. Monsanto operated a “Mafia fusion center” to monitor and discredit journalists and activists, and targeted a reporter who wrote a critical book on the company, documents reveal. The agrochemical corporation also investigated the singer Neil Young and wrote an internal memo on his social media activity and music.

The records reviewed by the Guardian show Monsanto adopted a multi-pronged strategy to target Carey Gillam, a Reuters journalist who investigated the company’s weedkiller and its links to cancer. Monsanto, now owned by the German pharmaceutical corporation Bayer, also monitored a not-for-profit food research organization through its “intelligence fusion center”, a term that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies use for operations focused on surveillance and terrorism.

The documents, mostly from 2015 to 2017, were disclosed as part of an ongoing court battle on the health hazards of the company’s Roundup weedkiller. They show:

Monsanto planned a series of “actions” to attack a book authored by Gillam prior to its release, including writing “talking points” for “third parties” to criticize the book and directing “industry and farmer customers” on how to post negative reviews.
Monsanto paid Google to promote search results for “Monsanto Glyphosate Carey Gillam” that criticized her work. Monsanto PR staff also internally discussed placing sustained pressure on Reuters, saying they “continue to push back on [Gillam’s] editors very strongly every chance we get”, and that they were hoping “she gets reassigned”.
Monsanto “fusion center” officials wrote a lengthy report about singer Neil Young’s anti-Monsanto advocacy, monitoring his impact on social media, and at one point considering “legal action”. The fusion center also monitored US Right to Know (USRTK), a not-for-profit, producing weekly reports on the organization’s online activity.
Monsanto officials were repeatedly worried about the release of documents on their financial relationships with scientists that could support the allegations they were “covering up unflattering research”.
The internal communications add fuel to the ongoing claims in court that Monsanto has “bullied” critics and scientists and worked to conceal the dangers of glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide. In the last year, two US juries have ruled that Monsanto was liable for plaintiffs’ non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), a blood cancer, and ordered the corporation to pay significant sums to cancer patients. Bayer has continued to assert that glyphosate is safe.

“I’ve always known that Monsanto didn’t like my work … and worked to pressure editors and silence me,” Gillam, who is also a Guardian contributor and now USRTK’s research director, said in an interview. “But I never imagined a multi-billion dollar company would actually spend so much time and energy and personnel on me. It’s astonishing.”

Carey Gillam interviews Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, the first cancer patient to beat Monsanto in court in Vallejo, California, September 2018.
Carey Gillam interviews Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, the first cancer patient to beat Monsanto in court in Vallejo, California, September 2018. Photograph: Araceli Johnson
Gillam, author of the 2017 book, Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science, said the records were “just one more example of how the company works behind the scenes to try to manipulate what the public knows about its products and practices”.

Monsanto had a “Carey Gillam Book” spreadsheet, with more than 20 actions dedicated to opposing her book before its publication, including working to “Engage Pro-Science Third Parties” in criticisms, and partnering with “SEO experts” (search engine optimization), to spread its attacks. The company’s marketing strategy involved labeling Gillam and other critics as “anti-glyphosate activists and pro-organic capitalist organizations”.

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Gillam, who worked at the international news agency Reuters for 17 years, told the Guardian that a flurry of negative reviews appeared on Amazon just after the official publication of Whitewash, many seeming to repeat nearly identical talking points.

“This is my first book. It’s just been released. It’s got glowing reviews from professional book reviewers,” she said. But on Amazon, “They were saying horrible things about me … It was very upsetting but I knew it was fake and it was engineered by the industry. But I don’t know that other people knew that.”

A Bayer spokesman, Christopher Loder, declined to comment on specific documents or the fusion center, but said in a statement to the Guardian that the records show “that Monsanto’s activities were intended to ensure there was a fair, accurate and science-based dialogue about the company and its products in response to significant misinformation, including steps to respond to the publication of a book written by an individual who is a frequent critic of pesticides and GMOs”.

He said the documents were “cherry-picked by plaintiffs’ lawyers and their surrogates” and did not contradict existing science supporting the continued use of glyphosate, adding, “We take the safety of our products and our reputation very seriously and work to ensure that everyone … has accurate and balanced information.”

(A Reuters spokesperson said the agency “has covered Monsanto independently, fairly and robustly”, adding, “We stand by our reporting.”)

‘They saw us as a threat’
The internal records don’t offer significant detail on the activities or scope of the fusion center, but show that the “intelligence” operations were involved in monitoring Gillam and others. An official with the title “Monsanto Corporate Engagement, Fusion Center” provided detailed analyses on tweets related to Gillam’s work in 2016.

The fusion center also produced detailed graphs on the Twitter activity of Neil Young, who released an album in 2015 called the Monsanto Years. The center “evaluated the lyrics on his album to develop a list of 20+ potential topics he may target” and created a plan to “proactively produce content and response preparedness”, a Monsanto official wrote in 2015, adding it was “closely monitoring discussions” about a concert featuring Young, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews.

Monsanto ‘fusion center’ officials wrote lengthy reports about singer Neil Young’s anti-Monsanto advocacy.
Monsanto ‘fusion center’ officials wrote lengthy reports about singer Neil Young’s anti-Monsanto advocacy. Photograph: Dan Steinberg/REX/Shutterstock
“We have reached out to the legal team and are keeping them informed of Neil’s activities in case any legal action is appropriate,” the email said.

A LinkedIn page for someone who said he was a manager of “global intelligence and investigations” for Monsanto said he established an “internal Intelligence Fusion Center” and managed a “team responsible for the collection and analysis of criminal, activist / extremist, geo-political and terrorist activities affecting company operations across 160 countries”. He said he created Monsanto’s “insider threats program”, leading analysts who collaborated “in real time on physical, cyber and reputational risk”.

“They saw us as a threat,” Gary Ruskin, the USRTK co-founder, said in an interview. “They were conducting some kind of intelligence about us, and more than that, we don’t know.”

Government fusion centers have increasingly raised privacy concerns surrounding the way law enforcement agencies collect data, surveil citizens and share information. Private companies might have intelligence centers that monitor legitimate criminal threats, such as cyberattacks, but “it becomes troubling when you see corporations leveraging their money to investigate people who are engaging in their first amendment rights”, said Dave Maass, the senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

David Levine, a University of California Hastings law professor, said he had not heard of any other private corporations running “fusion centers”, but said it did not surprise him that Monsanto was engaged in this kind of intensive digital monitoring.

The records showed Monsanto was also concerned about Ruskin’s Freedom of Information Act (Foia) requests targeting the company, writing documents on its relationships with researchers had the “potential to be extremely damaging” and could “impact the entire industry”.

In 2016, one Monsanto official expressed frustration of criticisms that the company paid academics to write favorable reports on their products: “The issue was NOT that we wanted to pay the experts but an acknowledgment that experts would need to be compensated for the time they invest in drafting responses for external engagement. No one works for free!”

Michael Baum, one of the attorneys involved in the Roundup trials that uncovered the records, said the records were further “evidence of the reprehensible and conscious disregard of the rights and safety of others” and that they would support ongoing punitive damages for people who got cancer after using Roundup.

“It shows an abuse of their power that they have gained by having achieved such large sales,” he added. “They’ve got so much money, and there is so much they are trying to protect.”

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