Musings: Improper Influence

Though the Joint Fact Finding Group was supposed to be independent as it evaluated agricultural pesticide use on Kauai, its final report and recommendations were unduly influenced by anti-GMO/anti-pesticide activists.

Their influence includes reviewing scientific reports, serving as consultants to the JFFG, providing the JFFG with unpublished studies and even crafting language for the report. To wit:

Three of the four persons selected to serve as “Liaisons and Resources” to the JFFG are anti-GMO/anti-pesticide activists, yet they are never identified in the report as such. 

They include: Carl Berg, who is president of Surfrider, one of the groups that is appealing the judge's decision on Bill 2491/Ordinance 960; Milt Clark, a part-time Princeville resident who penned letters to the editor opposing pesticides and supporting Ordinance 960; and Malia Nobriga-Olivera, who signed on to an anti-GMO seafood campaign run by Friends of the Earth.

Berg also provided the JFFG with Surfrider water sampling reports and data on gylphosate in honey, which the group accepted and cited, even though none of that work has been written up for the rest of us to read, much less published and peer-reviewed.

Clark, meanwhile, was asked to review the state's air sampling study, which concluded the odiferous stinkweed was to blame for sickening students at Waimea Canyon Middle School. Clark claimed the symptoms were “far more likely related to pesticide exposures than from exposure to stinkweed organics,” which is not surprising, given his anti-pesticide bias. Yet despite that bias, his review is listed in the JFFG report appendix as “Independent Commentary on Pesticide Analysis Study.” Indeed, he specifically asked that it be appended to the JFFG report, and they obliged.

Really? They couldn't find any “liaisons and resources” who didn't have dogs in the fight? Who chose these people for these roles? And what other influence did they exert that isn't specifically outlined in the report?

The JFFG report also noted: “Several local residents on the Westside have reported what they believe may be an unusual number of dead or sick owls but no samples of blood or tissues for pesticide residues appear to have been taken to date.” It then cited a “Map of Dead or Injured Owls found on the Westside” for this unsubstantiated, anecdotal finding, with no mention that the man who provided it, Howard Hurst, is one of the WCMS teachers who has been actively fighting the seed companies.

Similarly, the group accepted data from pesticide “drift catcher” samples collected by the anti-GMO/anti-pesticide groups Hawaii SEED and Pesticide Action Network. Again, these findings have not been written up for public review, much less published. Yet the JFFG not only accepted a verbal account of the sampling, it cited one result of this totally unscientific effort as “indicat[ing] the need for additional monitoring to determine the status of drift from agricultural operations in the Westside.”

And as I've previously reported, the JFFG report references the honey in glyphosate study, which again we can't review because it hasn't been written up or published, without mentioning it was funded by Surfrider.

Meanwhile, language taken nearly verbatim from a June 18, 2015 intent to sue letter filed by the Center for Food Safety — one of the groups appealing the ruling on Ordinance 960 — and the Center for Biological Diversity is included in the appendix to bolster the report's findings on atrazine. It presents as fact conclusions drawn by these two anti-GMO groups, and never references the letter as the source:

2. Surface Waters and Aquatic Ecosystems

Atrazine is now known to be a highly potent endocrine disruptor and persists in the environment after its use. Extensive scientific research has demonstrated that atrazine causes substantial negative reproductive effects in a variety of taxa when exposure occurs, even at concentrations as low as 0.1 ppb. Impairing reproduction through endocrine disruption, lowering reproductive output, chemical castration, disrupting development and immunosuppresion are among the types of harms that atrazine causes, all of which represent significant sublethal effects not considered by the EPA.

If the shoe were on the other foot, and seed company supporters had similarly influenced the report and its recommendations, the activists would be screaming bloody murder. But since it's them doing the manipulating, it's no problem. Indeed, they're using the dirty data to bolster their claim that the report vindicates all their fear-mongering.

We were all waiting for the JFFG report to shed some light on the true situation regarding agricultural pesticides on Kauai. Instead, we've gotten a document that is long on bias and speculation and short on impartiality and facts.