For nearly 30 years, Carey Gillam has worked as a business reporter covering corporate America, the last 17 of those with Reuters, where she specialized in writing about food and agriculture. In that role, she gained a reputation for her in-depth skeptical eye on issues involving GMO (genetically modified organisms) crops and the pesticides used with them. Her award-winning coverage has taken her across the country, visiting farmers and ranchers and exploring the high-tech laboratories and corporate offices of some of the largest agribusinesses corporations in the world.
“ ... She recently left Reuters to work as research director for U.S. Right to Know, a small nonprofit funded largely by the Organic Consumers Association with the mission of bringing “truth and transparency” about food policy to consumers. Over the last year, U.S. Right to Know has been making waves in the media, filing Freedom of Information Act requests at universities that have exposed cozy ties between some seemingly independent scientists and the biotech industry. Stories based on USRTK’s research have appeared on the front page of the New York Times, in the Boston Globe and at Bloomberg. In March, Chicago Public Radio reported on documents USRTK made public, regarding professor Bruce Chassy at the University of Illinois, who has been failing to disclose money he has received from Monsanto. ... “
“ ... You’ve been covering agriculture for almost two decades. When did you first start to feel pressure from Monsanto when covering GMO crops?
... Pressure from Monsanto began when I first started covering them around 1999 or 2000, and it wasn’t even GMO crops. At the time Monsanto was in transition from an industrial chemical company involved in litigation with PCBs to an agrichemical and biotech seed company. They had some GMO crops but they had only been out a few years. They also had the pesticide glyphosate or Roundup, and they were marketing bovine growth hormone for dairy cows. There were a lot of questions about a lot of this stuff. ... “
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