Mumbai/London/Athens: A US-based reputation management firm involved in monitoring activities of those critical of pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops on a private social network has ceased its profiling operations following an investigation led by investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports, and shared with The Wire and other international media partners.
The Missouri-based firm v-Fluence Interactive, headed by a former Monsanto executive, Jay Byrne, confirmed in an official statement on December 9, 2024, that the company has removed its Bonus Eventus portal that served as a “stakeholder wiki” hosting profiles of over 500 individuals globally. The private network included profiles of prominent Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, ecologist Debal Deb, organisations like Pesticide Action Network (PAN) India and other scientists and academics.
Among other findings, the investigation revealed that v-Fluence had received funding from the now-reduced US Agency for International Development (USAID) for Bonus Eventus via the International Food Policy Research Institute. The sub-contracts were aimed at countering criticism of “modern agriculture approaches” in Asia and Africa, according to public records obtained by Lighthouse Reports.
The investigation also highlighted that v-Fluence and Byrne are co-defendants in a lawsuit against global pesticide giant Syngenta, for suppressing information on the dangers of paraquat herbicide, alleged to have caused Parkinson’s disease among farmers in the US. Byrne had denied the allegations of the lawsuit, saying they were based on claims which were “manufactured and false”.
In India too, Syngenta came under scrutiny in 2017 after the Yavatmal pesticide poisoning scandal in Maharashtra that claimed the lives of at least 20 farmers. Farmers had alleged that Syngenta had failed to provide sufficient information regarding the risks of its pesticide ‘Polo’. Syngenta, however, maintained that there’s no evidence proving that its product caused the tragedy.
Narasimha Reddy Donthi, an independent policy analyst and consultant with PAN India, who has also worked closely with farmers in Yavatmal for securing compensation from Syngenta, says that the removal of the profiles is a “positive outcome”.
“However, they have to tell why they did that and for whom. Furthermore, we need to know how US funds got involved in such an enterprise. We need a deterrence – a official promise,” Donthi adds.
Legal concerns, lost clients and threats of litigation
v-Fluence said in its official statement in December last year that the removal of profiles comes after an “independent legal review” of obligations under the European data privacy rules. They also informed that the firm will “continue to offer stakeholder research with updated guidelines to avoid future misinterpretations of our work product”.
In an emailed statement, Byrne confirmed that the profiles had been removed, but said that they had been taken down prior to the legal review in light of litigation and threats of litigation.
According to reporting from David Zaruk, a Bonus Eventus member who was a recipient of Byrne’s emails, v-Fluence had to lay off around 40 staff after industry clients cancelled their contracts.
The investigation, published in September last year, revealed that v-Fluence’s Bonus Eventus was accessible to over 1,000 members, including many executives associated with global agrochemical companies, lobbyists and government members.
The eight Indians who had access to the Bonus Eventus portal include Raghavan Sampathkumar, the executive director of the Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII); and Anand Ranganathan, consulting editor of the Indian right-wing magazine Swarajya, and a former staff research scientist at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB).
Notably, the FSII is involved in a project with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare for deploying technologies to agro-ecological zones allotted for cotton production. The ICGEB also works with the Union Ministry of Science and Technology, for supporting biotech research and development. However, Ranganathan informed Lighthouse Reports and The Wire that he was unaware of the network and denied association with v-Fluence.
‘What about the harm already done?’
A number of profiles on the Bonus Eventus portal contained personal information such as phone number, email and residential address, details of people’s personal website, and income among other details of the individuals. Indian activists profiled on the network expressed concerns about potential misuse of data by those having access to such data.
In a written statement last year, Byrne had informed that the private, community-edited wiki platform includes only “publicly available and referenced information”, asserting that, “Any contact or other information which may appear on the wiki is from public records and is used publicly by the source as part of their business or advocacy.”
However, technology lawyer and policy adviser Pranesh Prakash, who had reviewed excerpts from some of the profiles, found that personal data was indeed being processed, and because much of the collected personal data was not made available by the person who was profiled, India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA) applied to it.
Prakash informed that the exception for “research purposes” under DPDPA does not apply if the data is being used to make any decision specific to any of the activists whose personal data has been collected.
Ecologist and seed conservator Debal Deb, who was profiled by v-Fluence, says that the company closing down the network is an “important development”, however, he also raised apprehensions about the harm already done.
“The issue is that no one knows what and how much harm these corporate agents have already perpetrated to the lives and careers of the scientists and environmental activists. A public announcement of dismantling a website does not absolve the decades-long crime of appropriation of citizens’ personal data, nor atone for the intangible damages to the individuals,” says Deb.