Is the Royal Society Monsanto?

A Guardian sub-editor turns European science academies into “food companies”

John Vidal, the Guardian’s environment editor, has a particular talent at passing off opinion pieces as news. Today he is writing about GM crops.

When it comes to GM crops Vidal is a very late 1990s type of green, believing any old piffle passed his way. This can be seen by his ridiculous demands that we should take the thoroughly de-bunked study of Seralini seriously. This is not that different to an environment editor telling us we should take seriously a study showing the stars are causing climate change.

Now, he seems to be moving into even more absurd territory, implying that the Royal Society and others are in on some kind of conspiracy theory to get GM crops grown in Africa:

Africa is expected to be the next target of GM food companies, as European scientists and policymakers travel to Ethiopia to boost the prospect of growing more of the controversial crops on the continent.

Anne Glover, the chief scientific adviser to the European commission, and other prominent pro-GM researchers and policymakers from European countries including Germany, Hungary, Italy and Sweden will this week meet Ethiopian, Kenyan, Ghanaian and Nigerian farm ministers as well as officials from the African Union.

The Royal Society is thus implied to be shilling for Monsanto and Syngenta. Really, is this any better than the most vacuous of climate change deniers claiming the majority of climate scientists agree on climate change simply to push some kind of left wing agenda? Some people don’t like the term anti-science, but in the case of Vidal it is hard to see how it is not literally correct.