David Zaruk
Canada
Brussels-based former chemical industry lobbyist, who once worked for the PR firm Burson-Marsteller. Blogs as "The Risk Monger" and is best known for viciously attacking critics of glyphosate - an article in Le Monde described him as "infamous for his penchant for insults". Claims to have been fired from an adjunct teaching post at Université Saint-Louis in Brussels because of his pro-GMO views. Chairman of Hank Campbell's Science 2.0 Corp which, in the view of the journalist and NYU professor Charles Seife, is a link in a "shady network of for-profits and non-profits helping Monsanto." Formerly Operations Manager at GreenFacts, a Brussels-based non-profit founded with funding from the Belgian chemical and pharmaceutical company Solvay.
Articles: The Monsanto Papers, Part 2 — Reaping a bitter harvest
Phony experts with veiled conflicts of interest polluting debates on endocrine disruptors, glyphosate, GMOs
Turning a blind ideology
Links to: Science 2.0, Hank Campbell
Zeneca
UK
Zeneca was a British multinational lifescience company formed in June 1993 by the demerger of the pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals businesses of ICI into a separate firm. Zeneca Plant Sciences developed a GM tomato paste, sold in Sainsbury's and Safeway in the UK from 1996 to 1999, when it was removed because of consumer rejection. Zeneca GM scientist Nigel Poole sat on the UK's GM regulator, the Advisory Committee for Releases to the Environment (ACRE) until forced to step down because of his employment by Zeneca. The current Chair of ACRE, Jim Dunwell, is a former Zeneca employee. Zeneca's first Executive Director, Peter Doyle, became the Chairman of the UK's public funding body for the biological sciences, the BBSRC. Doyle helped broker a £50 million pound deal for GM crop development between his company and the John Innes Centre. In 1999, Zeneca and the Sweden-based pharmaceutical company Astra AB merged to form AstraZeneca plc, which in 2000 with Novartis spun off its seeds and crop protection business into a joint venture: Syngenta.
Articles: Scientists get the pip over GM tomatoes
Biotech experts to lose GM role
The rise and fall of the GM tomato economy
Links to: Syngenta, Jim Dunwell, Nigel Poole, Peter Doyle, Ed Dart, John Innes Centre
David Zilberman
USA
Pro-GM Berkeley agricultural economist who has undertaken controversial research based on Monsanto data. With Peter Raven, among authors of 2010 NRC report touting benefits from GM crops.
Article: Response to Qaim and Zilberman
Links to: Matin Qaim, Monsanto