- Search the U.S. Right to Know Agrichemical Collection
- Search the Roundup Litigation Documents
- Search the U.S. Right to Know Food Industry Collection
- Read the UCSF blog: UCSF Chemical Industry Documents Adds Monsanto Papers and Agrichemical Industry Documents
Update 1/29/19: The University of California, San Francisco added the USRTK Food Industry Collection of emails to its Food Industry Documents Library. The first batch of USRTK emails posted to the database contain emails between the Coca-Cola Company and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including those reported in January 2019 study in the Milbank Quarterly, Public Meets Private: Conversations Between Coca-Cola and the CDC, by Nason Maani Hessari, Gary Ruskin, Martin McKee and David Stuckler. See our Coca-Cola and CDC Resources Page for more information.
UCSF Chemical Industry Documents Library Now Hosts U.S. Right to Know Collection
News Release
For Immediate Release: Thursday, April 19, 2018
For More Information Contact: Gary Ruskin (415) 944-7350
The University of California, San Francisco Industry Documents Library today placed online several collections of agrichemical industry documents, including some acquired and donated by U.S. Right to Know, a consumer and public health watchdog group.
The documents shine light on the public relations, scientific, legislative and regulatory tactics the industry has used to defend its products and profits.
“These documents offer an inside view of agrichemical industry communications about the health and environmental risks of its products,” said Gary Ruskin, co-director of U.S. Right to Know. “We hope they will prove to be a valuable resource for policymakers, investigative journalists and the public at large.”
The documents will be housed in the UCSF Chemical Industry Documents Archive, which is affiliated with the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents, an archive of 14 million documents created by tobacco companies and their allies.
The documents donated by U.S. Right to Know will be known in the archive as the USRTK Agrichemical Collection. Many of these documents were obtained via federal and state public records requests. In February, the Freedom of the Press Foundation documented growing opposition to the use of public records requests for documents related to the agrichemical industry.
“We want to make these documents available so that others don’t have to go through the trouble and expense of obtaining them,” Ruskin said.
Many of the documents known the “Monsanto Papers ” will also be made available.These documents are surfacing in litigation over whether Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
During the last year, these documents have been the subject of dozens of news stories worldwide. In March, two journalists at the French daily Le Monde, Stéphane Foucart and Stéphane Horel, won a European Press Prize Investigative Reporting Award for their work with the Monsanto Papers.
The documents are catalogued, indexed, fully searchable and downloadable so they will be easy to use for policymakers, journalists, academics and the general public. They are available free of charge.
Documents in the USRTK Agrichemical Collection at UCSF have been reported on in many news articles, including:
- New York Times: Food Industry Enlisted Academics in G.M.O. Lobbying War, Emails Show, by Eric Lipton
- Boston Globe: Harvard Professor Failed to Disclose Monsanto Connection in Paper Touting GMOs, by Laura Krantz
- Mother Jones: These Emails Show Monsanto Leaning on Professors to Fight the GMO PR War, by Tom Philpott
- The Progressive: Flacking for GMOs: How the Biotech Industry Cultivates Positive Media — and Discourages Criticism, by Paul Thacker
- Global News: Documents Reveal Canadian Teenager Target of GMO Lobby, by Allison Vuchnich
- CBC: U of S professor says there’s nothing unusual about his ties to Monsanto ; U of S Defends Prof’s Monsanto Ties, But Some Faculty Disagree, both by Jason Warick
- WBEZ: Why Didn’t an Illinois Professor Have to Disclose GMO Funding ? By Monica Eng
- Le Monde: La Discrète Influence de Monsanto, by Stéphane Foucart
- Huffington Post: Keith Kloor’s Enduring Love Affair with GMOs, by Paul Thacker
- Bloomberg: How Monsanto Mobilized Academics to Pen Articles Supporting GMOs, by Jack Kaskey
U.S. Right to Know is a nonprofit consumer and public health organization that investigates the risks associated with the corporate food system, and the food industry’s practices and influence on public policy. For more information, see usrtk.org.
-30-
