The Bonus Eventus social network doesn’t come up in a regular internet search because its creators have blocked Google from accessing it.
The website, which was launched in 2014, is the brainchild of former Monsanto director of corporate communications Jay Byrne, and provides a media-monitoring service for chemical company executives and chemical lobby groups.
But there is a darker side to its operation.
Investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports obtained and shared documents with the ABC and international media partners which reveal that Bonus Eventus — which in Latin means “good outcome” — has for many years been compiling “dirt files” on journalists and activists who have been deemed by it to be opponents of agrochemical and genetically modified organism (GMO) industries.
This includes personal information on academics, scientists, journalists and lawyers who have at some point been critical of the chemical industry or raised questions about the safety of agrochemical products.
There are individual wikis on more than 500 people including their speeding fines, house values, home addresses and, in one case, information on an extra- marital affair and subsequent suicide of an academic’s wife.
The welcome email from the Bonus Eventus social network promises “a library of background information”. (Supplied)
The information has been gleaned from publicly available sources, but by compiling this data into individual dossiers, Bonus Eventus has created what is effectively a “one-stop-shop” for its members looking for information on perceived chemical industry critics.
Australians with a profile on the invite-only social network
Documents seen by the ABC reveal that employees of CropLife Australia, an industry group whose members include agrochemical company Syngenta, have a Bonus Eventus profile. CropLife has been highly critical of the ABC’s reporting this month on the links between agricultural chemicals and diseases such as Parkinson’s.
CropLife CEO Matthew Cossey has been publicly critical of the ABC’s recent reporting about the herbicide paraquat. (Supplied)
When asked to comment on the links to Bonus Eventus, a CropLife Australia spokesperson told the ABC the organisation received a regular summary of “significant media stories and issues on food and agriculture issues” from Bonus Eventus, but did not have any other engagement with the website or its founder Jay Byrne.
When asked why CropLife Australia employees had member profiles and photographs on the website, the CropLife spokesperson said a member profile was created automatically when a person signed up to receive media summaries from Bonus Eventus.
Another Australian with a profile on the site is currently employed by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicine Authority (APVMA). The APVMA is responsible for approving chemicals in Australia. The profile appears to have been set up several years before this person joined APVMA.
When asked about this by the ABC, the APVMA said its employee had not been aware that they had a Bonus Eventus profile until notified of this by the ABC and they had arranged for this to be taken down.
Australian academics members of the invite-only social network
Australian academics attached to several Australian universities — some of whom have appeared in CropLife promotion of genetically modified technology and agrochemicals — also have profiles on the Bonus Eventus social network.
One of those academics told the ABC the site was created as an alternative to an email list for the discussion of biotechnology.
They said some academics in the US were using the site because they wanted to avoid their emails being subject to Freedom of Information applications by the pro-organic lobby, which they described as “an invasion of their ability to communicate”.
Instead, they invited their network to discuss the issues inside the Bonus Eventus ecosystem.
David Tribe is an Australian academic with a Bonus Eventus profile.
David Tribe, a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, is part of the Bonus Eventus network. (Supplied: University of Melbourne)
He’s been a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne for more than 35 years, specialising in genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Dr Tribe is also one of the founders of an organisation, Academics Review. Their website was archived on the Bonus Eventus website in 2016. Tax records from 2015 show the non-profit received funding from a lobby group for BASF, Bayer, Corteva, Monsanto and Syngenta.
In documents obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests in the US, Dr David Tribe was listed as a speaker at a 2015 pro-GMO conference held in California and organised by Jay Byrne.
The agenda was titled: “How to Establish and Tap Into Global Science/Journalist Network: Jay Byrne briefing on Bonus Eventus; David Tribe.”
At a 2015 event, Australian academic David Tribe was a speaker alongside Bonus Eventus founder Jay Byrne. (Supplied)
Dr Tribe did not respond to the ABC’s requests for comment.
Other Australian members include a government relations expert who worked for the tobacco industry, high-ranking employees of chemical giant BASF and an ex-Syngenta corporate communications executive.
Jay Byrne, who operates under the company v-Fluence, said in a statement that he had no Australian clients and that no known Australian government regulators had received reports from his company.
About a quarter of the 1,000 or so international members of the Bonus Eventus site are past and present employees from large agrochemical companies, including Syngenta, Bayer and Corteva.
Members also include scientists, civil servants and pesticide regulators from around the world. 30 current US government officials are members of the network, most of whom are from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Tracking the critics
Beyond a shared community, the website offers a library of briefs with pro-industry talking points, a media-monitoring system to track agriculture news, and a trove of opposition research profiles.
Marketed as “background on the critics”, these profiles contain intelligence on more than 500 individuals and 3,000 organisations. They include environmentalists, scientists, UN human rights experts, journalists, and even musicians, from across the globe.
Part of the Bonus Eventus portal offers members “background on the critics”. (Supplied)
Members can browse through them by category — such as “pesticide advocacy”, “water-climate advocacy” or “PFAS advocacy”.
The profiles look like a Wikipedia article, but also include personal information about each “critic” that appears to have been compiled from a range of publicly available sources.
Among the profiles are journalist Michael Pollan, Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva and Ghanaian musician Blakk Rasta.
The site even includes a designer from South Africa who once signed a petition to ban glyphosate.
US author and journalism professor Michael Pollan, who has written books critical of the food industry, has a profile on Bonus Eventus. (Supplied: Fran Collin)
There is also a “criticisms” section, devoted to logging controversies surrounding particular individuals.
A profile of a UK-based academic contains descriptions of his wife who died of “suicide-related complications” after discovering an extra-marital affair by her husband and following a “23-year struggle with depression and schizophrenia …”
The story was first reported in The Guardian and is publicly available, but has been included into the “wiki” of the academic.
Another profile of a prominent US scientist includes details about a 33-year-old traffic violation, his personal phone number and a home address.
When the ABC contacted one Australian member of the site from the scientific community, they said they no longer wanted to be associated with it.
“Storing or using personal and private information about anyone is not an ethical practice. Knowing that such data was available on Bonus Eventus makes me feel uncomfortable” they said.
In a statement, v-Fluence head Jay Byrne said the “community-edited wiki platform … includes only publicly available and referenced information”.
“We do not track or profile journalists,” the statement said.
The agrochemical industry, researchers and PR and lobby groups make up the majority of Bonus Eventus members. (Supplied)
CropLife Australia director of government relations Justin Crosby said in a statement that BonusEventus “supplies a media and issues monitoring services to members of the global agricultural, scientific and academic communities”.
“CropLife receives an email summary of publicly available significant media stories and issues on food and agriculture issues.”
Mr Crosby said CropLife did not receive any other services or have any other engagement with v-Fluence or Mr Byrne beyond that.
The poison PR world
Reputation-management company chief Jay Byrne, the brains behind Bonus Eventus, has years of experience working for the chemical industry and government.
Public spending records show his company v-Fluence received subcontracts funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) worth more than $400,000 from approximately 2013 through 2019 for services that included counteracting “opportunistic stakeholders” critical of “modern agriculture approaches” in Africa and Asia.
Jay Byrne is the founder of the agricultural lobby group v-Fluence. (Supplied)
Mr Byrne denied receiving any US government funding.
“We don’t work for or have any past or current contracts with USAID or USDA,” he said in a statement. As part of the government subcontract, v-Fluence was to set up the “private social network portal” that would, among other things, provide “tactical support” for efforts to gain acceptance for GM crops in certain African and Asian countries.
A 2010 email exchange released under FOI provides an inside look into its operations.
In the correspondence, Jay Byrne and Bruce Chassy, a now-retired US academic and proponent of GM and agrochemicals, discuss ideas on how best to tackle the organics industry.
“I would love to have a prime name in the middle of the organic aura from which to launch ballistic missiles,” Dr Chassy writes.
“I’d love to start a campaign to get USDA (US Department of Agriculture) out of the organic business. But it aint gonna happen.”
In response, Mr Byrne suggests “we work on the money (for all of us) first and quickly!” and relays that he is “compiling an “opportunities” list with targets.
Jay Byrne and Bruce Chassy discuss ideas to take on the organic industry over email. (Supplied)
The “list” included green activists, organisations such as Sierra Club, Greenpeace and journalist Michael Pollan’s website “In Defense of Food”.
“All of these individuals, organizations, content items and topic areas mean money for a range of well heeled corporations,” Byrne writes in the exchange.
“I believe our kitchen cabinet here can serve as gatekeepers (in some cases toll takers) for effective, credible responses, inoculation and proactive activities using this project platform.”
In the wake of the email exchange, Dr Chassy went on to launch the pro-chemical and GMO website Academics Review.
In response to questions from the reporting group, Mr Byrne claimed Bonus Eventus’ scope of work was “limited to monitoring, research, and trends reporting on global activities and trends for plant breeding and crop protection issues”.
“We provide supplemental analysis and context about stakeholders and topics to support our reports,” Mr Byrne said in a statement.
“No client of ours nor donor to [Dr Chassy’s] Academics Review provided any funding or played any role in the wiki project development.”
Mr Byrne also denied engaging in lobbying.
“There is no unethical, illegal, or otherwise inappropriate outreach, lobbying or related activities by our organization of any kind.”
Dr Chassy did not respond to requests for comment.
Court case alleges info suppression on paraquat
Mr Byrne and his company v-Fluence have been named in litigation in the US as co-defendants in a case against the agrochemical giant Syngenta.
They are accused of helping the global chemical company “neutralise” critics, and suppress information about risks its weed killer paraquat may cause Parkinson’s Disease.
Dave Dickens, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, says his clients will be alleging that Bonus Eventus was central to this effort and aimed “to create a network that the industry and these manufacturers could turn to when there was a problem”.
“They accumulate all the information,” Mr Dickens said, “then, they develop a plan to attack.”
The lawsuit was filed in Missouri by mother and son Donna and James Evitts.
Both suffer from Parkinson’s disease and claim it is linked to decades of use of the herbicide paraquat on their family farm.
Ms Evitts’s husband, George Evitts, also had Parkinson’s and died in 2007 at the age of 63 after decades of spraying paraquat on the farm.
Ms Evitts was diagnosed with Parkinson’s two years after her husband died. Their son, who grew up on the farm, was diagnosed with the same neurodegenerative disease in 2014.
The lawsuit cites sealed court records alleging that Syngenta signed a contract with v-Fluence in 2002 to help the company deal with negative information coming to light about its paraquat herbicides.
The lawsuit alleges v-Fluence helped Syngenta create false or misleading online content that was “paraquat-friendly” and used search engine optimisation to suppress negative information about paraquat.
One of the alleged v-Fluence jobs was to develop a website called the “Paraquat Information Center” at paraquat.com, which espoused the safety of paraquat and asserted there was no valid scientific link between the chemical and Parkinson’s disease.
In a written objection to the subpoena, lawyers for v-Fluence founder Jay Byrne said:
“Syngenta never engaged v-Fluence to perform any work on paraquat other than to monitor publicly available information, provide benchmark assessments of content and stakeholder sources, and to provide supplemental contextual analysis”.
Mr Byrne said the claims made in the lawsuit were “manufactured and false”.
“We will not comment or respond to any pending litigation claims outside of the courtroom.”
Syngenta maintains its product, paraquat does not cause Parkinson’s disease. But it said in a statement that it could not comment on matters “pertaining to active litigation”.
The Minister for Agriculture Julie Collins was contacted for comment.
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This story was created in collaboration with Lighthouse Reports (Netherlands), Africa Uncensored (Kenya), The Guardian (US), New Lede (US), Le Monde (France), The Continent (South Africa), The New Humanitarian (Switzerland) and The Wire News (India).
