GM Freeze calls on the Science Media Centre to disclose its own interests when it publishes expert reactions
The Science Media Centre (SMC) describes itself as an independent press office, but research by GM Freeze has found that the ‘expert reactions’ to science news stories that it publishes heavily favour organisations that fund it. Whilst the SMC discloses the interests of the experts it quotes, it does not make its own financial links clear.
The Food Standards Agency has indicated it may use the SMC to raise awareness about “Precision Bred” Genetically Modified Organisms (PB-GMOs), but in an in-depth report which assesses the organisation’s finances and legacy, GM Freeze questions the suitability of such a partnership.
The Science Media Centre is based in the Wellcome Trust Gibbs Building, Euston Road, London. Attribution: Oxyman / The Wellcome Trust, Gibbs Building / CC BY-SA 2.0
The SMC claims that its funders have no influence over its editorial decisions. Whilst this may be strictly true, it also appears that it facilitates preferential access to the press for scientists who work at organisations that fund it.
SMC funders in the financial year to March 2025 included CropLife International, which has lobbied for the deregulation of genetic technologies and which represents the four major agricultural biotechnology companies: Bayer/Monsanto, Corteva, Syngenta and BASF.
The SMC funder Croplife International’s members include the most powerful agricultural biotechnology companies in the world.
Numerous organisations with direct financial interests in genetic engineering also funded the SMC in 2024-25, including the Earlham Institute, BP International, the John Innes Centre and the Sainsbury Laboratory. Scientists from some of these organisations are repeatedly quoted in the SMC’s ‘expert reactions’, and also in ‘news’ stories generated by them, for example, about the development of particular genetically engineered crops. Whilst the SMC does separately publish a list of funders, it does not make such financial relationships clear on the webpages where its funders are featured.
One example is in relation to the hugely significant 2018 European Court of Justice ruling which found that gene editing was genetic engineering and should be regulated as such. The SMC collated quotes from scientists working at (or retired from) nine different organisations, more than half of which were SMC funders. Of the others, one was the British Society of Plant Breeders, a lobbying organisation whose members include biotech companies that do fund the SMC. The other three organisations were universities where genetic engineering was conducted. All of the scientists criticised the ECJ ruling. Three were quoted verbatim by the BBC, though it did not state that it had sourced the quotes from the SMC.
This is relevant for spins on far more than genetic engineering. In November 2023, the SMC organised a controversial briefing for journalists about the health impacts of ultra-processed foods (UPFs). These were “judged to be not black and white”, according to the BMJ. Three of the five scientists on the panel had links to food companies including Nestlé and Coca-Cola, and four of them worked at institutions that had funded the SMC.i
GM Freeze urges the SMC to review its processes so that its own financial interests are clear when it publishes stories and provides briefings and expert reactions.
According to the latest Consumer Insights Tracker, just 5% of people say they know what “precision breeding” means. GM Freeze is waiting to hear from the Food Standards Agency about whether it has decided to engage the SMC to inform people about PB-GMOs. Following a recent change in the law, these may soon be on supermarket shelves, unlabelled and without meaningful risk assessment.
GM Freeze Executive Director Leonie Nimmo said:
It would be outrageous for the Food Standards Agency to use the Science Media Centre to inform the public about new GMOs. The SMC is backed by the biggest agricultural biotech players on the planet; companies that have pressured governments to remove GM safeguards and which have a vested interest in ensuring that people do not understand the health, environmental and economic risks.
If the FSA proceeds with this disastrous idea then it must be completely transparent about the SMC’s involvement in any communications developed and disseminated. Further, the SMC must begin to make its own financial interests clear when it provides a platform for scientists and the institutions that fund it.
Perhaps, however, the government will prefer to keep people completely in the dark, given that consumers don’t want GM foods. People will be double blind: very few understand what PB-GMOs are, and even if they do, their preferences are irrelevant because they will not know what they are buying. It’s a huge betrayal.”
For a deep dive into the founding, funding and legacies of the SMC, see the GM Freeze report, The Science Media Centre, the Food Standards Agency, and how to undermine trust in the food system.
For the problems of communicating about “Precision Bred” GMOs, in the context of public concerns about science, see Powers of deception: GMOs by any other name.
i According to the information disclosed on the SMC’s website in March 2026. These were: University of Leeds, the Quadram Institute, Queen’s University Belfast and the Food Standards Agency.
