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, 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, 215 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 appears to also be the case that it facilitates preferential access to the press for scientists that 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. 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.
The SMC funder Croplife International’s members include the most powerful agbiotech companies in the world.
Scientists from some of these organisations are repeatedly quoted in the SMC’s ‘expert reactions’, and also in news stories generated by the organisations themselves, for example, about the development of particular genetically engineered crops. But the SMC does not make its financial relationship to these organisations clear on the webpagess on which they are featured.
In 2018, the European Court of Justice ruled 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.
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 have funded the SMC.i
GM Freeze urges the SMC to review its processes so that its own financial interests are clear when it provides briefings and expert reactions.
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 the new GMOs. The SMC is backed by the biggest agricultural biotech players on the planet, which 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 platforms scientists, and institutions that fund it.”
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.
