The allegations made against the Bivings Group in two recent columns (The fake persuaders, May 14, and Corporate phantoms, May 29) are completely untrue.
The "fake persuaders" mentioned in the articles - Mary Murphy and Andura Smetacek - are not employees or contractors or aliases of employees or contractors of the Bivings Group. In fact, the Bivings Group has no knowledge of either Mary Murphy or Andura Smetacek.
The article says that someone in our office appears to have "hacking skills" and accuses "biotech lobbyists" of launching "hacker" attacks. The Bivings Group does not hack into servers on behalf of anyone. As a victim of hacking attacks in the past, we strongly condemn anyone who resorts to this sort of online vandalism. We are aware of no "biotech lobbyists" engaged in such activities.
The articles claims that the Bivings Group is the author of several websites and "bogus citizens' groups" which have been coordinating campaigns against environmentalists, including a fake scientific institute, Centre for Food and Agricultural Research. We deny that. The article also says that we set up the Alliance for Environmental Technology (AET). The Bivings Group has long worked for AET, which is a legitimate trade association representing the pulp and paper industry. The AET website clearly discloses who funds the organisation. The Bivings Group has no involvement with Centre for Food and Agricultural Research and AgBioWorld.
F Gary Bivings
President, Bivings Group, Washington, DC
What the Mexican maize fiasco has demonstrated to me is that the press is almost entirely unaccountable for what they say. Some serve an agenda. For George Monbiot the agenda is what I have come to call the anti-corporate faith.
The server at Berkeley crashing took out Quist and Chaplea's email, but it also took out email of the authors of one critique (Kaplinsky et al). Though Conko and I have both written in to Agbioview, we have never exchanged so much as a single message with each other. My research is publicly funded, and my political stance is far from rightwing. The difference between Monbiot and Rush Limbaugh is which wing is flapping.
Dr Matthew Metz
Department of microbiology, University of Washington