On 27 September 2024 the Stitching Lighthouse Reports in collaboration with the Environmental Working Group, other NGOs, and journalists at Le Monde and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation published a series of claims about the work of v-Fluence and online platforms called Bonus Eventus.

“The claims by the Lighthouse NGO and other advocacy groups with whom they are collaborating are based on grossly misleading representations, factual errors regarding our work and clients, and manufactured falsehoods.” Jay Byrne, president v-Fluence.

Here is the response sent to Lighthouse prior to the publications of their allegations:

24 September 2024

Ms. Gibbs:

For more than a year now the Foundation Lighthouse Reports NGO, operating with the financial support of an AgroEcology Fund donor the Oak Foundation has been conducting an “investigation” into my work. The donor group sponsoring you is simultaneously funding similar “investigative” NGOs and activist groups seeking to block modern agriculture and harm the reputations of those who do not support their ideology – these campaigns have included the criminal destruction of public research and field trials, spurious lawsuit claims, and other advocacy attacking the credibility and motives of those working on food system solutions to sustainably meet the world’s needs.

For the past 13+ months your NGO has been filing FOIA requests, selectively reviewing litigation-related filings, trolling social media to contact our current and past employees, and contacting recipients of our newsletters falsely suggesting we are engaged in illegal or unethical activities. While you have not disclosed your donor or their agenda in your so-called investigation, you have indicated that your work is also being done in collaboration with Carey Gillam and representing her as a journalist employed by The Guardian.

As you know from our prior correspondence, Ms. Gillam is employed by the activist group Environmental Working Group whose work is funded by organic marketing and pesticide litigator groups which profit from her attacks on competing agricultural practices and their litigation targets.

As we’ve previously replied, we reject the premise that your campaign is legitimate journalism given the activists and special interest groups funding and collaborating with your purported investigation. The claims and questions you have posed are based on grossly misleading representations, factual errors regarding our work and clients, and manufactured falsehoods.

You have informed us and others that your intention is to report that my firm and I are at the center of a global conspiracy on behalf of the U.S. government and the agrichemical industry to undermine the European Union Farm to Fork strategy and prevent efforts to block the export of alleged EU-banned pesticides to Africa. Based on numerous inquiries we’ve received; it appears your singular goal is to unjustly damage our reputation worldwide.

Much of the false information you have shared with us and others is based on lawsuits claims which make numerous incorrect and factually false claims. To date, we’ve publicly stated and provided multiple depositions and court filings under oath that these claims are manufactured and false. While your colleague Ms. Gillam collaborates with these litigators and apparently seeks to air their claims via your organization, we will not comment or respond to any pending litigations claims outside of the courtroom.

Our scope of work that you are questioning is 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. No client has any direct role in the development of any of our materials, including supplemental research on issues and stakeholders in the wiki noted. We offer our newsletters to clients and others who are referred or whom we meet at various conferences and events. This includes those in both the public and private sectors. All recipients opt-in to receive our newsletters which includes access to our online archives and supplemental, community-edited issues and stakeholder research wiki.

The publishing standards for the wiki (which is not public) allows users to post publicly available information with references/links to the sources from which that information is derived. In some cases, this may include contact information or links to social media accounts and website registrations when relevant. That information is included when the individual, organization, or coalition publicly shares that information to contact them for their business or advocacy purposes and/or uses the identified social media accounts to post information about the topics we cover.

To reiterate.

• We don’t work for or have any past or current contracts with USAID or USDA. Neither has any role in nor directs our work in any manner.

• We do not engage in lobbying. We have agreements to provide our newsletters and related communications support limited to analysis, counsel on best practices, and occasional communication trainings with several international governmental organizations working in agriculture. Other clients include academic institutions, professional associations, trade groups and for-profit companies. None of these organizations requests anything beyond our monitoring, research services, and analysis. There is no unethical, illegal, or otherwise inappropriate outreach, lobbying or related activities by our organization of any kind. .

• We provide reports and analysis on publicly available food and agriculture issues, key influencers, related topics, and trends. Our issues monitoring reports, linked to supplemental topic and stakeholder research, is shared broadly with interested parties who opt-in to receive our newsletters. I am frequently invited to speak at briefings, conferences, and other events to share our knowledge about the topics we track.

• Our presentations and reports share content from all sources and points of view, including those critical of modern agriculture, with the intention of elevating awareness and fact-based, informed dialogue to support science-based, sustainable “favorable outcomes” (Bonus Eventus in Latin) in food and agriculture. Our role is as an information collection, sharing, analysis, and reporting provider. Our approach is to share and solicit information with a wide range of stakeholders to promote understanding of all the various stakeholders, positions, research, commentary, etc. impacting food and agriculture.

• We make NO representations or implied association or involvement on behalf of any clients regarding any authors/sources of content we include in our newsletters or regarding any recipients of those reports. Our reports include information from diverse sources and represent the views and opinion of those source to ensure our readers have full, accurate, contextual information about these topics. We have dozens of content categories and hundreds of coding tags we use to organize and distribute content. None convey or represent any relationship with or influence over the content authors and publishing sources and our organization or clients. Your inquiries to us and the authors of content appearing in our system suggesting otherwise are false.

Unless, otherwise noted, our above response addresses all your questions. Our response is the story you are representing is grossly misleading and based on manufactured and false claims.