Schneider Shorts 3.11.2023 – Give two advantages of using the stem cell trachea

Schneider Shorts of 3 November 2023 – trachea transplanters with retracted papers and safe MD thesis, MDPI lawyering-up against For Better Science, editors taking action on fake science, with another successful pig heart transplant, a thousand scientists on meat payroll, and finally, a Canadian university whitewashes a rotten crook.

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Science Elites

Exceptionally challenging due to a number of factors

Maybe you recall the affair of one of Canada’s biggest medical crooks, Gideon Koren, who is currently a professor at the Ariel University in Israel. To call Koren a fraudster is an understatement. You can read about this affair here, in an article which Koren had removed from Google search:

But he still has many friends in Toronto, in fact even when the whistleblower he terrorised, Nancy Olivieri, was a few days ago awarded with the John Maddox Prize 2023 for uncovering the deferiprone fraud affair, Koren’s name was never mentioned. That despite his being the principal investigator of that disastrous clinical trial, main recipient of the bribes from the drug manufacturer Apotex, and the central perpetrator in this affair.

After Canadian journalists reported about the diferiprone fraud and Koren’s other disastrous and evil scam, Motherisk, the University of Toronto and SickKids Hospital announced in 2018 to investigate 422 papers by Koren. Well, here is the result, reported on 10 October 2023 by The Star:

“After more than four years and hundreds of hours spent poring over scientific articles, Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) has completed its review of possible problems with research by one of its former doctors — the man behind one of the largest medical scandals in recent Canadian history.

The hospital’s findings are just three paragraphs long, determining the matter “inconclusive.” […]

SickKids ordered a “systematic” review of the vast body of work published by Dr. Gideon Koren after a Star investigation identified possible problems in more than 400 articles Koren co-authored.

Roughly 300 of Koren’s papers, the Star found, didn’t adequately disclose funding from pharmaceutical companies and, in some cases, contained lies about the way the SickKids program he founded, Motherisk, tested hair for drugs.

In a three-paragraph statement posted on its website, the hospital said it “cannot confirm with certainty that undisclosed conflicts exist” or whether the research papers complied with the institution’s ethics guidelines.

“The scientific review of these publications was exceptionally challenging due to a number of factors, including lack of access to data and the passage of time since the work was conducted,” the statement reads.”

Of course also the editors of the medical journals agree that a colleague’s career must be always protected, no matter how many he maims and kills:

“The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, which published several articles co-authored by Koren that the Star identified in its 2018 investigation as containing possible problems, was among the scientific journals that SickKids contacted.
Editor Joe Bertino said he reviewed the articles and determined that no corrective action was required. He said he is satisfied with the hospital’s response to the concerns about Koren’s publications.”

The whistleblower Olivieri was the only one whose career really suffered. Her tormentor Koren is doing great, academically and financially.

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Retraction Watchdogging

Give two advantages of using the stem cell trachea

News regarding the murderous trachea transplant surgeon and former Karolinska Institutet professor Paolo Macchiarini.

First, Macchiarini has to go to jail after all, the Supreme Court of Sweden rejected his appeal on 30 October 2023. Translated:

“The Supreme Court has decided not to grant leave to appeal in a high-profile criminal case involving trachea transplants. This means that the judgment of the Court of Appeal stands. […] The Supreme Court’s decision means that the case is not taken up for consideration. The judgment of the Court of Appeal thus stands.”

As you may have already heard, The Lancet gave up. Two papers about Macchiarini’s very first trachea transplant from 2008 are now retracted.

• Paolo Macchiarini , Philipp Jungebluth , Tetsuhiko Go , M Adelaide Asnaghi , Louisa E Rees , Tristan A Cogan , Amanda Dodson , Jaume Martorell , Silvia Bellini , Pier Paolo Parnigotto , Sally C Dickinson , Anthony P Hollander , Sara Mantero , Maria Teresa Conconi , Martin A Birchall Clinical transplantation of a tissue-engineered airway The Lancet (2008) doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(08)61598-6
• Alessandro Gonfiotti , Massimo O Jaus , Daniel Barale , Silvia Baiguera , Camilla Comin , Federico Lavorini , Giovanni Fontana , Oriol Sibila , Giovanni Rombolà , Philipp Jungebluth , Paolo Macchiarini The first tissue-engineered airway transplantation: 5-year follow-up results The Lancet (2014) doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(13)62033-4

the retractions happened not because the Lancet Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton suddenly felt remorse or pity for trachea transplant victims, but because upon notification of Patricia Murray and Peter Wilmshurst, the Swedish National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct (NPOF) made an official decision that the second paper (where Macchiarini and his acolyte Philipp Jungebluth used a Karolinska affiliation) was fraudulent. And the first paper was untenable without the second. Read here:

Now, the Retraction notice dated 28 October 2023 for Macchiarini et al 2008:

“After The Lancet issued two Expressions of concern in February, 2023^1, 2 for the original case description³ and the 5-year follow-up Article,⁴ the investigation by the Swedish National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct⁵ into the 5-year follow-up paper has led us to retract this paper.⁶ During that investigation, it was confirmed that a stent was inserted in the patient’s trachea less than 4 months after the operation. The Swedish National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct⁵ found that the statement made in that Article⁴ that a “4-month follow-up showed no complications” and that omitting information that a stent was inserted constitutes falsification. Similarly, the statement in the original report³ that “the graft immediately provided the recipient with a functional airway, improved her quality of life, and had a normal appearance and mechanical properties at 4 months” would also constitute falsification.⁵ We are, therefore, also retracting the Article of the original case description.
The Editors of The Lancet
The Lancet, London EC2Y 5AS, UK”

Retraction notice, dated 28 October 2023, for Gonfiotti et al 2014:

“Further to the two Expressions of concern The Lancet issued in February, 20231, 2 for the Article presenting the 5-year follow-up results³ of the case of tissue-engineered transplantation,⁴ the Swedish National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct⁵ has concluded in an investigation into this paper that it “contains fabrication and falsification in several places, and three falsified figures (4, 5 and 6C)”. We are therefore now retracting this Article³ together with the original description of this case.⁶“

Now, there should be some consequences, especially in Germany. Macchiarini namely remains adjunct professor at the Hannover Medical School (MHH), where his acolyte Jungebluth graduated as MD with an award-winning medical doctoral dissertation in 2010, read here:

The doctorate thesis is a “cumulative” one, meaning Jungebluth graduated with copies of his research papers with Macchiarini framed by some short descriptive text. The central publication, Macchiarini et al 2008, has been now retracted. The thesis is untenable without this central paper, but also the other 3 were flagged on PubPeer for data manipulation, they are likely facing retraction like the rest of Macchiarini studies.

1. Philipp Jungebluth , Tetsuhiko Go , Adelaide Asnaghi , Silvia Bellini , Jaume Martorell , Chiara Calore , Luca Urbani , Helmut Ostertag , Sara Mantero , Maria Teresa Conconi , Paolo Macchiarini Structural and morphologic evaluation of a novel detergent–enzymatic tissue-engineered tracheal tubular matrix Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (2009) doi: 10.1016/j.jtcvs.2008.09.085 

2. M. Adelaide Asnaghi , Philipp Jungebluth , Manuela T. Raimondi , Sally C. Dickinson , Louisa E.N. Rees , Tetsuhiko Go , Tristan A. Cogan , Amanda Dodson , Pier Paolo Parnigotto , Anthony P. Hollander , Martin A. Birchall , Maria Teresa Conconi , Paolo Macchiarini , Sara Mantero A double-chamber rotating bioreactor for the development of tissue-engineered hollow organs: from concept to clinical trial Biomaterials (2009) doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2009.07.018 

3. Tetsuhiko Go , Philipp Jungebluth , Silvia Baiguero , Adelaide Asnaghi , Jaume Martorell , Helmut Ostertag , Sara Mantero , Martin Birchall, Augustinus Bader , Paolo Macchiarini Both epithelial cells and mesenchymal stem cell-derived chondrocytes contribute to the survival of tissue-engineered airway transplants in pigs Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (2010) doi: 10.1016/j.jtcvs.2009.10.002 

In a sane world, this thesis is untenable and the medical doctorate degree must be withdrawn. But MHH is not part of the sane world.

In 2017, the then-President of MHH, Christopher Baum, together with the Ombudspeople Thomas Würfel and Beate Schwinzer decreed that Jungebluth’s thesis must never be investigated, regardless of the already available massive evidence of fraud and patient abuse.

In 2018, Baum suddenly left MHH despite being freshly re-elected as rector, under accusations of nepotism towards his wife, Anke Franzke. The new MHH President is Michael Manns. I wrote to him and the MHH responsibles again and received no reply at all. Total silence. Thus, my notification of suspected research misconduct was once again rejected. MHH will never investigate Jungebluth’s thesis or withdraw his degree. Just like they won’t withdraw Macchiarini’s adjunct professorship. If for no other reason but to avoid drawing attention.

And in England, they might need to change their GCSE (middle school) Biology exams. Look what was used rather recently (and might still be in use):

I am quite sure it was Martin Birchall who wrote these criminally insane GCSE questions. But who invited him to?

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A misuse of the scientific publishing system

A fraudulent paper from China has been retracted, but there is a twist. The fraud was reported to the journal by Cheshire in May 2023:

G.-G. Li , Z.-Z. Guo , X.-F. Ma , N. Cao , S.-N. Geng , Y.-Q. Zheng , M.-J. Meng , H.-H. Lin , G. Han, G.-J. Du The M2 macrophages induce autophagic vascular disorder and promote mouse sensitivity to urethane-related lung carcinogenesis Developmental & Comparative Immunology (2016) doi: 10.1016/j.dci.2016.01.010 

The Retraction notice from 28 October 2023 stated:

“This article has been retracted at the request of the Co-Editor-in-Chief after a complaint was registered on the PubPeer webpage (https://pubpeer.com/publications/2460573E8B5707B48D70D73FF31E54).

The article duplicates images from a figure, with a 90o rotation, from a paper that had already appeared in PLoS ONE (2015), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143438, also two panels in Fig 4C seem to be the same image. Several requests to the authors to resolve this went unanswered. One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that the paper has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Re-use of any data should be appropriately cited. As such this article represents a misuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.”

Now, the promised twist. One of the two Editors-in-Chief of Developmental & Comparative Immunology is Kenneth Söderhäll. Together with his wife and fellow professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, Irene Söderhäll, he had to retract 5 papers for massive fraud. This happened 8 years ago, and Söderhälls’ PhD student Apiruck Watthanasurorot was the main responsible. I’ll show you just one example of such a retracted paper:

Apiruck Watthanasurorot , Netnapa Saelee , Amornrat Phongdara , Sittiruk Roytrakul , Pikul Jiravanichpaisal , Kenneth Söderhäll , Irene Söderhäll Astakine 2–the dark knight linking melatonin to circadian regulation in crustaceans PLoS Genetics (2013) doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1003361  (retracted in April 2015)

There is more Söderhäll-authored stuff on PubPeer, not all of it has Watthanasurorot as co-author! The 2015 investigative report by NPOF’s predecessor Central Ethics Review Board is still available in internet archives, I offer a copy here, and the key excerpt (DeepL-translated):

“The conclusions of the preparatory study by Uppsala University, dated March 16, 2015, state inter alia that March 2015, state, inter alia, that mistakes have been made in the publication of certain figures and that some negligence has occurred. However, the University’s assessment is that there was no intent and that that the conclusions in the essays are not affected, which is why Irene and Kenneth Söderhäll have not been guilty of scientific misconduct […]

According to Uppsala University’s definition however, misconduct requires intent.

In this case it has been established that extensive image manipulation in a number of articles. It is difficult to understand that some manipulations have not been discovered. However, the expert group cannot determine whether Irene and Kenneth Söderhäll have acted with intent. However, in view of the extent of the image manipulations, it is obvious that those ultimately responsible for the articles, as well as researchers with long experience, must be considered to have violated their roles as supervisors and heads of department and thus acted negligently. They have thereby acted dishonestly according to the Swedish Research Council’s definition and international accepted practice.”

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Authors have not agreed

Frontiers retracts two papers by Maria Violetta Brundo and Daniele Tibullo, associate professors of medicine at the University of Catania. Which further proves that Frontiers execs are avid readers of For Better Science, where Brundo’s case was reported by Aneurus Inconstans:

These are the two retracted Frontiers papers, part of Brundo’s wider PubPeer record:

Maria V. Brundo , Roberta Pecoraro, Fabio Marino, Antonio Salvaggio, Daniele Tibullo, Salvatore Saccone, Vincenzo Bramanti , Maria A. Buccheri , Giuliana Impellizzeri , Viviana Scuderi , Massimo Zimbone, Vittorio Privitera Toxicity Evaluation of New Engineered Nanomaterials in Zebrafish Frontiers in Physiology (2016) doi: 10.3389/fphys.2016.00130

The retraction notice was published on 13 October 2023:

“Following publication, concerns were raised regarding the integrity of the images in the published figures.

The authors failed to provide a satisfactory explanation during the investigation, which was conducted in accordance with Frontiers’ policies. As a result, the data and conclusions of the article have been deemed unreliable and the article has been retracted.

This retraction was approved by the Chief Editors of Frontiers in Physiology and the Editor-in-Chief of Frontiers. The authors have not agreed to the retraction.”

This was the second retracted paper, also retracted on 13 October 2023 with an identical retraction notice:

Oh, and here are the two junior co-authors being celebrated in local media in November 2020 (and presented as Brundo’s PhD students):

“Two young researchers from the University of Catania – Roberta Pecoraro and Elena Maria Scalisi of the Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences – received the award for best presentation respectively in the “Communications” and “Poster” section at the XIV International Conference on Advances in Aquatic Ecotoxicology which was held, at a distance, in recent days in Istanbul, Turkey.”

The “International Conference on Advances in Aquatic Ecotoxicology” is a scamference series by the notorious Turkish predatory conference organiser WASET.

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The student did it

Another case of a rogue nameless student faking data. This paper from Bangladesh was retracted:

Muslima Zahan , Jiban Podder Surface morphology, optical properties and Urbach tail of spray deposited Co3O4 thin films Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics (2019) doi: 10.1007/s10854-019-00717-2

The Retraction notice from 1 November 2023 stated:

“The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article after concerns around images. Specifically:

All three images in Fig. 1 appear to be a very similar image at different scales, despite the legend saying that the samples were deposited at different temperatures.

There appears to be multiple similarities between curves a and b in Fig. 3, and in the 64+ range, all three curves appear very similar.

The authors did not respond to the request to submit raw images and data. The Editor-in-Chief, therefore, has lost confidence in the integrity of the article’s findings. The authors did not respond to correspondence from the Editor about this retraction.”

Now, in August 2023, the author Jiban Podder, Professor of Physics at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in Dhaka, defended his fake figures on PubPeer while blaming a nameless student:

“The student has collected the spectra from the XRD lab and apparently shows these spectra. I have no idea how this can be fabricated.”

Same two professorial authors here, and again no junior authors to blame:

My humble suggestion to journal editors is: professors as only authors of experimental papers are a sign of research misconduct. Either the data was stolen from those who actually did the experiments, or it was made-up. Or even both!

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Scholarly Publishing

Jesus’ informal self-identification

On 1 November 2023, I received this strange email via my site’s contact form:

“Dir Sir or Madam
According to the fundamental right of informal self-identification and the data protection law, in particular Art 16 GDPR (Right to Rectification) and Art 17 GDPR (Right to erasure – right to be forgotten), we request (on behalf of our employees, [IV] and Jesus Garcia) the immediately deletion of their published names on your website:
Schneider Shorts 22.09.2023 – Digging into still available archives and remaining lab-books – For Better Science and Schneider Shorts 6.10.2023 – You do some screening – For Better Science
We look forward to hearing from you.
Legal Department of MDPI”

The sender’s IP address tracked to Switzerland, where MDPI indeed resides. The author was “Gabriele”, the provided email legal@mdpi.com. I replied to the email, requesting to verify its authenticity, and received nothing back from that account. A Google search for “Gabriele” and legal@mdpi.com” led as its first hit to the LinkedIn profile of a Gabriele Urban, who works since June 2022 as Legal Counsel at MDPI. I contacted Urban asking him to confirm or deny that he wrote this letter, and got this back: “No, I do not give my consent.“

Whatever. These are the two articles MDPI has an issue with, follow the hyperlinks to read what it’s about:

• “Schneider Shorts 22.09.2023 – Digging into still available archives and remaining lab-books”, Chapter “Have a good day – MDPI Jesus delivers a sermon on COPE guidelines”
• “Schneider Shorts 6.10.2023 – You do some screening” – For Better Science”, Chapter “To minimize the stress levels – Shaker Mousa’s revealing retractions”

In the latter case, an MDPI employee was named as author of a rather silly uninformed email supporting a fraudster Editor-in-Chief. I removed her name upon her personal request, it wasn’t relevant anyway.

In the former case, the naming of the MDPI employee is of paramount public interest, including in the area of public health, and clearly serves scientific research purposes (Art. 17.3c-d GDPR), hence I am NOT going to honour any demands here. Thing is, MDPI’s Journal Relations Specialist Jesús Garcia Cano previously educated me in his emails (inter alia directed at me personally) that not even corrections will be issued at MDPI despite proven image duplications, and he even referred to made-up COPE guidelines to support his nonsense. A behaviour suggesting editorial incompetence at best, or rather something much more malicious. As reminder, MDPI’s business activities are financed largely by public research funds.

When pointed to similar data irregularities in his own research papers, Jesus went silent and later invoked the archangel Gabriel to avenge him. Garcia also wrote to me this email on 2 November 2023:

“Dear webmaster,

I hereby request the deletion of my personal data on your website according to Art. 17 GDPR.

https://forbetterscience.com/2023/09/22/schneider-shorts-22-09-2023-digging-into-still-available-archives-and-remaining-lab-books/#mdpi

I await your deletion confirmation until the close of business day 1 December 2023. Otherwise I will involve the German authority to enforce my rights.”

I suggested these MDPI clowns read about Art 17 GDPR first, and the exceptions it allows. It is very likely that MDPI doesn’t really care about the names of their employees being public, but uses this clumsy SLAPP attempt to stop scientists and journalists from writing critically about MDPI. In fact, Garcia even admitted in one of his emails to me:

“My messages and decisions come determined by the Company policies“

Maybe this bizarre attack by MDPI legal department was prompted by this recent preprint by Hanson et al 2023 and the corresponding reporting in El Pais:

“The analysis by Gómez Barreiro and his colleagues shows that MDPI is out of line in all indicators. […] In Spanish universities there is already talk of “MDPI professors,” in reference to the professors who have quickly climbed the ranks thanks to a curriculum doped with insubstantial studies published by the Swiss publishing house.”

And thanks to Garcia, we also know these trash papers are forever safe with MDPI: even proven data manipulation does not lead to corrections, never mind retractions.

What an utter trash business this MDPI is.

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Science Breakthroughs

Milestone Pig-to-Human

In USA, the University of Maryland Medical Center and the biotech company Revivicor (now called United Therapeutics) once again transplanted a genetically-modified pig heart into a patient, and the patient died. I wrote about the first pig heart transplant in January 2022 Friday Shorts. CNN reported about the recent death:

“Lawrence Faucette, the second living person to receive a genetically modified pig heart in a transplant, has died six weeks after the experimental procedure. The University of Maryland Medical Center, where the experimental procedure had been performed, said the heart began to show signs of rejection in recent days. […]

In January 2022, the University of Maryland also performed the first such experimental surgery on 57-year-old David Bennett, who died two months following the surgery. While there were no signs of rejection in the initial weeks following the transplant, an autopsy concluded that Bennett ultimately died of heart failure from “a complex array of factors,” including Bennett’s condition prior to the surgery. A case study published in the Lancet also noted there was evidence of pig virus that had not been identified previously.”

This was the Lancet paper, note the key words “Graft dysfunction” in its title:

Muhammad M Mohiuddin , Avneesh K Singh , Linda Scobie , Corbin E Goerlich , Alison Grazioli , Kapil Saharia , Claire Crossan , Allen Burke , Cinthia Drachenberg , Cihan Oguz , Tianshu Zhang , Billeta Lewis , Alena Hershfeld , Faith Sentz , Ivan Tatarov , Sarah Mudd , Gheorghe Braileanu , Kathryn Rice , John F Paolini , Kent Bondensgaard , Todd Vaught, Kasinath Kuravi, Lori Sorrells, Amy Dandro, David Ayares, Christine Lau, Bartley P Griffith Graft dysfunction in compassionate use of genetically engineered pig-to-human cardiac xenotransplantation: a case report The Lancet (2023) doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(23)00775-4 

As the paper admits, the pig graft was rejected by the first patient, so soon after the entrepreneur doctors tried again, on another patient, who died even faster. All this probably means nothing else but the urgent need to transplant even more patients to support United Therapeutics’ revenue. In fact, Scientific American brought this optimistic headline:

“Milestone Pig-to-Human Heart Transplant May Pave the Way for Broader Trial”

The article was written just before the patient died and spoiled everything:

“One major difference between the first and second surgeries is that although Faucette was considered terminally ill, he was much healthier than Bennett was at the time of his procedure. Unlike Bennett, Faucette had been living at home until shortly before the transplant and was much more mobile, according to Muhammad Mohiuddin, director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who is managing Faucette’s anti-transplant-rejection regimen.”

It reminds me of Paolo Macchiarini who decided that very sick and weak patients were sabotaging his regenerative medicine revolution by dying, and decided to operate on healthier ones. Who then died, too. Like Mr Faucette now. But Scientific American quoted excited surgeons:

““I would love to see heart [xenotransplantation in] a clinical trial next year and kidney [xenotransplantation trials] shortly thereafter,” says Jayme Locke, director of the division of transplantation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who was not involved in the latest experimental surgery. Locke and her colleagues have performed several kidney xenotransplants in humans who had suffered brain death. “The FDA holds those cards, and I think it’s going to really depend on what their risk tolerance threshold is,” she says. “But I’m hopeful. I think the FDA wants to see this happen.””

This was Locke’s pig kidney study on a brain-dead recipient, sponsored by United Therapeutics:

Jayme E. Locke , Vineeta Kumar , Douglas Anderson , Paige M. Porrett Normal Graft Function After Pig-to-Human Kidney Xenotransplant JAMA Surgery (2023) doi: 10.1001/jamasurg.2023.2774 

Locke’s patient was already dead, this is why the clinical intervention with a pig kidney (which run for only a week) was declared a success.

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Eating disorder requiring psychological treatment

Imagine to hear Science Has Spoken that you must eat meat, and then hear that it wasn’t Science speaking, but a bunch of corrupt failed scientists bribed by meat industry.

The Guardian reported on 27 October 2023:

“A public statement signed by more than 1,000 scientists in support of meat production and consumption has numerous links to the livestock industry, the Guardian can reveal. The statement has been used to target top EU officials against environmental and health policies and has been endorsed by the EU agriculture commissioner.

The “Dublin Declaration of Scientists on the Societal Role of Livestock” says livestock “are too precious to society to become the victim of simplification, reductionism or zealotry” and calls for a “balanced view of the future of animal agriculture”. One of the authors of the declaration is an economist who called veganism an “eating disorder requiring psychological treatment”.

The declaration was published a year ago but gave no information on its provenance. Its supporters appear to be overwhelmingly researchers in animal, agricultural and food sciences.

Documents obtained by Unearthed, Greenpeace UK’s journalism project, and seen by the Guardian, show the creation, launch and promotion of the declaration have significant links to the livestock industry and its consultants.”

Details are in the long read article and as linked on Unearthed. The virile masculine meat-eating real men behind the Dublin Meat Declaration are one Switzerland-based German economist and one Belgian biology professor (the latter seems to be into racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories of “The Great Reset”):

“The Dublin Declaration was launched at a meeting hosted by the Irish government’s agriculture and food agency, Teagasc, in October 2022, with the summit costing €45,000. It claims “livestock-derived foods are the most readily available source of high-quality proteins” and that “well-managed livestock systems … can generate many other benefits, including carbon sequestration, improved soil health, biodiversity, watershed protection”.

It was supported in April by a special issue of an academic journal, Animal Frontiers, guest edited by Prof Dr Peer Ederer and Prof Dr Frederic Leroy. Both were part of a six-member organising committee that initiated the declaration.

Ederer runs the Global Food and Agribusiness Network (GFAN), a company that provides research and advice to clients in the meat and livestock sector. He said recently on social media that veganism was an “eating disorder requiring psychological treatment” and likened it to the Heaven’s Gate cult.

He has also criticised the “climate hysteric policies” of the EU and in 2020 gave a talk to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s most high-profile climate sceptic group, in which he said “cows are not the reason for whatever climate change we have”.”

It is funny that the meat industry has to resort to the tactics of payrolled “scientists”, which is traditionally deployed by the tobacco, alcohol and pesticide industry. After all, it’s not like any government ever put any restrictions at all on meat sale, consume or advertising, there is also very little legal framework on animal welfare, even in the EU. And still, the meat industry is scared. Help them becoming even more scared when you do your grocery shopping.

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