Common Ground Country Fair 2019

Carey Gillam is a veteran investigative journalist with more than 30 years of experience covering corporate and political news, including 17 years as a senior correspondent for Reuters international news service. Since 1998 she has specialized in researching and reporting on the risks and rewards of our agricultural system. In 2018 Gillam’s book “Whitewash – The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer and the Corruption of Science” won both the Rachel Carson Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists and a gold medal for Outstanding Book of the Year from the Independent Book Publishers. Whitewash details how corporate control of agriculture and public policy has led to a pesticide-dependent food system that endangers our health and planet. Gillam spends a good deal of time pursuing Freedom of Information requests from U.S. regulators and has successfully sued the EPA to access thousands of documents that inform her work. Corporate powers have attempted to silence and discredit Gillam, but the evidence she has uncovered is so powerful that she was asked to testify as an expert witness before the European Parliament about her findings. She has been quoted as an expert on issues of GMO agriculture and agrochemical impacts by several news outlets, including The New York Times, CBS and Fox Business News. Gillam now works as research director for the nonprofit investigative research group U.S. Right to Know.