Former Monsanto VP for public policy – Obama’s deputy commissioner for foods at FDA

According to a 2010 Press Release posted on the FDA’s website:

Michael R. Taylor was named deputy commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in January 2010. He is the first individual to hold the position, which was created along with a new Office of Foods in August 2009.

Mr. Taylor is leading FDA efforts to

* develop and carry out a prevention-based strategy for food safety
* plan for new food safety legislation
* ensure that food labels contain clear and accurate information on nutrition

Taylor served as administrator of USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and acting under secretary for food safety at USDA. He spearheaded public health-oriented reform of FSIS, guided the development of new safety requirements for meat and poultry products, and addressed the hazard associated with E. coli O157:H7 in beef products.

Taylor began his career as a staff attorney at FDA, holding various positions including deputy commissioner for policy. He was involved in issuing regulations to address seafood safety and in carrying out nutrition labeling requirements.

Other positions held by Taylor include senior fellow, Resources for the Future; professor, School of Medicine, University of Maryland; partner, King & Spalding law firm; and vice president for public policy, Monsanto Company.

“I am fully committed to working with my FDA colleagues to make the changes necessary to ensure the safety of America’s food supply from farm to table,” said Mr. Taylor.

Huffington posted a story on insidious way rBGH (the bovine growth hormone) made it into our country’s food supply, with the help of Michael R. Taylor. They wrote about the dangerous effects of the addition of rBGH to our dairy supply:

In humans, studies indicate milk from cows treated with rBGH may contain elevated levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IFG-1), which can increase the risk of breast cancer and other types of cancer.

Here is a portion of what was detailed about Taylor’s connections in that story:

“An excerpt from a 1998 article in The Ecologist magazine details Taylor’s journey and its significance:

“In March 1994, Taylor was publicly exposed as a former lawyer for the Monsanto corporation for seven years. While working for Monsanto, Taylor had prepared a memo for the company as to whether or not it would be constitutional for states to erect labeling laws concerning rBGH dairy products. In other words. Taylor helped Monsanto figure out whether or not the corporation could sue states or companies that wanted to tell the public that their products were free of Monsanto’s drug.”

In June of 2011: Obama food safety chief and former Monsanto lawyer Michael R. Taylor defended the FDA’s sting operations and armed raids against raw milk producers, including Pennsylvania Amish farmer Dan Allgyer, who is facing an injunction for selling milk across state lines. None of Allgyer’s milk was contaminated. The agency’s actions are likely to put him out of business.

“We believe we’re doing our job,” Taylor said at a presentation at the Ogilvy Washington public affairs group. He promised to “keep doing our public health job,” and described his agency’s campaign against raw milk producers as based on a “public health duty” and “statutory directive.”

Taylor said he had a “quibble” with the notion that the agency is spending too much of its resources targeting boutique raw milk producers even as huge contamination outbreaks have occurred among large Iowa egg farms and elsewhere.

The FDA is in the midst of writing the critical regulations that will implement the Food Safety Modernization Act Congress passed last year with applause all around from the Obama administration, Democrats and Republicans despite ferocious opposition from small-farm advocates. The sweeping new law gives the agency extraordinary powers to detain foods on farms. It also denies farmers recourse to federal courts.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=90472#ixzz1VzM5L9jT

According to one blogger:

When FDA scientists were asked to weigh in on what was to become the most radical and potentially dangerous change in our food supply — the introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods — secret documents now reveal that the experts were very concerned. Memo after memo described toxins, new diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and hard-to-detect allergens. They were adamant that the technology carried “serious health hazards,” and required careful, long-term research, including human studies, before any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be safely released into the food supply.

But the biotech industry had rigged the game so that neither science nor scientists would stand in their way. They had placed their own man in charge of FDA policy and he wasn’t going to be swayed by feeble arguments related to food safety. No, he was going to do what corporations had done for decades to get past these types of pesky concerns. He was going to lie.