Obama appoints Pesticide lobbyist
Last year, Obama considered Michael Taylor” the current Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the FDA, and former Monsanto Vice President for Public Policy” to head Obama’s new Food Safety Working Group; The FSWG is currently chaired by the Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, and the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
When the FDA wrote the labeling guidelines for rBGH/rBST (recombinant bovine growth hormone) in 1993, Taylor was in charge as Deputy Commissioner for Policy with the FDA. The guidelines were tailor-made for Monsanto. So since Taylor is the reason milk from rBGH/rBST cows aren’t required to be labeled, there was significant public outrage at Obama’s consideration of Taylor to the FSWG.
Research has shown conclusively that the levels of a hormone called “insulin-like growth factor-1” (IFG-1) are elevated in dairy products produced from cows treated with rBGH; the increased IGF-1 in rBGH milk could survive digestion and make its way into the intestines and blood stream of consumers. “These findings are significant because numerous studies now demonstrate that IGF-1 is an important factor in the growth of cancers of the breast, prostate and colon.
Taylor recently appeared with Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, and Jerold Mande, USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Food at the USDA and NSF International-hosted 2010 Food Safety Education Conference in Atlanta. You can bet Taylor still has a powerful voice regarding U.S. food policy.
These revolving door appointments between big business and government in which — as Jim Hightower puts it — “civil servants exit from government and go to work for companies they used to regulate; then [whoop, whoop] come back inside government later to bend public policy in favor of their former private employer”, is not the kind of feel good change President Obama promised during his presidential campaign. In fact it’s just BIG BUSINESS as usual.