So, you might think, who better to carry water for agriculture on the Obama transition team than a George Washington University Research Professor in the Department of Health Policy? Someone with past appointments at USDA and the FDA? Someone with think tank experience.
Oh, yes, and someone who was Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto Corporation.
crossposted from unbossed
Yes, indeed, who better? Better, of course, meaning that you want the world made safe for Monsanto products.
Of course this may explain why so many people in bed with Monsanto have their names in the running for USDA head and other key food protection posts? People like the infamous Pennsylvania Ag Secretary Dennis Wolff and Tom Vilsack.
As Tom Philpott at the Gristmill said:
I don't think I'm a jaded enough observer of Washington's ways to figure it out. But here's what I know.
* The transition named its "team members" looking at energy and natural resources agencies, which includes USDA. The list includes Michael R. Taylor, a man who spent his career bouncing between the employ of GMO-seed giant Monsanto and Bill Clinton's FDA and USDA. Taylor is widely credited with ushering Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) through the FDA regulatory process and into the milk supply. He was particularly useful in the effort to prevent abstaining dairies from advertising their milk as rBGH-free.
In his post at GWU, Michael Taylor teaches "PubH 209: Policymaking at the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health Policy"
And, well, who better to know than the man who was part of the Monsanto-FDA revolving door that got rBST approved. And yes, there is also a Clinton connection. Not surprising, since, says, CNN: "More than half of the people named so far to Obama's transition or staff posts have ties to former President Bill Clinton's administration."
That Monsanto-FDA revolving door was part of the Clinton administration apparatus.
Here is how Michael Taylor looks on his GW website.
Michael Taylor began his career at the Food and Drug Administration in 1976, as a staff attorney, and, after a decade in private law practice, returned to the FDA in 1991 as Deputy Commissioner for Policy. Following his departure from the FDA in 1994, Professor Taylor served as Administrator of the Food Safety and Inspection Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto Corp.; and Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future, where he focused on food safety as a global health concern and the impact of U.S. agricultural, trade, and development policies on poverty and hunger reduction in Africa.
Since joining SPHHS in 2007, Professor Taylor has promoted efforts to strengthen the FDA, especially by enhancing the agency's authority, resources and management structure. "No federal agency touches as many lives as intimately as the FDA, or works on a wider range of challenging public health policy issues," says Mr. Taylor. "The goal of my research and teaching is to bring these issues to life and equip students with a framework for understanding and analyzing them."
In recent years, he has also directed his longstanding interest in food systems and problems of food security to agriculture-led economic growth in rural Africa. He remains a Senior Fellow with the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, where he works with senior U.S. and African leaders to identify policies and programs to support the continent's own efforts to build sustainable solutions to its rural poverty and hunger challenges.
Education
Bachelor of Arts (Political science), Davidson College, 1971
Juris Doctor, University of Virginia, 1976
Teaching: PubH 209: Policymaking at the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health Policy
Research
Professor Taylor's research focuses on the policy, resource, and institutional issues that affect the ability of public health agencies to carry out their missions, with a particular emphasis on the FDA, the CDC and the ways in which federal, state, and local public health agencies interact. With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, he explores opportunities to improve the nation's food safety information infrastructure, strengthen state and local roles in food safety, and foster risk-based resource allocation to better prevent foodborne illness.
Community Service
Professor Taylor chairs the Steering Committee of the Food Safety Research Consortium, a collaboration among university and think tank partners to reduce the risk of foodborne illness in the United States. He is also a member of the National Academy of Science's Committee on Environmental Decision-Making Under Uncertainty and serves on the board of the Alliance to End Hunger. In 2002, Professor Taylor earned the FDA's Distinguished Alumni Award.
And then there is the Michael Taylor you find on Political Friendster, where the connections among Taylor, Monsanto, and the unseemly side of the Clintons run deep.
Here are some snippets from the Political Friendster Michael Taylor page.
Attorney for Monsanto who rewrote the "regulations" for Genetically Modified foods.
He practiced food and drug law and was a partner in the law firm of King & Spalding for ten years and VP for Public Policy at Monsanto Company.
He was Administrator of the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service from 1994 to 1996, Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the Food and Drug Administration from 1991 to 1994.
Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the Food and Drug Administration from 1991 to 1994, and an FDA staff lawyer and Executive Assistant to the FDA Commissioner from 1976 to 1981.
Although Taylor gained employment with FDA under George H.W. Bush, Taylor's a bi-partisan He's the second cousin of Tipper Gore, our former VP's wife. Washington is a cozy town.
During his days at King and Spaulding, Taylor also authored more than a dozen articles critical of the Delaney Clause, a federal law passed in 1958 prohibiting the introduction of known carcinogens to processed foods. The Delaney Clause had long been opposed by Monsanto and other chemical and pesticide companies. When Taylor rejoined the federal government, he continued to argue that Delaney should be overturned. This was finally done when President Clinton signed the so-called Food Quality Protection Act on the eve of the 1996 elections.
One of Taylor's duties was to represent Monsanto's efforts to get its bovine growth hormone approved by the FDA. Taylor left King and Spaulding in 1991 to rejoin the FDA, this time as Deputy Commissioner for Policy. In that position Taylor was responsible for writing guidelines on the use and marketing of the controversial hormone that were favorable to the company.
And that, my dears, is how we have a Taylor who seems to be trying to sew up a deal to put a Wolff into the USDA henhouse.
Thanks to la vida locavore for the tip.
And OrangeClouds115 has a very nice rundown of issues for appoints at USA here.