Food Additive Regulation is Politically Contaminated
Marcia Hale
... former assistant to the President of the United States and director for inter-governmental affairs, later Director of International Government Affairs for Monsanto Corporation.
Michael (Mickey) Kantor
... former Secretary of the United States Department of Commerce and former Trade Representative of the United States under the Clinton administration, moved on to become a member of the board of directors of Monsanto/Pharmacia/Pfizer.
Patricia Kenworthy, one of Monsanto's top lobbyists, legal counsels and political operatives in Washington, is now working for the US National Environmental Trust.
Josh King
... former director of production for White House events, moved to director of global communication in the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto.
Terry Medley
... former administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), former chair and vice-chair of the USDA Biotechnology Council, former member of the FDA food advisory committee, and now Director of Regulatory and External Affairs of Dupont Corporation's Agricultural Enterprise. Dupont and Monsanto were discussing a possible merger just before the advent of the Pharmacia Corp deal which saw the re-labelling of most of Monsanto's activities bar the now narrow agricultural pesticide sector of its business (mostly Roundup/glyphosate).
Margaret Miller
... former chemical laboratory supervisor for Monsanto responsible for compiling scientific data supporting Monsanto's case to the FDA that its bovine growth hormone, Posilac (a suspected carcinogen), was safe. Shortly before Monsanto presented Posilac's safety submission to the FDA Miller left Monsanto for a job at the FDA where her first task was to approve the safety of Posilac. In short, Miller approved her own report. Assisting Miller was another former Monsanto researcher, Susan Sechen (see below), appointed as Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine in the FDA.*
Michael Phillips
... recently with the National Academy of Science Board on Agriculture . . . then appointed head of regulatory affairs for the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
Richard Pombo
... appointed as head of House of Representatives Agriculture sub-committee for dairy, livestock, and poultry by committee chairman, Larry Combest (R-TX). Pombo received money from Monsanto in 1994 at a time when the Dairy sub-committee he was a member of was considering a bill that would have required milk and milk products containing genetically engineered hormones to be labelled. The sub-committee stalled the bill until the 1994 elections when it automatically died and was thus never voted on.
William D. Ruckelshaus
... a Harvard-trained lawyer who came out of the Justice Department to become the first administrator of the new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970. He served another three-year term as EPA administrator during the Reagan administration and for the past 14 years has been a member of the board of directors of Monsanto/Pharmacia/Pfizer. Currently also a principal in the Madrona Investment Group.
Donald Rumsfeld
... former US Secretary of Defence (2006), was president of Searle Pharmaceuticals, purchased by Monsanto in the early 1980s and was responsible for forcing aspartame through its final approval process with the support of incoming US President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Aspartame-related disease conditions have been given the inclusive title “Rumsfeld Disease” by anti-aspartame activists.
Susan Sechen . . . former Monsanto researcher, later switched to a job at the FDA as Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine. Worked at the FDA with former Monsanto employee Margaret Miller (see above) ensuring the approval of Posilac, Monsanto's bovine growth hormone once used widely on an estimated 70 percent of the US dairy herd, but now facing reduced sales as dairy farmers recognise Posilac causes huge health problems in dairy herds.*
Michael Taylor
... former legal advisor to the FDA's Bureau of Medical Devices and Bureau of Foods; later executive assistant to the Commissioner of the FDA; still later a partner at the law firm of King & Spaulding, a premier D.C. law firm representing corporate clients, where he supervised a nine-lawyer group whose clients included Monsanto Agricultural Company and spearheaded a move to weaken the US Delaney Amendment's strong stance on carcinogens in the diet. His suggested changes, published in the prestigious Journal of Toxicology, eventually became the new standard operating procedure at FDA, i.e. during the FDA's approval process, any evidence that appeared of a chemical's potential to cause cancer would automatically be minimised.
Taylor rotated later to become Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the FDA and used his position to fast track approval of Monsanto's Posilac rBGH dairy growth hormone through its final approval process.* Having checked chemical industry concerns were being well served by the Administration he returned to his old job with King & Spaulding. Eventually became head of the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto. More recently, on 14th March 2009 the newly elected President Obama short-listed Taylor for his White House Food Safety Working Group to improve and coordinate the government’s approach to the nationwide food safety crisis.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
... former Monsanto lawyer at law firm King & Spaulding along with Michael Taylor (see above) and was appointed to the Supreme Court by George Bush, Sr. Thomas was the deciding swing voter on the appeal court bench to give the 2000 Presidential election to George, Jr. putting the seal on a pro-chemical/GE industry White House.
Tommy Thompson
... US Secretary of Health, was a supporter of Monsanto in Wisconsin. He received $US50,000 from biotech firms in his election run, and used state funds to set up a a $317 million biotech zone in Wisconsin.
* NOTE: Margaret Miller, Michael Taylor, and Suzanne Sechen (an FDA "primary reviewer for all rBST [rBGH/Posilac – ED] and other dairy drug production applications" ) were the subjects of a U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation for their role in FDA's approval of Posilac, which has had use-approval refused in Canada, the UK and the EU among others. No surprise in the fact that the GAO Office found "no conflicting financial interests with respect to the drug's approval" and only "one minor deviation from now superseded FDA regulations". (Quotations are from the 1994 GAO report.) Currently (June 2009), Monsanto’s influence is to be seen behind a Federal government bill, HR875, which, in effect, sabotages organic farming by putting so many legal fences around farmers’ markets,** which are important outlets in the USA for organic produce, that they would no longer be able to operate. The bill was introduced by US Congress member Rosa DeLauro, whose husband, Stanley Greenberg, is the CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research which does consulting work for Monsanto. HR875 ultimately favours Monsanto's own genetically engineered “RoundUp-Ready” (RoundUp is Monsanto’s leading chemical pesticide product) seeds and crops favoured by corporate farmers. Monsanto has been recently spearheading a PR campaign against organics, suggesting that because organic farmers use compost they are exposing American consumers to dangers from Legionnaire’s Disease to E. Coli bacteria. The irony in this charge is that Monsanto/Searle’s leading artificial sweetener product, aspartame/Additive 951, is actually synthesised from E. coli bacteria as part of the production process.
** Federal Bill H.R. 875, “The Food Safety Modernisation Act”, could end Farmers’ Markets (March 10, 2009) If this bill eventually goes forward into law in its present form it would force anyone who produced food of any kind, and then transported it to a different location for sale, to register with a new federal agency called the “Food Safety Administration.”
This agency would take over food safety issues from the FDA, which, since the FDA has proved itself incapable of handling food safety issues, could only be of benefit to the American consumer. The bill, however, inevitably targets the growing influence of the Farmers’ Market, a concept of direct produce sales by the actual farmer and grower bypassing the chain of wholesalers and retailers who conventionally overprice produce while underpaying the actual producer.
H.R. 875 favours the large American corporates whose bulk production and large-scale marketing methods mean they are hardly affected at all by provisions of the proposed bill.
The small, hard-working, family farmer who produces a relatively few kilograms/pounds of vegetables and/or fruit per week for direct sale is seriously handicapped by the bill, however. They would not only have to register, but would be subject to inspection of their property and all records related to food production by federal agents. The frequency of these inspections would be determined by the whim of the Food Safety Administration.
Mandatory “safety” records would have to be kept. Anyone who failed to register and comply could be facing a crippling fine, thus adding one further burden on the already imperilled American family farm. Since farmers’ markets have become an increasingly popular method of organic food marketing worldwide following the “Small is beautiful” and “Low food miles” ethic, the bill specifically attacks the viability of small-scale organic farming.