WASHINGTON LAUNCHES THE
GMO REVOLUTION
11
explanation, raised the FDA standard by 100 times for the permissible level of antibiotics that farmers could put into milk. She single..:handedly cleared the way for a booming business for Monsanto's rBGH hormone. A cozy club was emerging between private biotech companies and the government agencies that should be regulating them. It was a club more than a little fraught with potential conflict of interest. I I As one of its top officials, Taylor helped the FDA draw up guidelines to decide whether GMO foods should be labeled. His decision was not to label GMO foods. At the same time, again under Taylor's guiding hand, the FDA ruled that risk-assessment data, such as data on birth defects in cattle or even possible symptoms in humans arising from consumption of GMO foods, could be withheld from the public as "confidential business information:' Were it to leak out that Monsanto, Dow or other biotech companies were creating grotesque deformities in animals fed GMO foods, it might be detrimental for the stock price of the company, and that would damage the full flowering of private enterprise. This, at least, seemed the logic behind the perverse kind of "Shareholder value ueber Alles:' As FDA Biotechnology Coordinator James Maryansky remarked, "The FDA would not require things to be on the label just because a consumer might want to know them."12 A lawyer for Monsanto, Michael R~ Taylor, had been placed in charge of GMO food policy within the government's principal food safety body. As a suitable postscript, honoring the adage, "we take care of our friends;' Monsanto rewarded the diligent public servant by appointing Michael Taylor to be Vice President of Monsanto for Public Policy after he left the FDA. 13 FDA and Monsanto Milk the Public By 1994, after a suitable amount of time had elapsed, the FDA approved the sale of rBGH milk to the public. Under the FDA rules, of course, it was unlabeled, so the consumer could avoid undue anxiety about giving himself or his children exposure to cancerous
