There is nothing safe about toxic pesticides & unlabeled genetically engineered foods. On April 19, 2012 the Occupy Monsanto Genetic Crimes Unit will protest outside of the Food Safety Summit at the Washington Convention Center. Food safety activists will meet at 11:00am at the Mount Vernon Square / 7th Street / Convention Center Metro station (Yellow & Green Line at the corner of M Street & 7th Street, NW) and will call on FDA Commissioner Michael Taylor to resign.
At 11:30am, former Monsanto executive, “Food Safety Czar” Michael Taylor will be answering questions at the Food Safety Summit “Town Hall” forum. The GCU is calling for Taylor’s immediate resignation because a former Monsanto lobbyist, who profits from the increased use of pesticides & genetically engineered foods, should not be determining food safety & labeling standards in America.
The Town Hall, as the forum is being called, is NOT open to the general public. Food Safety Summit attendees have paid at least $350 to attend. Occupy Monsanto’s 99%ers will take to the sidewalks dressed in Genetic Crimes Unit bio-hazmat uniforms to highlight the grave implications of chemical and genetic contamination in America’s food supply.
ABOUT MICHAEL TAYLOR
For over 30 years, Michael Taylor has been a part of the toxic revolving door between the public sector & the private sector. Starting 1976, Taylor became a staff attorney for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where he was executive assistant to the Commissioner. In 1981, he went into private practice at King & Spalding, a law firm representing chemical company Monsanto, where he established and led the firm’s “food and drug law” practice. A decade later, on July 17, 1991, Taylor left King & Spalding, returning to the FDA to fill the newly created post of Deputy Commissioner for Policy. While at the FDA, he also oversaw the policy regarding Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH/rbST), which is injected into cows to increase milk production. Taylor asserted that milk from injected cows did not require any special labeling and wrote the white paper suggesting that if companies have the audacity to label their products as not using rbGH, they should also include a disclaimer stating that, according to the FDA, there is no difference between milk from treated and untreated cows. Between 1994 and 1996 he moved to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), where he was Administrator of the Food Safety & Inspection Service and was influential in the approval of unlabeled genetically modified foods entering the American food supply. After briefly returning to King & Spalding, he then returned to Monsanto to become Vice President for Public Policy from 1998 to 2001. Taylor has been a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine and in 2007 he became a Research Professor of Health Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. On July 7, 2009, Taylor once again returned to government as “senior advisor” to the FDA Commissioner and on January 13, 2010, he was appointed to another newly created post at the FDA, this time as Deputy Commissioner for Foods, which makes him the second highest-ranking official at the FDA. Under his current tenure at the FDA, he’s been involved in the approval of genetically engineered alfalfa and is currently in support of genetically engineered salmon. Since August of last year, two on-line petitions, which call for President Obama to rescind his appointment of Taylor to the FDA, have gathered over 500,000 signatures.
