Michael Taylor, Monsanto and the FDA’s Armed Raids on Small Dairy Farms

Food Justice — By sowj on September 8, 2011 7:39 pm

Since July 2009, Michael Taylor has been working as the Senior Advisor to the Commissioner of the FDA. Prior to this job he had worked for the FDA under several titles and also served 7 years as attorney to the Monsanto Corporation. While working for the FDA in 1991, he was part of the team that “approved the use of Monsanto’s genetically engineered growth hormone in dairy cows.”

Now Taylor is part of the FDA team that heads armed raids of small dairy farms which produce raw milk. I understand that food safety is a huge issue in this country, but armed raids? Really? The hypocrisy of someone who has worked directly with Monsanto, approved the widespread use of bovine growth hormones all while talking about food safety is mind-boggling. Is going after small farmers the answer, when some of the largest food safety debacles in our country have come from large scale, corporate food production?

Michael Taylor has made steps toward food safety through his work with the FDA. However, is it enough? Tom Philpott wrote a great article for Grist back in 2009 that gives a nuanced view of Taylor’s career. And here are a couple of great, short articles from The San Francisco Chronicle and The Huffington Post.

(Michael Taylor)

Below is the copy of a petition by Credo that is trying to oust Taylor from his current position at the FDA. Please read on and sign the petition if you are moved to.

Why is a former Monsanto lobbyist currently serving as the FDA’s food safety czar waging war on small dairy farms that produce fresh milk?

While factory farm operators are getting away with serious food safety violations, raw milk dairy farmers and distributors across the country have been subjected to armed raids and hauled away in handcuffs.

The Food and Drug Administration is running sting operations followed by “guns-drawn raids usually reserved for terrorists and drug lords” as part of a crackdown on unpasteurized milk.1 Meanwhile, the FDA is letting the highly consolidated industrial meat and factory farm industry off the hook despite growing problems.

Not surprisingly, the person responsible for prioritizing armed raids on small dairies over holding agribusiness accountable is a former Monsanto attorney and chief super lobbyist. Monsanto’s Michael Taylor is the second highest-ranking official at the FDA, and as Food Safety Czar is responsible for implementing the day-to-day policies that govern the food safety laws for the U.S.

Tell President Obama to fire Monsanto’s Michael Taylor from his job as Food Czar at the FDA.

Whether or not you think unpasteurized milk is a good idea, it’s clear that the FDA under Michael Taylor has its priorities wrong. When industrial agribusiness sickens thousands of people, it’s absurd for the FDA to target Amish farmers producing fresh milk, much less to engage in “guns drawn” enforcement raids.

CREDO is joining our allies at Food Democracy Now! in calling on the president to fire Monsanto’s Michael Taylor from the FDA. Midwestern farmers will play an important symbolic role in President Obama’s reelection campaign. We need to let the president know that we stand with small farmers and not Monsanto!

Michael Taylor seems focused on entirely the wrong aspects of food safety enforcement. Rather than making sure that food safety inspections are done properly at our nation’s largest factory farms, where antibiotic resistance has run amuck, Taylor has been leading a departmental crusade against small raw milk dairy producers. So far several dairy farmers have been subject to a year-long undercover sting operation from the East Coast to California.

Incredibly, Michael Taylor and FDA inspectors have not arrested or fined the Iowa agribusinessman — Jack DeCoster — who was wholly responsible for the more than 500 million eggs that were recalled in 2010 salmonella-tainted egg recall. Though this industrial agribusinessman endangered the health of millions, Michael Taylor thinks Amish farmers producing fresh milk are more deserving targets of his FDA enforcement raids with guns drawn.

While CREDO recognizes the inherent risks that are involved in food production, it’s time that the U.S. government start responsibly looking into the real origins of our nation’s largest food safety recalls and stop harassing family farmers trying to survive in the excessively consolidated food and agricultural sectors.

Tell President Obama to fire Monsanto’s Michael Taylor from his job as Food Czar at the FDA.