You’ve no doubt heard the term “Shadow Government”. The term implies a sinister and powerful group of anonymous men in dark, smoked-filled rooms who pick up phones and quietly give orders. Maybe the real Shadow Government isn’t calling the shots in some plush back room after all — maybe they’re all out in the open masquerading as our guardian angels, as people in charge of protecting us from danger.
All of us are the familiar with the names of the federal agencies assigned to protect us: the U.S.D.A and F.D.A. But how many of us know that the hundreds who direct and staff these agencies move in and out of “revolving doors” to and from the companies they’re supposed to regulate? The list is endless.
Case in point — Margaret Miller, former chemical laboratory supervisor for Monsanto who worked on rBGH safety studies until 1989; she served as Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine in the United States Food and Drug Administration.
Now Michael Taylor is under consideration to head the new Food Safety Working Group, a group designed to coordinate federal agencies and advise President Obama which laws and regulations need to be changed and enforced.
The same Michael Taylor who was a partner at the law firm of King & Spaulding whose clients included Monsanto.
The same Michael Taylor who was legal advisor to the United States Food and Drug Administration’s Bureau of Medical Devices and Bureau of Foods.
The same Michael Taylor who was executive assistant to the Commissioner of the FDA and Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the United States Food and Drug Administration.
And yes, the same Michael Taylor who wrote the FDA’s guidelines on recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), while serving as its deputy commissioner for policy. The rules ban dairies from labeling their milk “rBGH Free”.
Bear in mind that rBGH has been banned in every industrialized nation in the world except for the U.S. Monsanto’s claims that rBGH-derived milk is safe despite documentation that rBGH milk contains high levels of IGF-1, a potent cancer tumor promoter.
Here’s how it all works:
Monsanto was required to submit a scientific report on rBGH to the FDA so the agency could determine the growth hormone’s safety. Margaret Miller put the report together, and in 1989 shortly before she submitted the report, Miller left Monsanto to work for the FDA. Guess what her first job was? Strangely enough, to determine whether or not to approve the report she wrote for Monsanto! The bottom line is that Monsanto approved its own report. Miller was assisted by another former Monsanto researcher, Susan Sechen.
But in an article titled “Not Milk: The USDA, Monsanto, and the U.S. Dairy Industry” Che Green, founder and director of The ARMEDIA Institute, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization focusing on farm animal issues in the United States, writes that, “The results of the study, in fact, were not made available to the public until 1998, when a group of Canadian scientists obtained the full documentation and completed an independent analysis of the results. Among other instances of neglect, the documents showed that the FDA had never even reviewed Monsanto’s original studies (on which the approval for Posilac {rBGH} had been based), so in the end the point was moot whether or not the report had contained all of the original data.”
And as though the FDA didn’t already exhibit enough audacity it handed Michael Taylor the responsibility to make the decision as to whether or not rBGH-derived milk should be labeled. (At the time, Michael Taylor, who had previously worked as a lawyer for Monsanto, was executive assistant to the Commissioner of the FDA.)
In 1994, Taylor ended up writing the rBGH labeling guidelines that prohibit the dairy industry from stating that their products either contain or are free from rBGH. Even worse, to keep rBGH-milk from being “stigmatized” in the marketplace, the FDA ruled that the labels of non-rBGH products must state that there is no difference between rBGH and the natural hormone.
According to journalist Jennifer Ferraro, “while working for Monsanto,Taylor had prepared a memo for the company as to whether or not it would be constitutional for states to erect labeling laws concerning rBGH dairy products. In other words, Taylor helped Monsanto figure out whether or not the corporation could sue states or companies that wanted to tell the public that their products were free of Monsanto’s drug.” — “Lies and deception: How the FDA does not protect your best interests”.
Who needs a Shadow Government when willful deceptions and glaring conflicts of interests are freely executed in the open light of day between powerful corporations who subject us to carcinogenic chemicals in the name of profit, and the federal agencies in charge of protecting us? Where’s all the hard-hitting investigative journalists asking questions? Where’s all the breaking news stories of skullduggery and graft, of outrage? Nowhere. What we get are softballs from good old Larry King.