Starting in 1991, sitting presidents of the United States have appointed Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lawyer, to various positions based upon the needs of his primary client, Monsanto, and other former food manufacturing clients. While he is not the only one, his past actions have had the most impact on the food you eat every day.

In 1991, the White House ordered the FDA to promote biotechnology. It created a new position called Deputy Commissioner for Policy to supervise the formulation of its policy on genetically engineered or modified foods (GMOs). At the White House’s urging it recruited attorney Michael Taylor, a Monsanto lawyer, to head up the formation of GMO policy.

Taylor, who had been representing Monsanto the holder of more than 600 GMO patents at that time (now over 14,000 and still counting), also represented other members of the biotech industry. Under Taylor, employees of the biotech industry giants were hired to staff key positions in the FDA that controlled the food regulatory issues which governed the actions of their former employers. That policy continued even after he left.

When Vice-President Dan Quayle introduced the FDA’s final policy in 1992, he referred to it as “regulatory relief” for the industry. The FDA acknowledged its policy was to “to foster” U.S. biotechnology. The complicity of the U.S. government is fostered in part by their partnership with Monsanto on a number of patents to produce genetically modified food products. Yes, our government is in a partnership with biotech giant Monsanto.

What better way “to foster” bio-policy than to get the U.S. government to be your partner. What better way to carry out your goals than hiring the biotech industries’ own employees to carry out their agenda. Yet, neither the FDA nor the USDA nor the White House ever mention their partnership.

Their complicity was never more obvious than when Wikileaks released documents on how Monsanto and the U.S. government teamed up on a strategy to compel Spain to lift their ban on GMO products. At one point, Monsanto and the U.S. government used the World Bank to threaten Ireland. Irish ministers were told that if they did not permit GMO foods to be sold in Ireland, they would not be eligible to receive any loans.

During Mr. Taylor’s first tenure as Deputy Commissioner in the 1990s, references to the unintended negative effects of bioengineering were deleted from policy statements over the protests of agency scientists and independent researchers.

On May, 29 1992, the FDA issued a final statement claiming that GMO foods are no riskier than natural foods and that the FDA had no information to the contrary. That FDA policy, which is in effect today, denies knowledge of scientists’ concerns and declares that no safety studies on GMOs are required. The FDA left it is up to Monsanto and the other biotech companies to determine if their foods were safe.

After completing his assignment for Monsanto and his other former clients in the FDA, Taylor was rehired by Monsanto as Vice-President for Public Policy at a substantial increase in salary. Another fox being rewarded for robbing the public’s henhouse.

A 2007 review of published scientific literature on the “potential toxic effects/health risks of GM plants” revealed “that experimental data are very scarce.” The author concluded his review by asking, “Where is the scientific evidence showing that GM plants/food are toxicologically safe, as assumed by the biotechnology companies?”

The fact is there is none. Why? Because all of the independent testing around the world reveals that GMO foods contain bacterias, toxins and/or viruses that are transmitted to humans within the foods’ DNA. Every new independent test reveals a negative secret about genetically modified organisms despite Monsanto’s efforts to quash their opposition.

During the 1990s, Mr. Taylor was also responsible for the approval of Monsanto’s rBGH (Bovine Growth Hormone commonly known as steroids) on dairy cows despite rBGH being banned by nearly every other nation because their available data proved it was unsafe. Officials of the Canadian government, to this day, allege that Monsanto tried to bribe them to approve rGBH in Canada. Monsanto’s response was the Canadian officials misunderstood them. Without the Canadian officials wearing a “wire”, there will never be any proof.

Shortly after rBGH received FDA approval, Monsanto founded and funded the American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology (AFACT) to push for laws banning any label delineating milk as rBGH-free. In effect, Monsanto tried to stop competition from organic milk producers. Consumer outrage and lobbying efforts from organic associations prevented these laws from passing in all states except Ohio.

The law in Ohio was challenged in the courts by the Organic Trade Association and the International Dairy Foods Association. In September 2010, a three-judge panel of 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that milk in Ohio can still say “rbGH-free” on its label. The court “challenged” the FDA’s finding that there is “no measurable compositional difference” between milk from rBGH-treated cows and milk from untreated cows.

The FDA’s claim that there was no compositional difference between milk from rBGH-treated cows and milk from untreated cows was debunked by the court. The court cited several reasons why the milk from rBGH cows differs including increased levels of the hormone IGF-1, lower nutritional quality and pus in the milk.

Michael Hansen, Senior Scientist at Consumers’ Union, offered studies indicating that rBGH use induces an unnatural period of milk production during a cow’s “negative energy phase”. According to these studies, milk produced during this stage is considered to be low quality due to its increased fat content and its decreased level of proteins.

Experts noted that milk from treated cows contains higher somatic cell counts which makes the milk turn sour more quickly and is another indicator of poor quality. Yet when Michael Taylor was a deputy commissioner of the FDA, it was approved without testing.

Today, the U.S. is the only developed nation to allow humans to drink milk or other dairy products from cows given artificial growth hormone. It is contained in almost every dairy product sold in stores (except organics), including diet foods. It is also given to livestock to fatten them quicker for market.

Sadly, the hormone is used by bodybuilders to gain weight and bulk up. Babies and children who drink milk tainted with rBGH synthetic hormones will likely gain weight and bulk up in the same manner as bodybuilders. It is one of the many causes of the increased weight, obesity and food addiction that is plaguing the youth of today.

In 2010, President Obama, despite Michael Taylor’s clear conflicts of interest with Monsanto, appointed Mr. Taylor to the position of FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods. By this appointment, President Obama has let Monsanto and the biotech industry know they’ll have plenty of friends and supporters within his administration. Obama clearly reneged on his campaign promises to address this kind of Cronyism and conflicts of interest in our government.

To this day, the FDA and USDA have continued to misrepresent facts about food products in support of the food and drug industries’ goals. “How?” By implementing the decisions made through incestual relationships between the industries’ current employees and their former workmates now serving in key positions in the FDA and USDA. Instead of regulators and protectors, the public interest is undermined by Cronyism at it worse. Cronyism for money and future job security.

One need look no further than former FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes. On January 25, 1981, FDA Commissioner Dr. Jere Goyan was fired just moments before he intended to sign into law a revocation order of aspartame’s application based upon a FDA Board of Inquiry report.

The day after President Reagan took office, the Commissioner’s job went to Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, a defense department contractor, with no experience in the field. The president knew it would take 30 days to get Dr. Hayes’s nomination approved, so he wrote an executive order making the FDA powerless to do anything about aspartame until Hayes got there.

The FDA had denied aspartame approval for more than eight years, until the newly appointed Hayes overruled the final scientific review panel and approved aspartame, but banned its competitor, natural organic Stevia. The FDA refused to release a copy of the order.

On August 1, l985, the FDA’s own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross, told Congress at least one of Searle’s studies “has established beyond ANY REASONABLE DOUBT that aspartame is capable of inducing brain tumors in experimental animals and that this predisposition of it is of extremely high significance.”

In his concluding testimony Dr. Gross asked, “Given the cancer causing potential of aspartame, how would the FDA justify its position that it views a certain amount of aspartame as constituting an allowable daily intake or ‘safe’ level of it? Is that position, in effect, equivalent to setting a ‘tolerance level’ for this food additive and thus a violation of that law? And if the FDA itself elects to violate the law, who is left to protect the health of the public?” Dr. Gross’ testimony can be read from the Congressional Record at SID835:131, August 1, l985.

Even the National Soft Drink Association filed a strong protest letter in 1983 against the approval of aspartame for use in beverages, saying “Aspartame is inherently, markedly and uniquely unstable in aqueous (water soluble) media.”

In l985, the FDA admitted in Congressional hearings that the FDA was getting so many complaints on aspartame it was referring them to the AIDS Hotline. On June 26, 2007, the FDA finally admitted that there had been more than 10,000 complaints made about aspartame during that time. The FDA will not disclose the current total of complaints.

In 1983, Dr. Hayes, under fire for accepting corporate gifts, left the agency and went to work for Searle’s pharmaceutical public relations firm as a senior medical advisor for an estimated salary of $500,000 a year. A follow-up article alleged that Dr. Hayes showed up for work for about 15 days. Dr. Hayes has refused all interviews to discuss his actions. After Dr. Hayes left for employment at Searle, his successor at the FDA urged Congress to prosecute G.D. Searle for “specific false statements or concealed facts” stemming from Searle’s testing of aspartame.

However, the two government lawyers assigned to the case decided against prosecuting G.D. Searle and then joined Searle’s law firm. Their successor, currently the United States Attorney in Chicago, then permitted the statutes of limitations to run out. This is but one example of the conflicts of interest driven politics of the FDA and USDA.

It is virtually impossible to protect the FDA and USDA henhouses when you are hiring the foxes as security guards. It’s like having an “inside man” on a bank job that opens the vault and loads the money onto the robbers getaway car.