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For a mere grand, you can attend the entire 3-day Food Safety Summit set for April 17-19 in Washington, D.C. There you'll get to hear Monsanto-lobbyist-now-Obama's-Food-Safety-Czar, Michael R. Taylor, wax tyrannical about how federal and state regulators will manage the inspection requirements of the boondoggle Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

As Deputy Commissioner for Foods of the US Food and Drug Admin, Taylor also promises to whine about the lack of funding for his FSMA vision of stopping natural food production in the US during his April 18 workshop.

He's seeking a $3 billion budget to "modernize" our food system. By modernize, he means to hyper-regulate the small producer out of existence, while criminalizing natural food production and trade.

After his workshop, chemical company and GMO giant DuPont will announce this year's winner of the Food Quality Award. Can't wait to see who they select. You can be sure a completely organic, unprocessed, unadulterated, natural food won't take the prize.

The next morning, Taylor will co-host a Town Hall with the USDA's Under Secretary for Food Safety, Elisabeth Hagen.

You can deliver a question to Taylor now, which he may address during the Town Hall. Here's the question I submitted: "Why are you opposed to raw milk and GMO food labeling?"

Taylor's currently under fire to be fired. Several consumer groups have joined to push for his dismissal from the FDA. You can sign a petition to hand him his pink slip here.

As the poster boy for government-industry collusion, Taylor is behind several raids on natural milk producers throughout the nation. He champions the biotech myth that genetically modified foods are "substantially equivalent" to real food.


Comment: Michael Taylor is a perfect poster boy for government-industry collusion:

Monsanto Executive Appointed to High Level Position in the FDA
A 2010 article published by Veterans Today titled, Former Former Monsanto Exec. Appointed to the Head of the F.D.A.!, announced that Michael R. Taylor, was appointed Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the FDA.

Taylor is a former top executive (VP Public Policy), attorney and lobbyist with Monsanto and has had prior positions with law firms, the USDA and the FDA

Veterans Today wrote in the article about Taylor:
"During his former stint in the FDA during the Clinton administration, he helped write the rules to allow rBGH (Bovine Growth Hormone) into the American food system and our children's milk. Which is perhaps why the FDA staffer who wrote Taylor's bio seems to have all-but-forgotten his decade-plus of Monsanto work.

Michael Taylor and Monsanto are responsible for subjecting this country and many others to the increased risk of breast cancer (7 times greater risk), prostate cancer and colon cancer because of what they did to milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream with rBGH as well as to all the foods that rely on milk solids and other parts of milk.

He left the FDA in 1994 and a few years later became Monsanto's Vice President in charge of lobbying in Washington. As a lobbyist, Taylor argued AGAINST the Delaney Clause, one of the foundations of food safety regulation that prohibits cancer-causing chemicals to be added to food."
Case Study in Corporatocracy: Monsanto, Big Pharma, and the FDA Used Key Players to Approve rBGH
The approval of rBGH by the United States was yet another prime example of the revolving door between Monsanto, Big Pharma, and the FDA. In fact, the obvious conflict of interest among many of the FDA's employees who were involved in the approval process actually prompted a GAO investigation in 1994. One of the employees, Michael Taylor, began his career in 1976 with the FDA as an attorney.

It is also noteworthy that as of July 2009, Taylor was appointed by the Obama administration to the position of senior advisor to the commissioner of the FDA. Riddled with ties to Monsanto, one of the major players in the approval of rBGH is now the American food safety czar. One can read a much more detailed expose' of Michael Taylor in my article, "Monsanto's Leading Soldier in the War on Raw Milk."

Though "equivalent," he refuses to require labeling of GM foods, despite that nearly all consumers want the ingredient labeled. Just Label It is trying to get a million signatures on its legal petition filed with the FDA. You have until March 27 to sign it.

Taylor even wrote the FDA white paper on recombinant bovine growth hormone, a GMO ingredient added to factory milk, suggesting that companies that label their milk rBGH-free should also be required to state that FDA asserts there is no difference between milk from drugged vs. undrugged cows.

"Taylor's disclaimer was a lie," says Jeffrey Smith. "Monsanto's own studies and FDA scientists officially acknowledged differences in the drugged milk. No matter. Monsanto used Taylor's white paper as the basis to successfully sue dairies that labeled their products as rBGH-free."

In a victory for informed consent, last year an Ohio district court overturned the ban on labeling milk as free from artificial hormones.

Good folks fighting for clean, safe and natural foods might want to consider invading the Food Safety Summit and performing some action to raise awareness of the public's demand that genetically modified foods be labeled and that the natural milk trade be left unmolested by government hyper-regulation.

Taylor's "Town Hall" isn't free. The minimum you'll pay to attend any portion of the 3-day summit is $650, if you register after March 30. Registering now can get you in for one day for $350.

This could be similar to what Adam Eidinger did when he infiltrated Monsanto's annual shareholder meeting earlier this year and gave a well-prepared three-minute speech.

Have someone videotape your action at the Food Safety Summit Town Hall; we'll all want to see it.

About the author

Rady Ananda is an investigative reporter and researcher in the areas of health, environment, politics, and civil liberties. Her two websites, Food Freedom and COTO Report are essential reading.Read other articles by Rady Ananda here.