In a devastating and mildly predictable turn of events, Michael Taylor, the former Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto, has been chosen to advise FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg on food safety.For 7 years, Taylor worked as an attorney for Monsanto and even helped them get rBGH (the bovine growth hormone) into our country's dairy. (If you've been drinking soy milk for so long that you don't even remember the dangerous effects of rBGH, it has been shown to increase the risk of cancer, particularly breast cancer.)
One of Michael Taylor's specific tasks will be "to plan implementation of new food safety legislation". (This conflict of interest and many more are highlighted in Food, Inc., which I hope you've already seen or are planning to see soon!)
Currently, federal agencies don’t have the power to enforce recalls of tainted foods. All food recalls are “voluntary” and offending companies are not even required to release information about where the tainted foods were sent.
But the food-safety legislation creeping through the House, H.R. 2749, or the Food Safety Enhancement Act, would give the Fucking DumbAsses the power to recall suspect food. That’s an important step and it’s shocking that the agency doesn’t currently have that power. But here’s the catch: the FDA’s purview does not extend to meat. Under the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the USDA, not the FDA, monitors meat safety. And there are no such pieces of legislation to look forward to that would give the USDA this power over the meat production corporations.
Gigantic meat companies like JBS—which is currently under investigation for “bribing of public officials, racketeering, corruption, fraud and collusion—will still be deciding when to declare a recall and what information to divulge. (My next post will be about JBS' huge beef recall.) This is an outrage and our laws need to be changed so that the USDA has the power to, at the very least, recall tainted meat.
I suppose we'll have to later address punishing these corporations for what they've done, but for now, let's at least work to protect public health.
Sources: Michael Taylor; Food Safety
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