The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

5The Bovine Growth Hormone Affair,Part One: The Food and DrugAdministration Under the InfluenceBecause the chemical composition of the milk is not altered as a result ofPOSILAC, the manufacturing and taste properties do not change.—Monsanto Web site“This affair was a real descent into hell. ...I had joined the Food and DrugAdministration thinking I would be working for the good of my fellow citizens,and I discovered that the agency had betrayed its role as guardian ofthe public health to become the protector of the interests of big business.”When I met him in New York on July 21, 2006, nearly twenty years after theevents he was describing, Dr. Richard Burroughs still found it hard to talkabout. “It’s too painful,” he said tensely every time I mentioned it. “It feels asthough the ground is giving way beneath me all over again and I am going tobe swallowed up. It’s still hard today to recognize that I was fired from theFDA because I opposed the marketing of a product I considered dangerous.But that was my job.”Witnessing Burroughs’s distress made me think of Cate Jenkins, WilliamSanjour, and all those who will appear later in this book: Shiv Chopra ofHealth Canada, Arpad Pusztai of the Rowett Institute, Ignacio Chapela ofthe University of California at Berkeley, and the journalists Jane Akre andSteve Wilson. All had the same choked voice as soon as they began to talkabout their experience as whistle-blowers. The story of Richard Burroughs isa classic example.