The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

106 the world according to monsantoopinion in opposition to his,” the whistle-blowers wrote. “The basis of ourconcern is that Dr. Livingston had Dr. Miller write a policy on use of antimicrobialsin milk. She picked an arbitrary and scientifically unsupportednumber of 1 ppm as being the allowable amount of antimicrobial in milkpermitted without any consumer safety testing. This is for an antimicrobial.A cow could be treated with several antibiotics and each one would be permittedto be in milk at a level of 1 ppm without additional consumer safetytesting. Effects of the different antibiotics could be addititive and this is nottaken into account.”“As soon as we learned of this letter, we began to hope again,” recounted JeremyRifkin, the media-savvy president of the Foundation on EconomicTrends, whom I met in his Bethesda office in July 2006. Author of the bestsellerThe Biotech Century, this economist was unquestionably the first Americanintellectual to recognize what was at stake with rBGH, the initial GMOproduct put on the market by Monsanto. 21 He launched a national campaignin February 1994, which he called the “Pure Food Campaign.” In televisionarchives he can be seen pouring containers of milk into the gutters of NewYork as a young activist accosts passers-by. “Transgenic growth hormone is atest to persuade us to accept GMOs,” she shouts through a megaphone, brandishinga sign reading “No to transgenic milk!” Relying on the anonymous letterfrom the CVM whistle-blowers, Jeremy Rifkin managed to convince threemembers of Congress to ask the GAO to open an investigation. The investigativearm of Congress, which had just pathetically buried its first investigationof the health risks of rBGH, opened a second one, this time on a possibleconflict of interest affecting FDA handling of the question.* Under scrutinywere Susan Sechen, Margaret Miller, and a man named Michael Taylor.Taylor perfectly embodies the revolving door system and, beyond that, thelinks between Monsanto and U.S. regulatory agencies. According to his résumé,this lawyer, born in 1949, worked first at the FDA (from 1976 to1980), where he helped draft documents concerning food safety for the FederalRegister. In 1981 he joined the prestigious firm of King and Spaldingin Atlanta, whose clients included Coca-Cola and Monsanto. On July 17,1991, he was appointed deputy commissioner for policy of the FDA, a posi-*On April 15, 1994, the three members of Congress wrote to the GAO explaining that the first investigationfailed “because of the refusal by the Monsanto company to communicate all availableclinical data on rBGH.”