The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

142 the world according to monsantoat fostering American industry by reducing to the maximum extent possiblewhat White House hard-liners called “bureaucratic obstacles,” which is howthey saw the health and environmental tests required by regulatory agenciesbefore a new product could be marketed: the FDA for food and drugs, theEPA for pesticides, and the Agriculture Department (USDA) for crops.The United States at the time was conducting a merciless struggle to imposeits superiority in competition with Japan, and to a lesser extent withEurope, particularly in the area of new technologies, but also in agriculturalproducts. In this extremely competitive context, the stakes involved in biotechnologywere considerable. For this reason, on June 26, 1986, the WhiteHouse issued a policy document entitled “Coordinated Framework for theRegulation of Biotechnology,” directed primarily at preventing Congressfrom getting involved in this delicate issue by introducing specific legislationfor the regulation of GMOs. Addressed to the three relevant regulatoryagencies (FDA, EPA, and USDA), the directive provided that productsderived from biotechnology would be regulated within the framework of alreadyexisting federal laws, insofar as “recently developed methods are an extensionof traditional manipulations” of plants and animals. 20 In other words,GMOs did not require special treatment and would be subject to the samesystem of approval as non-transgenic products.But the document did not satisfy Monsanto, which clearly had anotheridea in mind. “‘There were no [GMO] products at the time,’ Leonard Guarraia,a former Monsanto executive who attended the Bush meeting, recalled....‘But we bugged Bush for regulation. We told him that we have tobe regulated.’” 21 So what was behind what the New York Times called an“unusual pitch”?“In fact,” Michael Hansen of the Consumers Union told me in July 2006,“Monsanto wanted an appearance of regulation. The company knew that afterthe PCB and Agent Orange scandals, when it had lied or concealed data,it would not be believed if all it did was to say that GMO products posed nodanger to health or the environment. It wanted federal agencies, primarilythe FDA, to be the ones to say that the products were safe. So, whenever aproblem arose, it would be able to say: ‘The FDA has established thatGMOs do not pose any risks.’ This was also a way of covering itself in casethings turned out badly.”According to the New York Times reporter, the Washington meeting bore