Courtesy of Jr. Deputy Accountant
Once again I am left questioning the Obama administration’s decision-making ability. I have nothing against the man himself but it is those he chooses to surround himself with that leaves me wondering what on Earth he could be thinking, and his latest appointment to the FDA is no exception.
Meet Mike Taylor (via NYT):
The Obama administration, moving to address the nation’s fractured food safety system, on Wednesday appointed Michael R. Taylor, a veteran food expert, as deputy commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration. The newly created position is the first to oversee all the agency’s many food and nutrition programs.
The federal government’s oversight of the nation’s food supply has for decades been split among 13 disparate and sometimes feuding agencies. The result has been a growing menu of food recalls, including contaminated peanut butter, spinach and cookie dough, and the annual sickening of about 70 million people.
With new powers and extensive Washington experience, Mr. Taylor is supposed to fix this mess. But he is likely to be on a short leash.
He’s got an exceptional resume, one that bounces him back and forth from law to Washington (surprise) on behalf of our friends at Monsanto. You know the ones, the guys who are only interested in profits using their patented frankenscience seeds.
Check out You’re Appointing Who? Please Obama, Say It’s Not So! via HuffPo to read all about the horrors of genetically-modified foods, the Monsanto lawyer who knew they are to blame for all sorts of human health issues from asthma to cancer and, worse of all, the Obama appointment as food safety czar that put that very lawyer in charge of (allegedly) guarding the sanctity of our health. If you had any doubts up until this point that the FDA doesn’t actually care whether you live or die, let that be a compelling piece of evidence that opens your swollen, cataract-infested eyes.
The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This is no joke.
Here’s the back story.
When FDA scientists were asked to weigh in on what was to become the most radical and potentially dangerous change in our food supply — the introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods — secret documents now reveal that the experts were very concerned. Memo after memo described toxins, new diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and hard-to-detect allergens. They were adamant that the technology carried "serious health hazards," and required careful, long-term research, including human studies, before any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be safely released into the food supply.
But the biotech industry had rigged the game so that neither science nor scientists would stand in their way. They had placed their own man in charge of FDA policy and he wasn’t going to be swayed by feeble arguments related to food safety. No, he was going to do what corporations had done for decades to get past these types of pesky concerns. He was going to lie.
That man? Why Mike Taylor of course.
Forgive me for being bold but Obama needs to look at the big picture instead of listening to these assholes he surrounds himself with. But let’s look at his comments July 2, 2009 to AllAfrica.com about introducing the "green revolution" to Africa:
Now, I also think on the ground in many of these countries, how we think about not high-tech stuff but low-tech technologies to, for example, improve food production is vitally important. And I’m still frustrated over the fact that the green revolution that we introduced into India in the ’60s, we haven’t yet introduced into Africa in 2009. In some countries, you’ve got declining agricultural productivity. That makes absolutely no sense. And we don’t need fancy computers to solve those problems; we need tried and true agricultural methods and technologies that are cheap and are efficient, but could have a huge impact in terms of people’s day-to-day well-being.
Wait, that same "green revolution" introduced in India that has led Indian farmers to suicide as they buckle under the weight of debt and Monsanto-introduced GM seed fraud? I don’t think so.
Is this who you want running the show, America? If so, I grieve for you.
