Washington Post | By Judy Sarasohn | December 23, 1999
Michael R. Taylor, who played a major role in overhauling federal meat safety programs, is leaving his perch at Monsanto Co., where he is vice president for public policy. His resignation is effective Jan. 31.
"I am leaving Monsanto because I am interested in exploring in a noncommercial setting the proper roles and interactions of the public and private spheres in meeting society's food, health and environmental needs," he wrote in a Dec. 13 letter to Monsanto chief executive officer Robert B. Shapiro.
In a brief interview, Taylor said he had only high regard for Monsanto and his colleagues there.
Some of Taylor's friends, however, said he had become frustrated with the "culture" of the biotech company and he believed it had not done enough to effectively get across to the public the safety of genetically engineered foods, drugs and other agricultural products.
During his tenure at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he was administrator of the Food Safety Inspection Service and acting undersecretary for food safety, Taylor oversaw the transition from the older system of looking at, touching and smelling meat to a more scientifically based system known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, which requires companies to identify the points in their production processes most likely to be susceptible to contamination and create acceptable plans for preventing it.
Taylor also was deputy commissioner for policy at the Food and Drug Administration from 1991-1994, after having represented Monsanto at the law firm of King & Spalding, where he was a partner.
Although he had recused himself for one year at the FDA from any action dealing directly with Monsanto or any other law firm client, Taylor was attacked by anti-biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin, who charged that Taylor had a possible conflict of interest relating to a controversial genetically engineered Monsanto drug approved by the FDA in 1993. In 1994, three members of Congress asked the General Accounting Office to investigate Taylor and two other FDA officials; they alleged that their impartiality could have been compromised by prior relationships with Monsanto, the corporate sponsor of recombinant bovine somatotropin. The GAO review cleared Taylor, who by then had moved to the USDA, and the other two officials.
