Letting the Fox Guard the Henhouse is Not Bipartisanship

Is there some kind of virulent bad appointments contagion going around?

Because President Obama is considering doing it again.

Sometimes I'm just rendered speechless, and this is one of those times. Natasha Chart via Sustainable Food at Change.org:

Obama's considering appointing a former Monsanto vice president, Mike Taylor, to head the Food Safety Working Group at the FDA.

As Jill Richardson writes at LaVidaLocavore at the link above, Taylor thinks the FDA wastes too much time on food safety inspections at meat packing plants. Further, he believes that one of their main problems is that they have to slow down their line speed too much.

Everyone who's read anything about the horrendous working conditions at US meatpacking plants knows that incomplete kills before slaughter and worker injuries increase dramatically when line speeds increase.

As also noted at the Ethicurean, Taylor is the reason milk from rBGH/rBST cows doesn't have to be labeled. Bovine growth hormone is perfectly safe, after all. Except for cows, or humans who drink its breakdown products in milk.

So yes, Mike Taylor is the person we have to thank for putting pus from mastitis-infected cows into the milk supply, and exposing milk-drinking Americans by the millions to greater cancer risks.

This guy is heading up a food safety working group.

I'm just swimming in the changeiness.

Kids, if you care about your food, you know what to do:

Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
Or click here.

Monsanto, of course, is the company driving third-world farmers into destitution and starvation by selling them genetically-modified seed that cannot reproduce itself, forcing farmers to buy new seed every year instead of saving seed from each harvest.

The president might ask the organic vegetable gardening First Lady what she thinks of that.