Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the FDA was Michael Taylor—Monsanto's former attor-
ney, later Monsanto's vice president, now is back at the
FDA as the US food safety czar.
Stossel: So Monsanto has captured the FDA, this
thousand-person agency? And [the FDA] is just in the
tank with big business?
Smith: Monsanto has not only captured the FDA, but as
I traveled to thirty-six countries, they've done the same
to many, many countries. . . .
Stossel: ...That makes me skeptical of you [Smith], not
them [in that Smith's conspiracy theory is too expansive
and intricate to take seriously].
Lusk: You look at every major scientific authority on
the subject, whether it's the US National Academy
of Sciences, the American Medical Association, the
European Commission, the World Health Organization,
the Food and Agricultural Organization [of the United
Nations] . . . these are all independent bodies, of indepen-
dent scientists, and every one of those organizations has
confirmed the basic safety of biotech foods.
—John Stossel, host, “War On . . . ,”
Stossel
, Fox Business
News, June 6, 2013. The guests are Jayson Lusk, agri-
cultural economist at Oklahoma State University, and
Jeffrey Smith, Institute for Responsible Technology.
A good conspiracy theory will have a villain who is with-
holding vital information from the public, and because it is
the company's responsibility to perform the research demon-
strating the product is safe, there is always the fear that the
company is hiding a dangerous secret. Also, much of the infor-
mation about the effects and performance of GM crops is con-
trolled by the seed corporations, allowing them to release only
studies that view GMOs favorably, and suppress studies that
do not. Both Marie-Monique Robin's topic and the documen-
tary
Ethos
claim that Monsanto deliberately withheld informa-
tion showing harms from their rBST hormone (given to cattle
