DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 150

forms created in their laboratories, and that they would soon be able to clone endless replicas of a living
organism from a single cell of its body.
Rifkin did not have the profile of a late 1960s activist. He had earned a BS in economics at the Wharton
School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was elected president of the graduating class of 1967.
As the winner of the General Alumni Association's Award of Merit, he was commended for “selfless char-
itable work as President of the Campus Chest,” for being imbued with the “spirit of Pennsylvania” and
“communicating this to football fans as a cheerleader,” and for advancing “the cause of Greek letter soci-
eties.” 8
But somewhere along the way, Rifkin was politicized, and he became a vocal opponent of the Vietnam
War. As a student at Tufts, where he obtained a master's degree in international affairs, Rifkin pursued
antiwar activities and became an environmentalist. In 1973, as the country reeled from high gas prices, he
organized a protest against the oil companies at the Boston Harbor during the 200th anniversary of the Bo-
ston Tea Party. In 1977, he and a colleague founded the Foundation on Economic Trends (FOET), where
he still works today promoting a long-term economic sustainability plan to address the triple challenge of
the global economic crisis, energy security, and climate change.
But back at the dawn of biotech, Rifkin was focused on genetic engineering. He frightened the industry,
and the fact that Monsanto had in their possession a tape of him speaking to environmentalists suggests
that it or some other entity was monitoring his activities.
One of the executives present at the screening was Washington, D.C., insider Will Carpenter, who had
represented Monsanto in the battles over chemical production that had pitted environmentalists against in-
dustry during the disputes over Monsanto's long record of polluting. He wanted to follow a new path with
biotechnology. 9
At strategy meetings during 1983 and 1984, Carpenter argued that the government's stamp of approval
was needed to provide assurance to the public that the technology was safe. He proposed asking the gov-
ernment for regulation and help in shaping the process, so that if companies fulfilled a list of requirements,
products would automatically be approved. Monsanto certainly did not want any new laws passed to regu-
late the industry; rather, it was very likely in search of a regulatory fig leaf.
Carpenter ran into trouble when he went to Washington to sell the idea of regulation: the Reagan crowd
didn't believe in regulation. 10 Henry Miller, in particular, was an FDA official strongly opposed to the
Monsanto plan. An irascible opponent of environmentalism and regulation, he spent fifteen years at the
FDA serving as an important advocate for the biotech industry. During his FDA tenure, he was the found-
ing director of the biotechnology office and a medical reviewer for the first GE drugs who saw to their
rapid licensing. Today, the stridently antiregulatory Miller is still speaking out against the regulation of bi-
otechnology as a fellow at the right-wing Hoover Institute.
Miller charged Monsanto with trying to squeeze out the smaller biotech firms such as Calgene, which
could not afford to test new products. According to Charles, Miller called Monsanto “traitors” who caused
more harm to the industry than Rifkin. Amid this extremely charged atmosphere, Monsanto decided that a
detailed strategy was necessary. 11
Monsanto called upon King & Spalding, one of its hired guns in Washington, to develop a strategy for
a regulatory process that would help the company bring its products to market quickly and smoothly. The
125-year-old international law firm still represents big pharma-biotech companies today under the um-
brella of its “FDA and Life Sciences” practice, which was established by Michael Taylor. As discussed in
chapter 6 , Taylor had been a staff attorney at the FDA, and he was hired to head the firm's FDA lobby shop
in 1981.
Monsanto's lobbying power was unmatched. The industry-friendly regulation that Taylor proposed was
adopted almost verbatim in the policy developed by the White House Office of Science and Technology