How Monsanto Made Sure Its Frankenfoods Escaped FDA Regulation & What HHS Sec. Kennedy Can Do About That Now

April 21, 2025 | by Alexis Baden-Mayer, Political Director, Organic Consumers Association

How did foods produced with genetic engineering and nanotechnology escape Food & Drug Administration regulation? That story is told in the 2008 documentary film, and 2012 book, The World According to Monsanto by Marie-Monique Robin of M2R Films.

In 1987, as Vice President, George H.W. Bush toured Monsanto’s genetic engineering labs. Monsanto’s executives complained to him that they were waiting on the Agriculture Department to approve field tests of crops genetically engineered to withstand the corporation’s Roundup weedkiller. Bush told them, “Call me, we’re in the dereg [deregulation] business.”

In 1992, as President, Bush made good on his offer, completely exempting GMOs from food safety regulation, as part of his “regulatory relief initiative.”

Genetically modified foods should have been regulated under Congress’s 1958 Food Additives law. This would have required each new GMO to go through a rigorous premarket safety review to be approved or rejected based on scientific evidence, but in 1992, President Bush’s Food & Drug Administration exempted GMOs from the law by declaring them “generally recognized as safe.” GRAS was meant for common, pre-1958 processed food ingredients like sugar and gelatin.The “generally recognized as safe” exemption never should have been used to give a free pass to a new technology that would put things in our food we’d never eaten before, but that’s what the Bush Administration did. If corn was “generally recognized as safe” and didn’t have to be safety-tested, GMO corn would be treated the same.

Through an interview with the top government bureaucrat who worked in the Bush Administration on GMOs, The World According to Monsanto explains exactly how this happened. James Maryanski, Biotechnology Coordinator at the FDA from 1985 to 2006, told Marie-Monique Robin that the FDA decision to treat GMOs just like normal crops was a political decision, not a scientific one.

Monsanto’s man inside the FDA was Michael Taylor. Taylor is a classic example of the Washington lawyer who uses the “revolving door” between the federal regulatory agencies and the should-be regulated corporations to move back-and-forth, always serving the interests of his corporate clients. Taylor worked first at the FDA (from 1976 to 1980), where he drafted food safety regulations. In 1981, he joined the prestigious firm of King & Spalding, where his clients included Monsanto and one of its front-groups, the International Food & Biotechnology Council. In 1991, he was appointed deputy commissioner for policy at the FDA.

Taylor told Robin that his appointment to the FDA had “nothing at all to do with GMOs,” and he claimed not to be the author of those policies. “That’s just false,” he told her.

But, it appears that Taylor lied to Robin. Michael Hansen, Senior Staff Scientist of the Consumers Union, told Robin that it was obvious to everyone working on the issue that the policy the government adopted was exactly what Taylor had drafted for his corporate clients. Indeed, James Maryanski confirmed that Taylor “provided the leadership for the project and served as the chief and lead policy person, in terms of making sure that the project got done.”

This all happened more than 30 years ago. Is there anything that can be done about it now?

On March 10, 2025, Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., promised to close the “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) loophole that allows dangerous food additives to enter the marketplace without premarket safety testing. This could mean GMOs, given that blanket GRAS exemption in 1992, might finally be safety tested as food additives! But, don’t expect Sec. Kennedy to do this without a huge groundswell of grassroots pressure.

Tell Sec. Kennedy: GMOs Should Not Be GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe)!

Tell Sec. Kennedy: Ban Insecticide-Producing GMOs!

Tell Sec. Kennedy to Ban Quorn!

>> Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Organic Bytes <<