Monsanto Hijacks Safe Food Coalition

For what is rumored to be an unusually large fee, Monsanto hired Foreman onto their BGH lobby team. With her help, Monsanto has successfully prevented Congress from overriding FDA's decision that milk from rBGH-injected cows need not be labeled, despite the food safety concerns of many including the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. (See PR Watch #2, p.8.)

Foreman told PR Watch that she saw no conflict of interest between lobbying for rBGH and for the Safe Food Coalition. "The FDA has said rBGH is safe," she explained, adding "Why don't you call CSPI, they say rBGH is safe too?" When asked how much money she has received from Monsanto to lobby for rBGH, she angrily declined, saying "What in the world business is that of yours?"

Carol Tucker Foreman's potential "safe food" conflicts go much deeper than rBGH. Her client Monsanto is also the world's largest producer of herbicides, whose residues are consumed in food and groundwater. People are eating fish, milk and meat contaminated with Monsanto's cancer and birth-defect-causing PCBs. Monsanto is also the producer of NutraSweet.