Michael R. Taylor is an American lawyer who has played leadership roles in the US Food and Drug Administration, agrochemical company Monsanto, and law firm King & Spalding.

degree in political science from Davidson College in 1971 and served on active duty in the US Army as an officer in the Military Police Corps from 1971 to 1973, stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco.

[11] In some of his early writings, Mr. Taylor addressed the Delaney Clause, a part of a 1958 federal law that prohibits any carcinogenic chemical from being added to food that is processed.

[13] In 1981, Taylor argued in Legal Times of Washington that it was the role of Congress, not FDA, to decide if there should be a de minimis interpretation of the Delaney Clause.

He also oversaw development of FDA policies on such matters as human tissue transplantation,[22] food biotechnology (discussed below), dietary supplement safety,[23] and off-label use of drugs and company-supported continuing medical education.

[25] In late 1992 and early 1993, an outbreak of foodborne illness caused by E. coli-contaminated hamburger sold at the Jack in the Box fast food chain on the US West Coast killed four children and seriously injured over 700 other people.

[28] As a first step toward that accountability, Taylor informed the industry audience that henceforth FSIS would consider raw ground beef containing any amount of that pathogen to be adulterated, unlawful for sale, and thus subject to recall.

"This seemingly simple change – calling E. coli O157:H7 an adulterant – has over the last 20 years saved countless children from kidney failure and death.

[33] In July 1996, FSIS issued the final HACCP and pathogen reduction regulations, which were announced by President Clinton in an Oval Office radio address attended by Secretary Dan Glickman, Taylor and foodborne illness victims and their families.

This led to Shapiro's presentation at an October 9, 1999 Greenpeace Business Conference, in which he pledged to listen more and "reconsider the moral, religious and ethical ramifications of the use of biotechnology in agriculture.

Monsanto was a client of King & Spalding for whom Taylor performed some legal work on pesticide and biotechnology matters in the 1980s not related to the Delaney Clause.

[44] In February, 1994 anti-biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin charged that Taylor had a conflict of interest with respect to the approval of rBST, a hormone for dairy cows produced using biotechnology and used to increase milk production.

The HHS Ethics Counsel and the congressional Government Accountability Office (GAO) both investigated the Rifken allegation, as well as whether Taylor had violated conflict of interest rules by virtue of his involvement in the 1992 guidance documents.

On the guidance documents, HHS and GAO also found that Taylor had fully complied with his recusal agreement regarding such general policy matters and had not violated any conflict of interest rules.

At a meeting of health care journalists in 2013, Taylor acknowledged objections people had expressed about his working on FDA-related matters in both the public and private sectors and said "I fully understand and respect that point of view.

"[46] He also noted that he complied with all applicable ethics rule and that some of the concerns were based on mistaken facts, such as the claim that he participated in FDA's decision on rBST.

The risk analysis work included helping lead a multi-university collaboration, the Food Safety Research Consortium, in the development of a risk-based priority setting framework.

Taylor oversaw the rulemaking required to implement FSMA, led an extensive program of stakeholder outreach and dialogue on the content of the rules, and worked with CFSAN, CVM and FDA's inspection unit (the Office of Regulatory Affairs) on the development of strategies for field-based implementation of the new food safety rules, focused on maximizing prevention of food safety problems and strengthening outbreak response.

The project team compiled data on over 500 donor programs and obtained input from nearly 200 experts and stakeholders to document patterns and trends in current investments and opportunities for improvement.