Michael R. Taylor

Michael R. Taylor is a Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future (RFF) in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit
research organization that has been conducting independent research on natural resource and
environmental issues for 50 years. He is Director of the Risk, Resource, and Environmental Management
Division. Taylor received a B.A. in political science from Davidson College and a law degree from the
University of Virginia. His personal research addresses policy and institutional issues affecting food security
in developing countries and food safety as a global concern.

Prior to joining RFF, Taylor served in government, practiced law in Washington, and worked in private
industry. He was Administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service
from 1994 to 1996, Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 1991
to 1994, and an FDA staff lawyer and Executive Assistant to the FDA Commissioner from 1976 to 1981. He
practiced food and drug law and was a partner in the law firm of King & Spalding for ten years and, just
before his arrival at RFF in June 2000, served for sixteen months as Vice President for Public Policy at
Monsanto Company. He serves as co-chair of a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on the
Use of Third Party Toxicity Research with Human Participants. He served on the NAS Committee on
Defining Science-Based Concerns Associated with Products of Animal Biotechnology, which recently
completed a report on Animal Biotechnology—Science-Based Concerns (Washington, D.C.: National
Academy Press, 2002). Taylor is an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and a
member of the Board of Trustees of Resolve, Inc., a nonprofit environmental and public health mediation
and dispute resolution organization. November 2003