From: Center for Food Safety [action@foodsafetynow.org]
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 3:16 PM
To: FDA Commissioner
Cc: president@whitehouse.gov; vice.president@whitehouse.gov;
fdadockets@oc.fda.gov; fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Subject: Oppose the New FDA Regulations on GE Foods!

FDA Commissioner 
Dockets Management Branch (HFA 305)
Food and Drug Administration
5630 Fisher's Lane, rm. 1061
Rockville, MD 20852

RE: Docket No. 00N-1396, and 00D-1598

Dear FDA,
 
I am outraged by your new policies on genetically engineered (GE)foods. 
 Despite overwhelming consumer demand, your agency still fails to require 
safety testing and mandatory labeling for GE foods. As a consumer plagued 
with various food allergies, your notification policy is an insult to 
consumers, and irresponsibly ignores strong scientific evidence of 
numerous potential health and environmental risks to GE foods. You should 
be aware that these foods could be toxic, could cause allergic responses, 
could have lower nutrition value, could compromise immune responses in 
consumers, and could cause irreparable damage to the environment. 

I am also greatly opposed to your new voluntary labeling policy, which 
denies consumers a basic right to know. Without mandatory labeling, 
neither consumers nor health professionals will know if an allergic or 
toxic reaction was the result of a genetically engineered food. Consumers 
will also be deprived of the critical knowledge they need to hold food 
producers liable should any of these novel foods prove hazardous.

Your proposed rules ignore serious concerns, and appear to be a decision 
made to convenience industry at the expense of public health and the 
environment. I will not accept your attempt to make me a guinea pig of 
these untested foods, and I trust you will take my concern along with the 
thousands of others into serious consideration.  I hope that you will 
exercise compassion and balance it with conomic considerations, as it 
could be your child or grandchild who is next to find his or herself 
increasingly physically intolerant of commonly consumed foods.


Sincerely,
Avalyn J. Pitts, Esquire



Avalyn Pitts, Esq.
5421 Sargent Rd
Hyattsville, MD, 20782

CC: 
The President
Vice President Dick Cheney
FDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00N-1396]
Senator Paul S. Sarbanes
Senator Barbara A. Mikulski
Representative Albert Russell Wynn
Representative Steny H. HoyerFDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00D-1598]


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