From: Center for Food Safety [action@foodsafetynow.org]
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 1:07 AM
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. 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.

As a Certified Organic Farmer, I am also concerned that the" burden of 
proof" falls on me to show  that my products are non-GMO, when the burden 
of proof should be on the industries and companies producing these 
products.  This is unfair to me both on a phylosophicaal, social, and 
financial levels.

Walt bernard

Sincerely,

walt bernard
pobox 119
dorena, or, 97434

CC: 
The President
Vice President Dick Cheney
FDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00N-1396]
Senator Ron Wyden
Senator Gordon Smith
Representative Peter A. DeFazioFDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00D-1598]

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