From: Center for Food Safety [action@foodsafetynow.org]
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 6:54 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,
 
As with many things the Former Bush Administration has done, undone, broken 
 and "streamlined", 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. Plus, you set up the American public as 
test subjects for products that may be totally unsafe.  I suppose you and 
your office are protected against the millions of lawsuits that should be 
coming your way when/if Americans and others become ill.  For those of us 
who might want to avoid these "foods", where shall we find a "genetically 
modified-free" supply?  Mars perhaps?

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, but we know that, given our new government, awareness is a 
rare commodity.  Since your administration is quickly returning us to the 
Nuclear Brink, I'd like my last few meals to be a few notches up from the 
nutritional value of sawdust.

I am also greatly opposed to your new voluntary labeling policy, which 
denies consumers a basic right to know. Like the RADURA labeling policy of 
the first Bush Administration, your agency continues in an 
industry-supportive mode, ignoring the basic decency of informing the 
public.  In my memory, long and tired, you have historically opposed the 
public's right to know regarding herbicide, pesticide and other "food 
coating" labeling.  We only shop in stores where there's a policy to label 
everything possible, but if the supplier isn't informed, neither will we.  
I suppose the deep-thinking philosophy at your agency (and now throughout 
our government) is "what you don't know won't hurt you".

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.  Naturally, as with RADURA, you all know that mandatory 
labeling will scare the hell out of the public.  They'll reject 
genetically engineered food, which will cut into the profits of large 
corporations.  Thanks for doing your duty.

Your proposed rules ignore serious concerns, and appear to be a decision 
made for industry at the expense of the 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'd rather starve.

But I doubt you'll listen to little old me.  I doubt you read these 
things, unless they are from the president of some corporation, begging 
for a handout.  I doubt you or your agency, all under the thumb of our 
idiot president, have the guts.

Surprise us.

Sincerely,

Mark Richards

Mark Richards
29 Juniper Road
Littleton, MA, 01460

CC: 
The President
Vice President Dick Cheney
FDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00N-1396]
Senator Edward M. Kennedy
Senator John F. Kerry
Representative Martin T. MeehanFDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00D-1598]

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