From: Center for Food Safety [action@foodsafetynow.org]
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2001 4:15 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 Commissioner:
 
I am very concerned about 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. 

In addition, one should consider the impact of such softening of reporting 
requirements on the current reporting of food contents by food industries. 
The real irony of this weakening is that we are also spending Federal 
funds in health education, teaching students to be able to read the labels 
and interpret the data for their own health.    

Your proposed rules ignore serious concerns, and appear to be a decision 
made for the convenience of commercial interests at the expense of public 
health and the environment. 

No American citizen should be set up to be an unconscious guinea pig with 
these untested foods.  I trust you will take my concern, along with the 
concern of thousands of others, into serious consideration.


Sincerely,

Kathryn C. Sherlock, Ph.D.



Kathryn Sherlock
1004 Camino Oraibi
Santa Fe, NM, 87501

CC: 
The President
Vice President Dick Cheney
FDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00N-1396]
Senator Pete V. Domenici
Senator Jeff Bingaman
Representative Thomas UdallFDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00D-1598]


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