From: connelly@cs.indiana.edu
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 10:01 AM
To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Cc: connelly@cs.indiana.edu
Subject: Oppose FDA's New Regulations on Genetically Engineered Food

Kay Connelly
315 S Mitchell
Bloomington, IN  47401

connelly@cs.indiana.edu


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.

Please, before you send me a form letter response, take the time
to make sure it addresses my concerns in an intelligent manner.
I am not ignorant of the pro-GMO propoganda and I don't buy the
standard arguments of "GMOs have not been proven to be unsafe".
The fact is, GMOs have not been proven to *be* safe, and until
they do, they should be labelled so I can choose *not* to 
consume them!

Sincerely,



Kay Connelly