From: Jesse Herbert [freeeeus@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2001 3:32 PM
To: EXECSEC
Subject: Docket # 00N-1396 and #00D-1598


Commissioner ,

I am baffled that the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) has proposed regulations that still
fail to require labels or safety tests on genetically
engineered (GE) food. Do your children eat these foods?
Labels on GE foods are required
in Japan, Russia, and throughout Europe, yet your new proposal continues to deny Americans the right to know what
is in our food.
 

Labels must be required to protect the public from potential
health effects that could only be traced if GE foods can be
identified, yet FDA's "voluntary labeling" guidelines will
leave thousands of unlabeled GE foods on our supermarket
shelves. Furthermore, the agency's proposed rule only requires companies to notify FDA when bringing GE foods to market, but it fails to require any safety testing.  Doctors and scientists have warned about the potential for GE foods to trigger dangerous allergies, change the
nutritional value of foods, and cause irreversible harm to the environment. Do you know your horticulture well enough to understand what I am saying?  FDA appears to be playing politics with
our food, and disregarding science-based precautions that other countries have implemented.


I implore you to reconsider this proposal and insure that GE
foods are subject to pre-market testing and labeling.
Americans deserve the same protections as the rest of the
world. 

If you (as in the top decision makers whom I doubt will even read this) are instrumental in even one mass-scale contamination of our food supply with an irreversible new but harmful genetic trait, will you resort to excuses?  Maybe it will simply drive you to madness, but that won't help then will it?  Please do the right thing while we still have time.

Sincerely, 

Jesse Herbert




Jesse Herbert
1910 Tamarac Rd
Johnsonville, NY 12094
USA
freeeeus@yahoo.com