From: Center for Food Safety [action@foodsafetynow.org]
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 5:19 PM
To: FDA Commissioner
Cc: president@whitehouse.gov; vice.president@whitehouse.gov;
fdadockets@oc.fda.gov; fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Subject: Oppose the FDAs new policies on GE Foods!!

FDA Commissioner Jane Henney
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 Ms. Henney,
 
I am greatly disappointed by your new policies on genetically engineered 
 (GE)foods. Your failure to protect the public interest and require safety 
testing and mandatory labeling for GE foods, even in the face of 
overwhelming consumer demand, is irresponsible and outrageous. Your 
“notification” policy is an insult to consumers which ignores strong 
scientific evidence of numerous potential health and environmental risks 
to GE foods. 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 and revise your guidelines accordingly.


Sincerely,



Leda Huta
9102 Eton Rd.
Silver Spring, MD, 20901

CC: 
The President
Vice President Dick Cheney
FDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00N-1396]
Senator Paul S. Sarbanes
Senator Barbara A. Mikulski
Representative Albert Russell Wynn
Representative Constance A. MorellaFDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 
00D-1598]


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