From: Center for Food Safety [action@foodsafetynow.org]
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2001 11:11 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 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,
 
Your new policies on genetically engineered (GE) foods are an affront to 
 the rights and intelligence of all Americans. Despite enormous public 
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 posed by GE foods. I 
believe you know that these foods could be toxic, could cause allergic 
responses, could have lower nutritional value, could compromise immune 
responses in many people, could cause severe problems with producers of 
our food who do not want their crops, bees, or livestock contaminated with 
potentially disruptive genes, and could cause irreparable damage to the 
natural environment to which we all owe our continued existence. 

I am also adamantly opposed to your new “voluntary labeling” policy.  This 
head-in-the-sand approach denies Americans our basic right to know what is 
in the food we eat and drink. 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 are a seriously flawed 
effort to allow the food industry to completely escape any responsibility 
for the potentially severe harm they may be creating.  These rules and the 
people behind them anger me for the way they ignore the needs of public 
health and a healthy environment. I will not accept your attempt to make 
me a guinea pig of these untested foods. I want you take my concerns 
seriously and require that all GE food ingredients be labeled as such in 
the foods they compose.


Sincerely,


Jeffrey A. Schimpff




Jeffrey Schimpff
2721 Kendall Avenue
Madison, WI, 53705

CC: 
The President
Vice President Dick Cheney
FDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00N-1396]
Senator Herb Kohl
Senator Russell D. Feingold
Representative Tammy BaldwinFDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00D-1598]


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