From: Center for Food Safety [action@foodsafetynow.org]
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2001 3:25 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 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 wrting to express my extreme dissatisfaction with your new policies on 
 genetically modified foods. Despite overwhelming consumer demand, your 
agency still fails to require safety testing and mandatory labeling for GM 
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. This attitude sets us on a 
slippery slope, the full consequences of which to ourselves and future 
generations we can't begin to comprehend without further research.

I am also greatly opposed to your new “voluntary labeling” policy, which 
denies consumers a basic right to know. The fact that not one GM producer 
volunteers this information now is unlikely to change in the future.  
These corporations have conducted focus groups which have determined that 
Genetically Modified or Genetically Engineered labels are detrimental to 
the marketing of their product.  Do you seriously purport to believe that 
they will ever voluntarily do anything which would impair their product's 
marketability?  If so, you are seriously out of touch with the reality of 
the world in which these uber-capitalists live.  

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.


Sincerely,



Adam Mizicko
5434 Carriage Drive
El Sobrante, CA, 94803

CC: 
The President
Vice President Dick Cheney
FDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00N-1396]
Senator Dianne Feinstein
Senator Barbara Boxer
Representative George Miller
Representative Ellen O. TauscherFDA Dockets Management [Docket No. 00D-1598]


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