From: talking@together.net
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2001 12:34 PM
To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Subject: Oppose FDA's New Regulations on Genetically Engineered Food

Eleanor Berger
12 Lakeview Drive
Plattsburgh, NY  12901 
talking@together.net


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.

Your job should be as much to protect the public as it is to 
protect the profits of industry.  Without the safeguards you 
are ignoring, the public is not being served or protected.

We want labeling and testing.  It's just that simple.

Sincerely,
Eleanor Berger




Eleanor Berger