From: Center for Food Safety [action@foodsafetynow.org]
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 5:14 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 
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 FDA,
 
I believe that your new policies on genetically engineered (GE)foods does 
 not do enough to protect consumers against possible health risks that may 
be posed by eating these foods. Your agency must require safety testing 
and mandatory labeling for all GE foods to fully ensure that our public 
health is not being undermined. 

Very few companies are going to voluntarily participate in your current 
“notification” policy, and therefore we need the FDA to responsibly 
regulate the production and marketing methods of these products. All 
consumers 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.  I live in California, a state 
where there is more awareness of and availability of organic foods than on 
average in the nation, but unfortunately even here the access to organic 
products is grossly uneven and biased along economic lines.  Mainly those 
in the higher income population have the ability to purchase specialty 
organic foods and come across the information that helps them to choose 
healther foods.  Without mandatory labeling, most general consumers who 
buy food from the large grocery chains nor health professionals at large 
will not 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,

Genevieve Liang

Genevieve Liang
3335 Canfield Ave., #9
Los Angeles, CA, 90034

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


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