From: ehorizon@netins.net
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 4:49 PM
To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Cc: ehorizon@netins.net
Subject: Oppose FDA's New Regulations on Genetically Engineered Food

Danielle Wirth
1456 334th Rd.
Woodward,  IA 
ehorizon@netins.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.

I teach environmental science. My students are mostly urban and vitally concerned about food safety issues. Many come to class already well-informed on the issues and I am happy to put them in contact with organic meat,egg and veggie producers. Why does the USDA continue to prop up a system that is reactionary and dangerous? The FUTURE lives in organic and sustainable ag. Consumers are demanding it. Or, is the USDA just a puppet of the commodity industry, a monopoly concerned only with extreme profit in the short term for the very few, and not concerned about ecosystem health and dynamic rural communities? 

Please be reasonable and take special note of where the world is heading. Germany has already moved to mandate more consideration in research dollars and economic support for organic farming. Germany is banning research on GMO's. 



Sincerely,



Danielle Wirth