From: Regan Quinn [qmaher@newwave.ent]
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 9:40 PM
To: Food and Drug Administration
Subject: Docket # 00N-1396 and #00D-1598


Food and Drug Administration ,



For the past dozen years, I've worked as a medical research assistant to a firm which conducts pesticide product liability litigation. I know all too well the limitations of corporate research, which confines its investigations to the happy, lamplit area of encouraging results; and ignores vast shadowy unknowns including such fundamentals as how genetic variation and pharmacologic interactions impact product toxicity.  Now, we are to rely upon the wisdom and discretion of corporations in designing foodstuffs and creating life forms which can, thru self propagation,  magnify their designers mistakes to the nth generation.  Give me a break!
   Take the insertion of the Bt gene into corn and so on.  A toxin which is effective in killing insects when applied to the surface of the plant is encoded into every cell of the plant,with no real background on human effects - And now we learn it presents a risk to the survival of the Mona Lisa of butterflies - the Monarch. What a bonehead idea! If anyone had been thinking seriously about ill effects this might have been anticipated, but as might be anticipated noone was.  Well, maybe a few people were thinking about putting the organic farmers out of work, by breeding insect resistance to Bt - shameless slimeballs!
I am an allergic person. What do I do when some harebrained geneticist inserts shrimp genes in my Wheaties? Hmmm??Contemplation of this eventuality makes me hugely indignant, disgusted and fearful.
And I endorse every point of the following:
Labels on GE foods are required
in Japan, Russia, and throughout Europe, yet your new
proposal continues to deny Americans the right to know what
is in our food.
 

Labels must be required to protect the public from potential
health effects that could only be traced if GE foods can be
identified, yet FDA?s "voluntary labeling" guidelines will
leave thousands of unlabeled GE foods on our supermarket
shelves. Furthermore, the agency?s proposed rule only
requires companies to notify FDA when bringing GE foods
to market, but it fails to require any safety testing.
Doctors and scientists have warned about the potential for
GE foods to trigger dangerous allergies, change the
nutritional value of foods, and cause irreversible harm to
the environment. FDA appears to be playing politics with
our food, disregarding science-based precautions that other
countries have implemented.


I urge you to reconsider this proposal and insure that GE
foods are subject to pre-market testing and labeling.
Americans deserve the same protections as the rest of the
world. 

Regan Quinn
1113 Highland Rd.
Charleston, WV 25302
(304)344-5780
qmaher@newwave.net


Regan Quinn
1113 Highland Rd.
Charleston, WV 25302
US
qmaher@newwave.ent