From: asprey@qwest.net
Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 2:46 PM
To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Cc: asprey@qwest.net
Subject: Oppose FDA's New Regulations on Genetically Engineered Food

Bill Asprey
700 S. 9th
Laramie, WY  82070

asprey@qwest.net


RE: Docket No. 00N-1396, and 00D-1598

Dear FDA,
 
kELLOGG'S INC. has sent me e-mail stating that they don't even know what foods they sell have GE ingredients. So even if we are being used as guinea pigs in some perverse experiment, this ignorance of exposure parameters makes it bad science anyway. Shame on you. Every GE cell should be tracked until long term and large-scale exposures have occured. This new, potentially hazardous long term technology must, ethically, be monitored. Or you are not scientists. Without such monitoring the companies making the money now can never be forced to pay reparations when long term exposure problems do appear as seems possible.

Also, how do you square this with the 1996 FQPA (Food Quality Protection Act)? You must test this, at minimum, on young mammals' development. Or is the EPA responsible for this? You (or they) have plenty of money to do this....DO IT!!!!! NOW. Or you personally will be held responsible for this irresponsible release of potentially harmful materials into our shared ecosystem.

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 feel all of you should be required to eat only GE foods for a few years. Then we could all find out the problems with it and only people responsible for the release of GE would have to pay the price. Do you believe in the product? Do you not trust the lack of science here? TRUST is the key word. FAITH is another way of saying it. Do you have FAITH in KELLOGGS INc.?

I am also flatly 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.  AGAIN, YOU try the stuff!!!! Why should you be the only ones who know where this stuff is in the food supply, when even the producers don't apparently know where it is? You could destroy this technology with poor supervision,... look at starlight corn!!! It is DEAD!!

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 (in poorly prepared experiments!). I will not accept being made into a pig by anyone. I already told Kelloggs that I will only feed my litter with organic food until they label their experimental semi-edible material that they sell as food.

Sincerely,

Bill Asprey.

Bill Asprey