From: Beck Horne [wayoffthegrid@earthlink.net]
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2001 6:05 PM
To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Subject: Docket 00N-1396 & Docket 00D-1598

Dear Food and Drug Administration,

Regarding your proposed new rules on genetically engineered (GE) foods:

You have failed to require health and ecological safety testing, or
mandatory labeling of GE foods. This puts my health, your health, your
children's health AND our environment at risk. It deprives me of the right
to know or choose what I am eating. If you agree we live in "the land of the
free" --- we should at least have a choice in the type of food that goes
into our bodies. Don't you agree? (Of course, you may prefer a tyrannical
government, where there is no choice!)

My demands, like those of other health-conscious Americans, include the
following:

* The FDA must require mandatory pre-market comprehensive environmental
review. Unlike conventional pollutants, where a given amount of pollutant
causes a limited amount of damage, a small number of mutant genes could have
a population explosion and reproduce forever, causing unlimited and
irreparable damage.

* The FDA must require mandatory pre-market long-term health testing. GE
products could be toxic, cause allergic responses, have lower nutritional
value, and compromise immune responses in consumers.

* The FDA must require mandatory labeling of GE products. 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 would be deprived of the critical knowledge needed to hold food
producers liable should any of these novel products be hazardous.

* The FDA must end its cozy relationship with the industries it purports to
be regulating. People have been allowed to work for a biotech company, then
work for the FDA writing the regulatory rules on that company's product,
then go back to working for the company. Ninety-two percent of FDA advisory
committee meetings had at least one conflict of interest.



Respectfully submitted by,

Beck Horne, very concerned consumer