From: amorfia@sirius.com
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2001 7:42 PM
To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Subject: "Docket 00N-1396 & Docket 00D-1598" 

DEar Sir and Madame:

As a farm girl, consumer, activist and vegetarian who has been eating 
organic food for over 20
years, I PROTEST loudly the following:

* Do not require mandatory pre-market safety testing
* Do not require pre-market environmental review
* Do not require mandatory labeling of GE foods
* Restrict voluntary labeling of non-GE foods
* Require a mere letter of notification prior to the
marketing of a GE food
* Fail to ensure public access to adequate information
for independent review
* Are supported by industry and opposed by consumer groups

PLEASE IT IS required that:

* 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.

With the wholesale killing of animals in Europe, the high rates of cancer 
in the USA, can you not see that we, as consumers want REAL CHOICE.  I want 
to KNOW what I am eating.  Why is it in a democracy that we are being 
poisoned and experimented upon without our knowledge.  PLEASE STOP THIS NOW>

Jeanette Cool
San Francisco, CA