From: Peggy Mauro [gemlight@qwest.net]
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 4:32 PM
To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Subject: "Docket 00N-1396 & Docket 00D-1598" 

To whom it may concern:
Please know that I feel strongly about having my food labeled.  There are
many companies who are using genetically modified foods which I choose to
avoid for myself and my family. Please support those of use as consumers
that want to know what is in our food and mandatory labeling is extremely
important to many of us who are working on maintaining a healthy lifestyle
without GMO's.
Sincerely,
Peggy Mauro, R.N.
Wellness Consultant
P.O. Box 17771
Boulder, Colorado 80308

 Despite overwhelming consumer demand, the FDA
has failed to require health and ecological safety testing
or mandatory labeling, and thus puts your health and our
environment at risk and deprives you of the right to know
or choose what you are eating.

The proposed rules:

* 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:

* 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.
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