From: Achee22@aol.com
Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 1:28 AM
To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov
Subject: Docket 00N-1396 & Docket 00D-1598

Dear FDA Representative,

     First, I consider it a travesty on any kind of decency that genetically 
tampered food is even allowed to exist.   This is a horror beyond imagination.
 
> It is terrible that 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
>
Please defeat this immediately.   It is totally unconscionable.

> * 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.
> 
It is safer to eat food in a so-called "Third-World" country in this alleged 
"First'World" U.S., which has the most adulterated food on the planet, as 
well as some of the most unhealthy people addicted to junk food, and failing 
health.   The only reason people here live longer than in "poorer" countries 
is that people by and large have the finances to purchase medicines.   The 
very food most people in the U.S. eat, the very substances that most people 
use to clean their homes, the very air most people in the U.S. breathe makes 
most people sick, whether or not they themselves are aware of it or not.   It 
is most disturbing, and must be stopped.   Food actually tastes better in 
almost any other country than the U.S., unless the food eaten in this country 
is certified organic, and even then, the organic food elsewhere often tastes 
better.   The U.S. is creating a death trap with this genetically mutilated 
food, just as it is with radiated food, a great way for people to ingest the 
precursor to many kinds of cancer, rather than ingesting good health.   
Please defeat this horrible proposals.   Imagine if your family, your 
children, your loved ones are the very ones eating this adulterated and toxic 
substance masquerading as food, for if these proposals are passed, they very 
well could be, and you would be partially responsible.   To listen to people 
who can make money from this is to listen to someone perpetrating a crime and 
denying it while right in the midst of doing it.   

Thank you.

Respectfully yours,

Audre S. Arbe
A Voting, Concerned and Aware Citizen>