A letter signed by 55 members of Congress was sent to the FDA on March 12, 2012, asking that agency to require the labeling of genetically modified foods. The letter was signed by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and fifty-one others. With the exceptions of Richard Hanna and Bernie Sanders, all signers are Democrats. Other signers include Consumers Union, the National Cooperative Grocers Association, and the National Organic Coalition.
The letter is in support of the Center for Food Safety’s legal petition filed on behalf of the Just Label It campaign. That petition was filed in October 2011, and has been signed by more than 850,000 citizens. Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director for the Center for Food Safety, said, “consumers are being misled about the foods they are purchasing. FDA’s two-decade old decision is bad policy based on outdated science and must be revoked. The American consumer deserves the same fundamental freedoms and choices of other nations’ citizens.”
Almost 50 other countries have mandatory labeling policies for GE and GMO foods, including Japan, Brazil, China, the EU, and the UK. An FDA policy statement in 1992 allowed corporations to market GE and GMO foods without labeling as long as they were “not ‘materially’ different from other foods.” Those “material” differences included taste, appearance, and smell.
The Center for Food Safety says those standards are “applying 19th century science to the regulation of 21st century food technologies.” That agency also says “the outdated standard has no legal basis in the statute and was adopted by FDA despite a lack of scientific studies or data to support the assumption that GE foods are not materially different from conventional foods.”
The letter is dated March 12, 2012, was it sent a year ago with no response from the FDA? It seems that the members of Congress could’ve written a more compelling letter. So many reasons to label GM and Nano-Tech Foods…
Would love to know who the other senators are. How can I find out?
Senators and Congressmen and women signed the letter. You can see all of the signatures by clicking on the first link in the story.
If GM foods are as safe as the biotech companies and the FDA claim, then why not label them. Since they were not tested for safety, and there are no tests for or tracking of illnesses they may cause, it sounds like they know something they don’t want us to know. I can’t eat GMOs because they give me severe stomach pains, and other serious symptoms. So I avoid all the foods and products that are likely to contain any adulterated GMOs. Since the crap is not labeled, it is very hard to do. And I have a limited diet in order to avoid them as much as possible. I eat mostly organic foods.