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FDA Ignores 1 Million Signatures Supporting GMO Labeling

  • Spence Cooper
  • April 4, 2012

The Center for Food Safety (CFS) submitted a record-breaking one million public comments to the Food and Drug Administration requesting that the agency require labeling of genetically engineered foods.

More than 450 organizations, businesses and associations united in support of the CFS legal action. The CFS petition was filed in October, 2011.

Several “Just Label It” participants also joined the Center’s petition, and together submitted over one million public comments to the FDA demanding the agency label genetically engineered food.

However, as Mike Barrett points out, the FDA has virtually erased one million signatures and comments on the “Just Label It” campaign.

“Evidently, the FDA counts the amount of signatures not by how many people signed, but how many different individual letters are brought to it. To the FDA, even tens of thousands of signatures presented on a single petition are counted as — you guessed it — a single comment. This is how, despite over a million supporters being gathered by the petition, the FDA concluded a count of only 394.”

For the FDA to brazenly eliminate one million signatures in support of GMO labeling clearly demonstrates that the FDA’s role as a regulatory agency is a meaningless sham — the agency is nothing but a contrived front working on behalf of biotech corporations like Monsanto and powerful agribusinesses and international food producers such as Cargill.

Andrew Kimbrell, an attorney for the Center for Food Safety, one of the partner groups on the Just Label It campaign, said their petition has nothing to do with whether or not genetically modified foods are dangerous.

“This petition is about a citizens’ right to know what they are eating and whether or not these foods represent a novel change.” said Kimbrell.

CFS notes that currently, the great majority of U.S. corn is genetically engineered, as are soybeans, cotton, and sugar beets. Approximately 70 percent of processed foods on supermarket shelves”from soda to soup, crackers to condiments”contain GE ingredients.

“The public has spoken, loud and clear: FDA should require the labeling of genetically engineered foods,”said Kimbrell.

FDA Ignores 1 Million Signatures Supporting GMO Labeling“Providing basic information doesn’t confuse people, it empowers them to make informed choices. Absent labeling, Americans are left in the dark, unable to choose for themselves whether to purchase GE foods”

According to CFS, in the last year, thirty-six bills dealing with the labeling of genetically engineered foods have been introduced in Alaska, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia.

And CFS claims nearly 50 countries have mandatory labeling policies for GE foods including South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, Brazil, China, Australia, New Zealand, the entire European Union, and many others.

Additionally, a letter signed by 55 Members of Congress was sent to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg requesitng the agency to require the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods.

“The bipartisan letter led by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) was written in support of a legal petition filed by the Center for Food Safety (CFS) on behalf of the ‘Just Label It campaign’ and its nearly 400 partner organizations and businesses; many health, consumer, environmental, and farming organizations, as well as food companies, are also signatories”

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