Just Label It
By Naomi Starkman | Photo By Just Label It 0
In October, the Just Label It campaign—a broad-based coalition of nearly 400 businesses and organizations dedicated to food safety and consumer rights—filed a petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to require labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods in order to give consumers the right to know what is in our food. Since then, more than 470 consumer, healthcare, environmental and farming organizations, manufacturers, and retailers have joined the campaign, which has generated over 550,000 consumer comments calling for the FDA to label GE foods. The goal of the campaign is to reach one million comments before the FDA public comment period ends in mid-April.
GE food, also known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), are foods that are altered at the molecular level in ways that could not happen naturally. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requires the FDA to prevent consumer deception by clarifying that a food label is misleading if it omits significant, "material" information. In 1992, however, the FDA issued a policy statement that defined "material" by the ability to be sensed by taste, smell or other senses. The FDA determined that GE Foods were "substantially equivalent" to conventionally produced foods, ruling that there is no “material” difference and, thus, do not require labeling. After almost 20 years, this policy is still in effect today.
"We are asking the FDA to change a decades-old and out-of-touch policy," said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety and lead author of the petition. “We want the FDA to require labeling on foods intentionally produced using genetic engineering."
Right now, the FDA is deciding whether to deregulate GE salmon and make it commercially available. According to the FDA, a salmon that is genetically engineered is not materially different from a non-GE salmon because it does not taste, smell or feel different. Without a label to tell us differently, when eating GE salmon, the public will not know if what they are consuming has been genetically altered.
Polls show that consumers demand transparency in the foods they buy and overwhelmingly support labeling of GE food. Ninety-five percent of consumers believe GE foods should be labeled, according to a poll conducted by the Consumers Union, and 93 percent of the American public want the federal government to require mandatory labeling. Labeling is required in other countries, including the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Brazil and China.
While nearly 90 percent of corn, 94 percent of soy, and 90 percent of cottonseed grown in the U.S. are from GE seeds, the safety of GE crops for human consumption has not been adequately assured. Yet unlike the strict safety evaluations for approval of new drugs, there are no mandatory human clinical trials of GE crops, no tests for carcinogenicity or harm to fetuses, no long term testing for human health risks, no requirement for long-term testing on animals, and only limited testing for allergenicity—despite the fact that some studies raise concerns that GE foods may pose an allergen risk.
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