Mothers and Others


		M & O Consumer Action Kit

		Introduction
		What is genetic engineering?

		Why Care?

		In the Kitchen

		In the Supermarket

		Mothers' Milk List

		On the Farm

		In the Garden

		Government
		Sample Letters to US Government
		Companies--Look Who Is Listening!
		10 Largest Companies

Food, Farms, and Genetic Engineering

Government

Assert Your Rights

Currently, U.S. government policies amount to a denial of our right to know whether our food contains genetically engineered (GE) ingredients. Although three different agencies are responsible for regulating GE crops, none requires safety testing or labeling of these novel foods. Mothers & Others' Shoppers' Campaign on Food, Farms and Genetic Engineering seeks to change these policies through citizen letters demanding adequate safety testing and labeling of GE foods.

U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) The USDA's mission is to ensure the safety and affordability of our food supply and to promote and market U.S. agricultural products here and abroad. The agency is responsible for approving GE crops for commerical production and for regulating field tests of new varieties, ensuring that companies use adequate buffer zones around test plots. Companies are supposed to demonstrate that a new GE crop won't have any significant effect upon the environment, but critics say the USDA has been lax, frequently disregarding its own field test criteria when approving new crops. The USDA has also come under fire for developing and patenting the "Terminator" technology--which sterilizes plants' offspring seeds--in conjunction with the Delta and Pine Land seed company.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

It is the FDA's job to ensure that the food we eat is safe and to provide consumers with information by regulating food ingredients and requiring nutritional content labels. In May 2000, the FDA began requiring biotech companies to consult the agency about new GE crops. The FDA recommends, but does not require, pre-market safety tests for possible health effects. In 1992, over the protest of some of its scientific staff, the FDA ruled that GE foods are no different from the products of traditional plant breeding and therefore do not have to be labeled or subjected to the level of safety testing required for food additives.

A pending lawsuit filed on May 27, 1998 alleges that the FDA's GE policy violates the agency's mandate to protect public health. And, on March 21, 2000, more than 50 consumer advocacy, environmental and health organizations filed a legal petition with the FDA. Both the petition and the lawsuit seek thorough pre-market safety testing, environmental reviews and mandatory labeling.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (FDA)
As the regulatory agency in charge of safeguarding the environment, the EPA is responsible for ensuring the environmental safety of crops genetically engineered to produce pesticides, such as Bt corn. EPA has been criticized for allegedly ignoring evidence that Bt crops could kill beneficial insects such as moths and butterflies, but the agency maintains that Bt crops did not harm the beneficial insects it tested. Yet two studies, released in 1999 and 2000 by Cornell University and Iowa State University respectively, have show that Bt corn pollen can be deadly to monarch butterfly caterpillars.

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