Once again the government has overlooked our interests and have sided with the interests of big business. Rather than require mandatory labeling or pre-market safety testing of genetically engineered foods, the FDA proposed voluntary labeling guidelines for foods that have special biotech ingredients, or genetically modified organisms, despite medical and scientific warnings.

This is good news, however, for the biotech industry which has so vehemently fought against the mandatory labeling of gene-altered foods.

We deserve to know what's in our foods, yet the FDA is working with the biotech industry to keep genetic engineering a secret ingredient. Why are we denied the right to know when the labeling of genetically engineered foods is required throughout Europe, Japan, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and other countries?

Also, the FDA's policy states that claims such as "biotech-free" would not be allowed because of the difficulty of proving it. But a label that reads "We do not use ingredients that were produced using biotechnology" would be OK. The new guidelines also would prevent the promotion of non-biotech products as being superior to biotech products, and it would disallow the commonly used term "genetically modified" in describing biotech crops.

Why are genetically engineered foods not subject to tighter regulatory controls? It all goes back to the Bush administration and a policy in which it developed. According to the policy, the FDA is to consider gene-altered crops to be the same as those which are produced by conventional means, and are thus not subject to the tighter regulatory controls for food additives.

As a result of such lax controls, the FDA will allow gene-altered foods on the market without long-term safety tests for effects in the diet or the environment. This is exactly what the biotech industry had hoped for -- less stringent regulations -- since they were the ones who requested the new policy and labeling guidelines which the FDA has so willingly enacted. They say that further regulation is unnecessary and worry that mandatory labeling of gene-altered products could raise unnecessary public fears about the products and strangle the industry (i.e. profits).

Additional info:

• A new Greenpeace report, Genetically Engineered Food: Still Unlabeled and Untested, has found that only three health studies on genetically engineered foods have been published in peer-reviewed journals. None of these met scientists' recommendations that gene altered foods be tested for 90 days, nor did they meet the FDA's own testing requirements for food additives that would require, in some cases, up to two years multiple feeding studies. The biotech company studies that the FDA relies on to assess new altered crops are generally not submitted for peer review and not available for public scrutiny.

• Doctors and scientists warn that genetically engineered foods could trigger allergies, have increased levels of toxins, or could hasten the spread of antibiotic resistance.

• Genetic engineering in agriculture involves splicing a gene from one organism, such as a bacterium, into a plant or animal to confer certain traits, such as drought tolerance or insect resistance in plants.

• Since the FDA has refused to require the labeling of Genetically Engineered foods and because the StarLink corn has turned up in at least three supermarket foods, a list has been compiled to help consumers avoid Genetically Engineered foods. It is intended to help consumers avoid mass food experiments because consumers should not be used as guinea pigs.

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