GMW: Consumer group sues FDA over biotech foods

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GMW: Consumer group sues FDA over biotech foods

" GM WATCH " <info

Wed, 7 Jun 2006 20:43:54 +0100

 

 

 

 

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Consumer group sues FDA over biotech foods

REUTERS, June 7, 2006

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/biotech/20060607-1051-food-gmo-lawsu\

it.html

 

WASHINGTON – A lawsuit filed Wednesday seeks to force the U.S.

government to conduct mandatory reviews of genetically engineered

foods and

require labeling of such foods once they are approved

The Center for Food Safety's suit against the Food and Drug

Administration comes after years of lobbying by environmental and

consumer groups

for more stringent regulation and labeling of biotech crops, which

biotech opponents fear can harm human health.

 

" We think the FDA should be the gatekeeper and should require... a

mandatory process that has rigorous science behind it and public

involvement and an actual approval process, " said CFS legal director

Joseph

Mendelson. " And we're asking that once these products are on the

market that

they be labeled. "

 

The FDA had no immediate comment on the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District

Court for the District of Columbia.

 

Genetically modified crops, such as soybeans, corn, and canola, are

grown widely throughout the United States, and the world leader in

development and marketing of the gene-altered crops is St. Louis,

Missouri-based Monsanto Co.

 

Yet the United States requires no independent testing of these crops or

the food products they are used in, does not mandate what data

companies must submit for review, and does not require that foods that

contain

biotech crops be labeled, CFS said.

 

Indeed, the United States has been pushing Europe, through complaints

with the World Trade Organization, to open its markets to genetically

modified food crops, despite widespread consumer opposition there.

 

" There has been a conscious effort on the part of the FDA and the

administration not to create any kind of regulatory burden for

agricultural

biotechnology, " Mendelson said. " They view this purely as an issue of

economics rather than of human health. "

 

CFS and more than fifty consumer and environmental groups, filed a

legal petition with the FDA in March 2000, asking the agency to adopt a

more rigorous approach to biotech food regulation, but the CFS said

Wednesday that the FDA had ignored the petition.

 

At various times over the last several years, different scientists,

including some within the FDA, have warned that altering the genetic

makeup of a food plant by inserting genes from one organism into another,

sometimes from an animal into a plant, for instance, could trigger

unexpected food allergies, create toxins in food, or spread

antibiotic-resistant disease.

 

Last year in Australia, scientists found that genes from a bean

engineered into pea plants created a potentially dangerous allergen in

the

biotech peas.

 

CFS said the tests that exposed that potential hazard have not been

conducted on any of the genetically modified foods currently marketed in

the United States.

 

The FDA is one of three government agencies that monitor genetically

modified crops. The U.S. Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health

Inspection Service oversees bio-crop trials and the Environmental

Protection Agency is responsible for regulating plants engineered to

produce

pesticides.

 

 

 

 

 

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