Tell the FDA: Just label it!
Elijah Zarlin, CREDO action
Dear Friend,
Does your food contain GMOs? Incredibly, we really don't know.
An estimated 80% of processed foods sold in the U.S. contain genetically modified organisms. Yet GMO foods are totally unlabeled.1
For the past 20 years, Americans have been denied their basic right to know because of a flawed regulatory system that has relied on corporate science without adequate peer-reviewed testing and scientific oversight.
It's time for that to change.
Already more than 40 countries around the world require labeling of foods that contain GMOs. While Americans who live in the "land of the free" have no idea what's in our food, citizens in Australia, Brazil, the European Union, Japan, Russian and even China have the legal right to know.
A recent poll shows that 93% of Americans support mandatory labeling of GMOs.2
Even President Obama has said he is in favor of labeling GMOs. In a 2007 campaign speech he promised to "let folks know whether their food has been genetically modified because Americans should know what they're buying."3 But he hasn't done it.
Last week the Center for Food Safety filed a petition with the FDA, and now more than 400 businesses, co-ops and organizations are calling on the FDA to immediately implement mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods.4
Too often, genetically modified foods have been approved by the FDA, despite a lack of thorough, independent study that doesn't originate from the industries making the genetically modified foods.
In the past nine months, the Obama administration has ramped up approval of GMO crops,5 including Monsanto's Roundup Ready GMO alfalfa, Roundup Ready GMO sugar beets, GMO sweet corn, Syngenta's GMO ethanol corn and a Scotts MiracleGro variety of GMO grass for lawns. Approval for GMO salmon is currently pending. So it's clearly time that foods made with GMOs be labeled.
Let this administration know that we demand our basic right to know if the food that we're eating contains ingredients that have been genetic engineered.
Thank you for fighting for safe and healthy food.
Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets
1. "Studies show GMOs in majority of U.S. processed foods, 58 percent of Americans unaware of issue," PR Newswire, October 10, 2010
2. "Many Skeptical of Bio-Engineered Food," ABC News, June 19, 2011
3. "GMO Labeling: America's right to know," Food Democracy Now
4. "Groups File Leg al Petition With FDA Demanding Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods," Center for Food Safety, October 4, 2011.
5. "Obama's Deregulation of GMO Crops," Tikkun, May 27, 2011
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