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Tell the Obama Administration to Create Strict Rules for Regulating Genetically Engineered Crops!

The Bush Administration USDA proposed weakening rules for genetically engineered crops on their way out. These rules would essentially allow companies in the biotech industry to regulate themselves, allow the continued contamination of organic and conventional crops, and allow food crops to be used to produce drugs, chemicals, and pesticides. We need rules that protect consumers, farmers, and the environment.

Can you demand that the Obama Administration scrap the Bush Administration rules, and create strict rules for how genetically engineered crops are regulated?

Please edit the letter below.

Subject:

Your Letter:

I am very concerned about the risks posed by genetically engineered crops--especially those crops engineered to withstand repeated applications of herbicides and crops that produce drugs and industrial chemicals. They threaten human health, organic and conventional family farmers, wildlife, and the environment. I urge USDA to withdraw the proposed rules or make substantive changes such as those presented below; publish the full Environmental Impact Statement; and suspend all new GE crop approvals in the interim.

The proposed rules contain significant loopholes; specifically, the rules allow biotech companies to self-assess the safety of their own experimental GE crops to determine whether USDA should even regulate them. This would significantly reduce USDA's oversight of a wide range of GE crops.

USDA must also use sound science to address the risks posed by GE crops rather than merely dismissing them as perception or marketing issues.

The proposed rule would also allow companies to grow some GE crops with no oversight whatsoever. This virtually ensures that contamination episodes will become more frequent. Such contamination often causes severe economic harm to farmers, and could threaten the environment as well. USDA must eliminate the Low Level Presence policy.

USDA must ban the outdoor cultivation of any and all plants engineered to produce drugs and industrial chemicals, and the production of ANY such food crops (indoors and outdoors).This is the only way to ensure that untested drugs and industrial chemicals don't end up in our food and environment.

Finally, the rule includes language that bars state or local regulation of GE crops that are more protective than its own weak standards. I strongly oppose such preemptive language that would bar local or state authorities from putting meaningful regulations or restrictions on GE crops in place that best suit their communities.

Sincerely,

USDA APHIS Comments

Docket No. APHIS-2008-0023

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