*SAMPLE TEXT TO ROBERT KENNEDY JR., SECRETARY OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN AND HEALTH SERVICES*
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Dear Secretary Kennedy,
Genetically modified foods should have been regulated under Congress’s 1958 Food Additives law. This would have required each new GMO to go through a rigorous premarket review to be approved or rejected based on scientific evidence, but in 1992, the George H.W. Bush Administration’s Food & Drug Administration exempted GMOs from the law by declaring them “generally recognized as safe.” GRAS was meant for common, pre-1958 processed food ingredients like sugar and gelatin. It should never have been used to give a free pass to a new technology that would put things in our food we’d never eaten before.
The 1958 law defined a food additive as “any substance the intended use of which results or may reasonably be expected to result, directly or indirectly, in its becoming a component or otherwise affecting the characteristics of any food (including any substance intended for use in producing, manufacturing, packing, processing, preparing, treating, packaging, transporting, or holding food …” Under the statute, pesticides used on raw agricultural products are specifically excluded as food additives, but herbicides are not.
Monsanto’s Roundup Ready GMOs clearly should have been treated as food additives. If they were, Monsanto would have had to prove that no harm would result from their use, through extensive toxicity and feeding studies.
Instead, home gardeners, pesticide applicators and farmers have been the guinea pigs. The data from this unethical human field trial is overwhelming. Roundup’s main ingredient glyphosate causes cancer, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It can cross the blood-brain barrier, making it a contributing factor in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. People exposed to Roundup are at a higher risk of infertility. In women, glyphosate may be causing polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis, due to its endocrine-disrupting capabilities and reproductive toxicity. In men, glyphosate can negatively impact sperm quality and reduce sperm counts, while decreasing testosterone in male offspring. Mothers’ glyphosate exposure during pregnancy increases their children's risk of abnormal brain development and poor functioning, including increasing the risks of autism spectrum disorder.
According to FDA regulations, the GRAS status of a substance must be reconsidered as new scientific information emerges. It is time to revoke the GRAS status of Roundup Ready crops and put these GMOs through the food additive process they should have been subjected to in the first place. There is no doubt they would be pulled from the marketplace if the FDA were to collect evidence of the harm they are causing.
Thank you for your attention to this important issue.
[Your Name]