FDA Deletes 1 Million Signatures for GMO Labeling Campaign - FDA slave to Monsanto?

[polly7]

While the Food and Drug Administration has seemingly reached the limit for unbelievable behavior, the company’s decisions continue to astound and appall consumers and health activists alike.

In the agency’s latest decision, undoubtedly amazing thousands of individuals yet again, the FDA virtually erased 1 million signatures and comments on the ‘Just Label It’ campaign calling for the labeling of genetically modified foods.

The ‘Just Label It” campaign has gotten more signatures than any campaign in history for the labeling of genetically modified foods. Since October of 2011, the campaign has received over 900,000 signatures, with 55 politicians joining in on the movement. So what’s the problem here?

Evidently, the FDA counts the amount of signatures not by how many people signed, but how many different individual letters are brought to it. To the FDA, even tens of thousands of signatures presented on a single petition are counted as – you guessed it – a single comment.

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_64409.shtml

FDA Deletes 1 Million Signatures for GMO Labeling Campaign
By Mike Barrett
Natural Society
Friday, Mar 30, 2012

[Tunkamerica]

1. to be fair, they count all such petitions the same.

I started a petition to make all foods Genetically modified and they counted all 6 signatures as one.

[fasttense]

2. Just another corrupted federal department.

Wasn't the FDA promoting pink slime? You know if they want to feed ammonia washed beef scraps from off the floor to the general public, they should at least identify the crap instead of hiding it with labels like "ground beef" and "filler". That way all those people here on DU, in the FDA and at corporations who really, really want to eat pink slime can find it easier.

We all know that corporations don't want to identify the crap they sell as food because then people wont buy it and eat it. By hiding it, they get us all to eat their waste products. Next up, brown slime. Don't worry, they'll wash it in ammonia first.

[NoMoreWarNow]

9. Republicans want to get rid of it, whereas Dems support these types of regulatory agencies

and what gets lost in the shuffle is how beholden these institutions are to big business, leading to faulty regulations. The people get screwed over because of Republican greed and Dem cowardice. On the other hand, there are lots of dumb regulations that also make the regulatory agencies mostly look bad. The system is horribly out of whack.

[fasttense]

18. I support Regulatory agencies too and we need a real and active FDA.

But I support uncorrupted, active regulatory agencies not revolving doors for corporate crap.

The reason this office is corrupt is because all of government is corrupted by the 1% with their bribe money.

This office could do it's job and do it well. But they decided instead to be beholden to the same corporate bribe money that has turned our democracy into a feudal fascist oligarchy.

[NoMoreWarNow]

19. I agree totally

just that failed anti-corporate regulation fits into conservative philosophy, at least in a superficial way.

[chervilant]

24. No, next it will be

Soylent Green, and don't you know they'll be thrilled to address the overpopulation problem, as well...

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Government officials and politicians...

are Monsanto's whores, no more, no less.

Decision Allowing Monsanto and Others to Pour Political Money
Into Congressional Campaigns Is a Threat to Organic Agriculture
By Roger Blobaum

This article was first printed in the July/August 2010 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service.

If you think it’s tough now trying to derail the global campaign by Monsanto and others to mislead the media and convince gullible policymakers that GMOs are the solution to feeding the world, you haven’t seen anything yet. The U.S. Supreme Court has just handed the instigators of this effort a big political gift in its decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case.

This decision has opened the money floodgates, allowing Monsanto and other corporations to spend as much company money as they like to finance all kinds of ads supporting or opposing federal and state candidates identified by name. It’s a direct threat to candidates who promise to do something about GMO contamination of organic farms, for example, or who challenge the government’s campaign to spread GMO agriculture worldwide.

snip

But lobbying and court fights are skirmishes compared to the threat posed by this decision. This threat is driven specifically by the court’s ruling granting corporations the same free speech rights as ordinary individuals under federal, state, and local election law. This frees them for the first time to target both House and Senate candidates and other candidates for public office and to spend unlimited amounts of company money in campaigns to try to defeat them.

It also means they can spend whatever it takes to bully elected officials who support organic agriculture and who propose and support stricter regulation of GMOs and pesticides. If intimidating members of Congress in their offices in Washington fails to get results, these corporations can throw unlimited amounts of money against them in their campaigns for reelection. Do what we want now, they can warn a lawmaker or staff member, or be prepared to face the consequences at the ballot box later.

http://www.mosesorganic.org/attachments/broadcaster/roger18.4monstanto.html

Lies and Deception: How the FDA Does Not Protect Your Best Interests.


snip

The FDA and Monsanto: Strange bedfellows

Monsanto was required to submit a scientific report on rBGH to the FDA so the agency could determine the growth hormone's safety. Margaret Miller put the report together, and in 1989 shortly before she submitted the report, Miller left Monsanto to work for the FDA. Guess what her first job was? Strangely enough, to determine whether or not to approve the report she wrote for Monsanto! The bottom line is that Monsanto approved its own report. Miller was assisted by another former Monsanto researcher, Susan Sechen.

But in an article titled "Not Milk: The USDA, Monsanto, and the U.S. Dairy Industry" Ché Green, founder and director of The ARMEDIA Institute, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization focusing on farm animal issues in the United States, writes that, "The results of the study, in fact, were not made available to the public until 1998, when a group of Canadian scientists obtained the full documentation and completed an independent analysis of the results. Among other instances of neglect, the documents showed that the FDA had never even reviewed Monsanto's original studies (on which the approval for Posilac {rBGH} had been based), so in the end the point was moot whether or not the report had contained all of the original data." 7

And as though the FDA didn't already exhibit enough audacity it handed Michael Taylor the responsibility to make the decision as to whether or not rBGH-derived milk should be labeled. (At the time, Michael Taylor, who had previously worked as a lawyer for Monsanto, was executive assistant to the Commissioner of the FDA.)

http://www.smart-publications.com/articles/lies-and-deception-how-the-fda-does-not-protect-your-best-interests

[polly7]

4. Great articles, JohnyCanuck

[saras]

5. By their logic, a petition means a powerful person forced a bunch of peons to support them...

...of course it only gets one vote, that of the powerful person that organized the petition.

They simply can't imagine, let alone grasp the functioning of, actual human beings in a democracy. It's just too foreign to them.

[savannah43]

6. Why are we paying to maintain this useless agency?

It does nothing for us, so it should be eliminated. Petitioning for that might do some good. And maybe the USDA should go with it. All they do is put a government stamp on toxic plastic corporate food and run interference for corporations against the organic producers. Thus, we're paying to poison ourselves.

[NoMoreWarNow]

7. arguably they protect us from the most blatant abuses, but it's utterly corrupt that we can't simply

get our food labeled as GMO or not.

[truedelphi]

16. What blatant abuses are our agencies protecting us from?

Japanese nuke reactors are spewing forth radiation - and our EPA decides to shut down its offices that are monitoring the situation.

FDA created the problem with GMO foods by letting Mike Taylor decide that the crap is similar to conventional foods. (circa Clinton era.)

Except for occasional food recalls, the FDA is nothing but a rubber stamp that ENDS people' s health.

[They_Live]

8. I would like to invite everyone to

get a stamp, an envelope, and a piece of paper and write a quick note to the FDA demanding that GMO food product be labled. It will only take a few minutes. I'm sure they'll love to get all that mail. I would really like to be able to follow their rules.

[drynberg]

10. FDA & USDA NEED TO BE TOTALLY "CLEANED"...

not by bullshit or "spin" but by firing all those who have been proved corrupt and by stopping the "revolving door" of US agencies and corporate $$ jobs right friggin' NOW. Enough of this nonsense and corruption, our very lives and those of our off-spring are at risk to being damaged or KILLED by this terrible selling off of our lives by bureaucratic hacks on the take. Question is: How do we do this right away?

[freshwest]

11. Stop running from the right and elect a truckload of environmentalists and health foodies.

Really, I mean that. Once upon a time, people were looking forward to cleaner air, water and food. In addition to all the other rights they thought civilization existed to promote. For too long we've had a bunch of narrow minded crooks being elected. Because people got busy, got brainwashed or gave up. IMHO.

[truedelphi]

15. I have no idea. Mike Taylor, who is among the worst of the worst of the worst,

Was given a high position by none other than Bill Clinton. And now Obama has him heading the FDA.

It was Taylor who put together the "scientific" doctrine that GMO foods are similar to conventional foods, and therefore need no testing. Not because of decades of research - but because Mike Taylor said they were!

[NoMoreWarNow]

20. exactly-- most Dems just seem clueless on this, or worse, bought and sold like the right

all we can do is try to educate people on this key issue, and hope we can stop it before Monsanto destroys agriculture.

[freshwest]

12. Slave to corporations, just like big pharma. Took off running at light speed in the Bush years,

With his 'let them regulate themselves, let the market and the invisible decide,' crappola. Well, it looks like the complaints about regulation being irrational was a self-serving lie. But their other one, about it hurting their business was true.

It hurts mega corporations who are killing people and destroying the desire of people who want to live free from having the most important aspects owned by these sociopaths. We need regulation to bring them into line but we won't get it with the media shills telling the folks that they're gonna starve or catch some awful disease if they don't agree to everything these pigs are offering us.

We are not united as a people, we don't respect each other and we don't get involved in government enough. We get what we work for, not what is handed down. The government and regulation are not the problem, the solution is to clean the agency up, or get the laws passed from state to state on COO, GMO and the like. To build and support local initatives and those who produce healthy food.

The EU has banned this stuff, and a lot of other things, because they believe in the common good, not just what's good for the pocketbook of some. We will not change the system here until we unite. In the meantime they will continue to pick us off one by one.

[quakerboy]

13. So does that mean if I send them 20 different letters

Each in its own envelope, I get to count 20 times as much?

[leftyohiolib]

14. this country's goverment is so infected i just want to pull my hair out

having to constantly fight with people who can barely write their name in the snow with a stick. USA!USA!USA!

[truedelphi]

17. Uh, the only problem is that the FDA is run by the people that Obama

Appointed. He is a constitutional scholar. He can write his name with a stick.

The main problem facing We The American People is not just stupidity, but also corruption.

[leftyohiolib]

21. the comment was made in a more general sense and not specific to this

but to talks about aca and brocolli, death panels, birthcertificates, union thugs , kenyon musilms with bad association to christian preachers, etc....

[magic59]

22. Ah yes, Monsanto.

The Agra Monster, much worse then Godzilla, Gamera or Mothra, this monster devours every family farm and organic plant in its path. It has powers beyond all others, money and the US government. A monopolistic monstrosity brought to you by paid off politicians.
Nothing can stop it, will turn the US into another Haiti.

[CanSocDem]

23. Replace...

...the industrial food industry with natural, organic plants. Think Globally, Act Locally.

.

[Sue McGovern]

25. April Fool's Joke Not True: FDA Did NOT Delete 1 Million GMO Labeling Petition Comments

The claim that Just Label It's record-breaking one million petition comments had been deleted by the FDA is not true. In fact, JLI submitted 1,149,967 comments to the FDA's www.regulations.gov site by midnight on March 27th, the final date comments were accepted. It took only 180 days for the comments to be generated on the GMO labeling petition, (Docket # FDA 2011-P-0723-001/CP), which had been filed in October 2011. JLI was started specifically to generate support for the petition and the labeling of genetically engineered foods.
“Submitting gathered signatures and uploading them to www.regulations.gov together has been common practice as long as the public has been able to submit electronic comments," said Heather Whitehead, True Food Network Director at the Center for Food Safety (CFS). "Perhaps this record number of commenters calling for transparency in labeling will focus the FDA to action on this issue, and put pressure on FDA to allow in the future for increased transparency in the public comment process by making changes necessary to allow for individual comments directed from third party sites."
JLI could have printed out every comment and delivered them to the FDA to count individually, but uploading them electronically prevents wasteful use of natural resources and was the best option. While it is an outdated system, it is not true that the FDA deleted Just Label It's comments. You just need to file a FOIA request to see them. For further details, please visit www.justlabelit.org/blog/

[pinto]

26. fwiw, axisoflogic is a highly unreliable source. Little editorial oversight, save for a decidedly

anti-government, conspiratorial agenda. Many of the printed submissions are anti-semitic, as well.

In a Venn diagram view I'd see them overlapping with many teabagger extremists, at least in tone and veracity. I'd take them with a large grain of salt.

[polly7]

27. Of course, pinto.

Mind pointing out the anti-semitic parts of the article, or should we just take your word they're there? I think most media anymore overlaps with teabagger estremist views were then part of a Venn Diagram, "at least in tone and variety". I take most / all of them with a grain of salt. Some, such as this one, I found very interesting, given what I know of Monsanto and any government agency.

But thanks, I'm sure you'll want to report this soon.