(article, Culinate staff)
Over the past few months, the Just Label It campaign demanding that genetically modified foods be labeled gathered a record-breaking one million signatures. But the Food and Drug Administration responded to the campaign's effort by disqualifying all but about 400 of those signatures. On Grist, an outraged Tom Laskawy pointed out that the FDA's disregard of public opinion is just part of a bigger pattern of acting on behalf of corporations instead of citizens. In addition to discounting the Just Label It campaign, Laskawy noted, the FDA has lately refused to ban both the endocrine-disrupting chemical BPA and the overuse of antibiotics in livestock, despite plenty of scientific evidence documenting the harmful results of both. Laskawy doesn't let Obama off the hook, either, citing his administration's "meddling" in such FDA matters as calorie labeling on movie popcorn and such USDA matters as the planting of GM alfalfa. He wraps things up bitterly: bq. That’s not to say the FDA never acts decisively. Small family farms selling raw milk and making raw cheese? The FDA is all over that! They will crush those raw-milk freaks like bugs to protect the dozens of people who might get sick. bq. But the hundreds of millions of Americans whose health is threatened by the rise of resistant bacteria in industrial meat? Or the million who would at least like to know when there are genetically modified ingredients in their food? Go file a new docket and they’ll get back to you!