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De:
Luiz Meira <luizmeira@aleph.com.br>
Data: Qui Ago 19, 1999 3:08
am
Assunto: [gen-ocidio] Religious Sue for GM food-labelling
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--
<>< Luiz Roberto Salvatori Meira
><> Equilíbrio Alimentar
http://www.aleph.com.br/~luizmeira
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De:
wytze <geno@zap.a2000.nl>
Data: Qua Ago 18, 1999 2:50
pm
Assunto: [Fwd: B-GE: Religious Sue for GM food-labelling]
Para: gentech@gen.free.de
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De:
MichaelP <papadop@peak.org>
Data: Qua Ago 18, 1999 1:07
pm
Assunto: B-GE: Religious Sue for GM food-labelling
Para: unlikely.suspects:;
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By Robert S. Greenberger
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON -- What do three rabbis, a Roman Catholic priest, a
Seventh-day Adventist minister, an Eastern Orthodox cleric and a Buddhist
who converted from Judaism have in common?
The answer: They all are part of a lawsuit in federal court here against
the Food and Drug Administration.
The suit charges that the lack of labeling of genetically engineered
foods makes it impossible for religious people to observe dietary laws and
customs. The religious plaintiffs are demanding mandatory safety testing
and labeling. The lawsuit, filed in May 1998, adds a new and unusual twist
to the debate over biofoods.
Almost since such products started appearing on supermarket shelves a
half-dozen years ago, critics worried that such experiments as splicing
flounder genes into beets to make them resistant to cold could produce
unpredictable results. In Europe, too, memories of mad-cow disease, along
with old-fashioned protectionism, have stoked antipathy toward U.S.
biofoods.
But the lawsuit filed by the religious officials charges, among other
things, that genetically altered foods are sinful, unethical - and maybe
not kosher. "The religious groups add a vital aspect," says Andrew
Kimbrell, who heads the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit group that is
litigating the action. "It brings in a lot of the ethical questions that
allow the public to better understand this."
The religious group was assembled by Steven Druker, a peripatetic lawyer,
Transcendental Meditator, Torah student and founding faculty member of
Maharishi International University in Iowa. To Mr. Druker, 52 years old,
the issue is very clear. In the Bible, Leviticus 19:19 forbids mating one
species of animal with another, as well as sowing a field with two types of
seeds. Companies and scientists who disobey this law, he declares, have
"cosmic chutzpah."
The FDA doesn't see it that way. It treats the new gene combinations in
biofoods just like the variations produced by more traditional breeding
techniques; in neither case does the regulatory agency require mandatory
screening or rules.
"Do we see [genetically engineered foods] as being so different as to be
put in a special class, and be treated differently and regulated
differently? I say no," says Eric Flamm, senior policy adviser in the
FDA's office of policy planning and legislation.
But if Mr. Druker prevails, and strict labeling is required, the
consequences for the biofood industry could be huge. "The large concern
[about labeling] in the back of everybody's mind is a boycott of
products," worries Alan Goldhammer, executive director for technical
affairs at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group. "That
could have a serious economic impact."
Mr. Goldhammer says biofoods have nutritional qualities that benefit
consumers and agronomic qualities that aid farmers. He adds that the
religious plaintiffs aren't making a "cogent argument," because "a gene is
a gene." He explains that when a cow gene is put in a tomato, "it's no
longer a cow gene," because it has been chemically synthesized in a test
tube.
Mr. Druker began to focus on forcing biofood companies to use labels in
1996. He had grown up in a not-very-observant Jewish household in Des
Moines, Iowa. But about a decade ago, divorced and practicing law in Los
Angeles, he joined a Torah study group. "I became more involved with
Judaism and studying Judaism and believing that we do have a duty to
uphold the integrity of God's creation," he says.
Several years later, Mr. Druker began research for a planned book on the
integration of religion, science and ethics. The more he researched, the
more concerned he became about genetic engineering. He decided that the
only answer to his concerns would be a lawsuit forcing food makers to at
least label the ingredients of biofoods.
Mr. Druker says that one morning in August 1996, while praying in his
apartment in tiny Fairfield, Iowa, he received guidance. "I don't want to
come across as Joan of Arc," he says, "but I felt on an inner level a very
strong inner feeling to go ahead and leave the book off for a while and go
ahead" with the legal action. And so he began crisscrossing the country,
gathering his Noah's Ark of plaintiffs, many of whom share his mystical
spirituality and distrust of authority.
In December 1996, on his first recruiting trip to the East Coast, he was
put in touch with Jossi Serebryanski, a Brooklynite and Hasidic rabbi.
Rabbi Serebryanski is part of Judaism's cabalistic tradition, which
focuses on the mystical dimension of the Torah and other Jewish law. He
told Mr. Druker that he believes there is a spiritual energy in food, an
energy he feels when he eats kosher foods. Indeed, he says, he has
channeled that energy to help heal people. He claims it has taken him
three to five minutes to heal carpal tunnel syndrome.
Mixing different species in food results in "destroying the natural
boundaries of nature," says Rabbi Serebryanski. "No one is big enough to
know all the damage that causes, and no one is big enough to repair it,"
he says. He signed on as a plaintiff.
Mr. Druker signed up four others after he spoke at the July 1998
"Summerfest of the North American Vegetarian Society" near Pittsburgh. One
listener linked him up with Father Samuel Kedala, a priest at her church,
the Holy Spirit Orthodox church in Wantage, N.J. In his written
declaration in the lawsuit, Father Kedala sounds an apocalyptical warning
against biogenetic engineering. It is the biofood industry's worst
labeling nightmare:
"Viewed from the Eastern Orthodox theological perspective, this process
appears to be utilizing the infectious, destructive forces of nature in
the creation of new life forms, which seems like a gross affront to the
Creator's original design."
Mr. Druker's speech also caught the attention of the Rev. DeWitt
Williams, director of health ministries for the Seventh-day Adventist
church in North America. About half the church's 10 million members
world-wide are vegetarians, he says. "The reason I'm concerned about
genetic foods is that many are made from soybeans," about one-third to
one-half of which have been genetically engineered, he says.
Ron Epstein, a child of the radical 1960s, was concerned about other
living things, including insects. "The basis for all Buddhist teachings is
respect for life," says Mr. Epstein, who converted to Buddhism from
Judaism. He worries that the damage from biofoods, which sometimes contain
insect genes, could be permanent. "If General Motors puts out a car, and
it's got a problem, you can recall it; genetic changes are out there
forever."
After three years of recruiting plaintiffs, Mr. Druker also even
succeeded in finding common ground between observant Jews and Muslims.
Both religions eschew pork products.
Joseph Regenstein, a Cornell University professor who has written about
biofoods, says the biofoods issue "is not a problem" for even strict
kosher certification organizations. And Mr. Druker says he doesn't think
there are any biofoods on the market that contain pigs' genes. But without
mandatory labeling, he says, there's no way to know what is in biofood.
Insects, says Mr. Druker, aren't kosher, citing the Torah's proscription
against eating "swarming, crawling creatures."
The lawsuit is also crawling along, as Mr. Druker collects more
religious supporters. According to one court document, the list recently
consisted of: 113 Christians, 37 Jews, 12 Buddhists and 122 people who
checked a box saying "my faith is not easily categorized."
=================================
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