US ACTION ALERT from the Center for Food Safety

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a new plan to eliminate regulation of certain toxins produced in food crops by means of genetic engineering. It sounds crazy, but the agency is accepting public comments right now and we need to stop this madness.

Right now, the EPA regulates what it calls plant-incorporated protectant (PIPs), which are plants engineered with pesticides in them. But now it’s planning to create a huge loophole that would use genetic engineering to ADD TOXINS to food crops with no approval needed if what they’re adding is a toxin that is naturally found in a wild relative of the plant.

The bottom line is that creating this loophole will mean more toxins can be added to our food crops using genetic engineering, with no oversight to ensure they’re safe for humans to eat! Let’s overwhelm the EPA with comments expressing widespread opposition so they have to scrap this plan and keep toxins out of our food!

Tell the EPA to stop the deregulation of toxins in genetically engineered plants!

Here’s how this works. Wild relatives of food crops sometimes contain dangerously high levels of toxins to help them ward off pests. EPA’s proposal would permit use of new genetic engineering techniques like gene editing to recreate such toxins in the foods we eat, without any regulation!

Here’s an example. When certain wild plants in the squash family cross with garden varieties, the offspring can produce fruit that makes people violently ill after just a few bites – a condition called “toxic squash syndrome"! EPA’s proposal would allow companies to artificially create such toxins in food crops, without any regulation!

Tell the EPA to reject this crazy loophole and keep our food safe!

Together we can force the EPA not to create this crazy loophole, but they need to hear from all of us.