In 1992, Monsanto toppled regulatory hurtles facing its new transgenic crops by convincing the George H.W. Bush Administration to go along with the ruse that genetically engineered foods are "substantially equivalent" to normal foods and therefore don't need to be safety tested or labeled. 

 

This was a terrible trick to play on the public, especially considering that 85% of consumers polled at the time thought it was "very important" to label genetically engineered foods. Since then, poll after poll has showed overwhelming support for the mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods. But, because genetically engineered foods haven't been labeled, currently only 26% of the public know what they're eating.

FDA scientists knew that genetically engineered foods were different in 1992. They described genetically engineered foods as "an entirely new adventure," acknowledging that genetic engineering endows plants with novel material never before found in them, including "new proteins in the human diet."

 

Eighteen years later, investigations of genetically engineered foods are confirming scientists' suspicions that biotech's scattershot technique of spraying plant cells with a buckshot of foreign genes that hit chromozomes in random spots would trigger the expression of new allergens, change the character of plant proteins, and ultimately prove to be toxic to mammals' vital organs.

President Obama's Food & Drug Administration needs to admit that, in the Bush-Quayle era of deregulation, they took the wrong approach to genetically engineered foods. On the campaign trail, Obama professed support for mandatory labeling. Now is the time for him to fulfill his promise to support consumers' right to know.