Sacramento Union Columnist Mark Williams Conducts Special Investigative Report

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SACUNION ORIGINAL: Is Pet-killing Wheat Gluten in the Human Food Too?

April 30, 2007

ACRAMENTO – Trying to get questions answered by food producers, sellers, regulators and the importers of the contaminated wheat gluten that has caused a consumer panic over pet food has resulted in a frightening answer: nobody knows for sure but the “off the record” answer ranges from “maybe” to “probably” and they were worried. On the record, nearly everybody ducks the question and recites some version of “we put consumers first, now call the FDA because it’s not our responsibility” mantra.

I got curious and started asking the question when officials initially refused to identify the importer of the polluted food ingredient and I started to notice “wheat gluten” on the lists of ingredients in many items we commonly buy for our own consumption. We were already shopping very carefully for our own pets but on a whim while shopping for us, I used my cell phone to call the toll-free consumer telephone number listed on a box of my favorite cereal to inquire as to the origin of the wheat gluten listed on that particular box.

You would have thought that I was calling the Pentagon and asking for the nuclear codes from the reaction that I got. The first response from the nice woman on the phone was that the origin of all the ingredients in my cereal is “listed on the box.” “Really? Where?” was my response. The nice woman suddenly got not so nice and said, “That information is protected.” I said “thank you” and returned the box to the shelf.

In the exchange of emails and telephone conversations with food industry and regulatory spokesmen that followed, I have learned a number of astonishing things. For starters, almost nobody will go on the record with more than guarded generalities and expressions of deep caring for the wellbeing of consumers, not without at least being prodded. That includes everybody from our friendly neighborhood supermarket to the taxpayer paid media and communications people at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – the very people charged with keeping the public informed and ensuring the safety of our food supply.

By now, we are all aware of the story of pet food manufactured under nearly 100 brand names ranging from discount noname brands to respected, upscale brands pulled from store shelves in the United States and Canada. The same Canadian based company, Menu Foods Income Fund Inc. of Streetsville, Ontario, manufactured all these brands. The pet foods were recalled after reports of a number of domestic cats and dogs suffering kidney failure. Tests identified a common filler, wheat gluten, imported from a brokerage in China as the likely source.

Officially, none of the tainted import made its way into the food human food supply. Unofficially it is a different story.

According to KIRO AM, Seattle talk show host David Goldstein, Del Monte Foods spokesperson Melissa Murphy-Brown, responded in an email that the corrupted ingredient was in fact “Food Grade.” That means that the suspect gluten was cleared by the FDA for inclusion in my favorite cereal. Del Monte voluntarily recalled a number of pet foods that it manufactures and that may have been contaminated but as of yet has not announced any recall or problems with any of the human foods it sells.

Nevertheless, the FDA quietly ordered a “quarantine” of unspecified human food products when they reportedly tracked a supply of the poisoned material into the human food chain. Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine, confirmed to CBS News that the FDA had gone so far as to warn the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta (CDC) “to put a special emphasis on looking at increased incidents of renal failure in people.”

So far, the suspect human food has tested okay, and the CDC says there have been “no spikes” in human renal failure – yet, that is. Both agencies confess as to being clueless as to where the 792-metric tons of possibly poisoned, food-grade wheat gluten from China may have ultimately wound up. As of this writing, neither will they comment on the quarantine, identify the products or even where in the country they were found. For its part the importer is on the record as saying that, “none of the recalled product was shipped to facilities manufacturing food for human consumption.”

The importer of the bad gluten, ChemNutra Inc of Las Vegas, Nevada lists on its Web site (www.chemnutra.com) a long list of animal and human food additives, and one pharmaceutical ingredient that it imports all from China. A spokesperson for the company told The Union that the Web site reflects more the “ambitions” of the company than the factual extent of their operations and pointed to an obvious error on the site – his own phone number on the Web site was incorrect.

At the same time a source close to the importer told me in a telephone conversation that the substance, melamine, suspected in the poisonings is not routinely tested for.

“It’s not like CSI where the stuff leaps out at you, you have to be looking for it.” Del Monte told CNN’s Joe Johns that the concentration of melamine found – 6 percent or higher – “would be considered a very large amount if this was random, in other words, accidental.”

The CNN story implies that the contamination is something other than “random” or “accidental.” Why would somebody intentionally contaminate wheat gluten? According to Dan Watts, a chemist with the New Jersey Institute of Technology, melamine is “rich in nitrogen” as is protein. Watts points out that the presence of nitrogen in the gluten would make the gluten appear to be richer in protein, and thus more valuable. Watts also told CNN that there to date has been no research showing ill effects from exposure to melamine. CNN’s Johns reports that the FDA is investigating the possibility that someone was attempting “a scam” without the intent to cause physical harm.

Of course, that brings us back to the question of our own food supply: Could someone be playing the same kind of game with gluten intended for human consumption?

One Union / www.marktalk.com source, in the business of importing food ingredients from China but who would not agree to be named, told us that the way the business works is that any given US import company simply contacts a broker in China who assembles the desired materials from multiple sources throughout that country and then ships them to the U.S. The spokesman compared looking for contaminants in these imports to the Homeland Security issues involved in “…looking for a nuclear bomb in shipping containers.There is just so much coming in that nobody can look at it all.”

For its part, the FDA admits that they inspect only a tiny percentage of imported foodstuffs and reports from China indicate that authorities there are only just taking the first baby steps in trying to modernize what is a Third World agricultural system where controls and standards are sketchy, at best. (Indeed, as this article was being prepared the FDA announced an “urgent warning” regarding potential botulism contamination of olives imported from Italy, a country hardly in the Third World and one where experience in handling olives is not exactly thin).

In the case of ChemNutra, the broker that they used was Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Ltd., Mainland China. An English-Language Web site for Xuzhou Anying (http://www.alibaba.com/company/10926883.html) lists a number of other foods and products exported to the United States including carrots, garlic, ginger, corn protein powder, other vegetables, and livestock feed.

Is all of that stuff safe? Is anybody checking? How much of what is going where? I asked an FDA spokesperson all those question, and more via email. In a return email she started by informing me that her response was “…provided to you (me) on background. Please attribute to an FDA spokesperson” and then answered each and every one of my questions by telling me to consult the FDA Web site!

Is any of this on Sacramento store shelves?

Realizing that our efforts to keep Chinook the Black Cat and Casey the Pound Dog safe would be for naught if our own food killed my wife and me, thus making them orphans, I contacted Pleasanton, Calif.-based Safeway, West Sacramento based Raley’s and two randomly selected makers of brand name food we normally buy.

I used the customer “contact us” link at Safeway.com and asked “Does ChemNutra Inc. of Las Vegas, NV supply any ingredients, of any kind, to Safeway brands foods; especially store bakery items?”

The answer came in a return email from Steve Gris at the Safeway’s Customer Care Center: “Unfortunately, the information you have requested is proprietary.” Gris also directed me to the “Investor Relations Link” at www.safeway.com for “information you (me) may find useful.” I went and I did not. He also provided me with the toll-free customer care telephone number where one of Safeway’s “associates” would be “happy” to “discuss” the issue further. I replied with an email clearly identifying myself as a journalist and restated my question. That email as of deadline has gone unanswered.

I then emailed to Nicole Townsend, Raley’s / Bel Air / Nobb Hill Foods Communications Manager the following question: “Does your company do business with ChemNutra or any other importer of Chinese imports in the manufacture of your own house brands of food?” I also asked her if Raley’s would contact its suppliers in order to identify those products containing ingredients imported from China or via ChemNurta and that if they would somehow inform consumers which products, if any, on their shelves contained those imported ingredients.

After a short email dance, she sent me (to my relief as a customer) the following email:

“We do not directly do business with ChemNutra or any other importer of Chinese imports to produce the products we manufacture in our central Bakery and at our dairy.

“Of the house brands we have manufactured by a vendor partner for our company, very few are made from products or imported from China. Those that are — canned mushrooms and Mandarin oranges, for instance — are clearly labeled on the packaging as products of China and contain all ingredients included in the productas required by law.

“In regards to our pharmaceutical products, we do not purchase products from ChemNutra or importers of Chinese imports. In fact, virtually all of our pharmaceutical products are purchased directly from U.S. companies.

“In regards to our fresh meat products, we do not currently import any of our fresh meat products. If we did so, we would label it clearly according to its country of origin labeling on the packaging.”

A call to the toll-free consumer line on a Quaker Oats product to inquire as to the source of wheat gluten in their food was answered quickly by the customer service representative who assured me that “all Quaker Oats” ingredients are “domestic” in origin and that they do not use imported wheat gluten.

General Mills’ customer service representative was a little confused and cited “law” prohibiting her from answering my question, so I called their main corporate telephone number and spoke with Maureen Ball, General Mills, Inc. Corporate Relations Coordinator. She promised to look into the matter and shortly after responded with an email in which she assured me that “General Mills does not purchase wheat gluten from China or from suppliers to Menu Foods.”

What is in the Gluten?

New York State health officials initially reported the presence of aminopterin, a rodent poison banned in the United States but commonly used in China. FDA investigators found an additional contaminant; melamine, an ingredient used in the manufacture of plastics but that may also be used as a fertilizer.

On April 11, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review reported that scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, had found indications of yet a third contaminant. Dr. Richard Goldstein, associate professor of medicine at Cornell and a member of the FDA team investigating the outbreak told the paper that: “There appears to be other things in there (the wheat gluten), other than the melamine, but identifying what they are is a long process.” Goldstein says his laboratory work has not uncovered any evidence of the aminoptern found by New York State health officials and adds that the melamine itself may not be the culprit but is “a marker distinctive to this outbreak.”

How serious is the outbreak and who’s killing Fluffy and Fido?

According to health officials, the number of sick or dead pets attributable to this outbreak is fewer than 20. Yet according to a national chain of over 600 veterinary hospitals, the number is higher, much higher. Portland, Ore-based Banfield Hospital says that based on a survey of 615 clinics they estimate that as many as 39,000 pets may have been sickened or killed since the problem first surfaced.

It has gradually emerged that Menu Foods knew early on that they had a serious problem on their hands. According to the FDA’s Sundlof, Menu Foods told the FDA that they began receiving reports of dogs and cats being sickened and dying on Feb. 20. They claim to have started testing their products a week later on Feb. 27. Menu fed suspect food to “40-50” dogs and cats. 7 of the animals died. In what he calls a “horrible coincidence” Menu Foods Chief Financial Officer, Mark Weins, sold 45 percent of his stock in the company on Feb. 26 and 27. The first public announcement and initial recall was made on March 16.

Robert W. Luba is the Chairman of Menu Foods Income Fund, Inc. His former position was President of Safety Kleen Corp., a hazardous and industrial waste collection company which itself is the successor to a company called Laidlaw Environmental Services. Both companies and Mr. Luba had been the subject of lawsuits from environmental concerns, and at least one class action by Safety Kleen shareholders alleging accounting irregularities designed to conceal the financial condition of both Safety Kleen and its predecessor, Laidlaw Environmental Services (US District Court for the District of South Carolina, case no. 3-00-114517 April 2006).

Menu Foods came to being in its present form in 2001 and is set up in Canada as an “Income Trust.” That Canadian legal technicality allows the company to avoid corporate income taxes. Despite dominating the North American pet food market and having several US plants the company reported a 2005 loss of more than $54 million (Canadian dollars) and suspended payments to the trustees (stock holders).

While hit hard by the recall of its products it is said by observers to not be in danger of going under simply because it dominates the market.

A Final Footnote

On April 12, the FDA highlighted the largely honor-system style enforcement of U.S. food safety by announcing that contaminated pet food still appeared on hundreds of store shelves.

Two of Menu Foods’ largest customers are household names and manufacture hundreds of products including, probably, a large percentage of the items in your grocery cart. They are Proctor & Gamble and Swiss-based international conglomerate Nestle.

Nestle announced on April 12, 2007 the acquisition of Gerber Products. Gerber represents 79 percent of the US baby food market.

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Mark Williams is a national talk radio host based in Sacramento. Contact him through his Web site, www.marktalk.com.

Ya-da, ya-da, ya-da, what’s with the “defacating into holes?” You’re getting off the issue with all of these derogatory remarks and would do better to stay focused on the subject. But that’s not your schtick, is it? Why the insults to the farmers who most likely had nothing to do with the mixing of melamine into the wheat gluten? Surely the scrap melamine would have been added in the manufacturing or distributing process by a greedy merchant with no regard for the consumer. That is the downside of capitalism run amok.
As for the GM angle, of course, the premise is not that the “farmer walking barefoot behind a water buffalo” has created, or defacated, the GM seeds (if indeed they even exist) any more than the farmer digging his cowboy boots into his John Deere deluxe has engineered Bt corn. That work is always done in a lab by scientists, not farmers. If the seeds exist, they would have to have been given to the farmer by his or her government or another government with a financial interest in their being sown in China far away from unsuspecting consumers and where laws may prohibit their cultivation.
But whatever the source of the contamination, our government needs to get to the bottom of it, inform the people, and rectify the situation. Our food supply is supposed to be regulated and safe. That is the government’s obligation to us and we pay taxes for that privilege. If they will not uphold this responsibility, a private watchdog group, the media, or someone else privy to the situation should investigate and determine the extent of the contamination and inform the public. We have the right to know and the truth will come out eventually. Hopefully it won’t be years, or even months, from now. I’m surprised there is not more commenting on your article, which is the most in depth I have seen so far in the media. The American people are in their usual stupor. They will eat almost anything!! And like it, too. More soma, please.

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-> Posted by debbie rubin / May 05, 2007

You won’t see the media dig into this story in any meaningful way. The simple fact of the matter is that the corporate interests involved are the media’s bread and butter (no pun intended) and it is very bad form to bite the hand that feeds. This is why the Union and my new independent broadcast (to be announced May 29) are so important, we have yet to be compromised. People who defecate into holes in the floor - like a cat in its box - are not doing advanced scientific research. The thought is a very funny one in fact. In terms of Black Helicopter stuff I’d be far more worried about food grown in this country, I also go out of my way to avoid anything marked “organic”. That word on a food product can only mean one of two things: At best it appears on the product as a marketing gimick to command a higher price for an inferior product (like the Chinese spiking fillers)...at worst it means that the product is full of bugs and germs that will kill you.

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-> Posted by Mark Williams / May 05, 2007

Fox is not the only one who sees a plausible connection between gm crops and the presence of melamine, aminopterin,and cyanuric acid, amiloride and amilorine. Of course, the intentional contamination using scrap garbage contaminated with who knows what else besides melamine (being that it is “scrap” means probably impure even as far as melamine goes) is also appaling.
As for your safeway rep telling you they “do not DIRECTLY do business with ChemNutra...” i wonder if any of their suppliers do business with ChemNutra or other importers. Things change hands so many times, importer, distributers, manufacturers of additives, I don’t know. It’s apparently a murky path, even for the FDA. I personally always ask if the company had independently tested their products and supplies for melamine or melamine derivatives or precursors. Of course, I usually get no answer other than that they have strong quality control procedures in place....but are they looking for melamine? But I try to get it in writing on email. You see how Quaker Oats changed their answer after I emailed them back that I was forwarding their responce to everyone I know. Frankly, I don’t know which to believe. My intuition tells me I’ve been eating Melamine for months, or maybe even years.
Also, I find the FDA statement that melamine is not known to pose any significant health risks to human beings at least partially true, although it may be suspected. I believe the key words there are “is not known.” From my reading, there has been no testing on human models, only rats--it was carcinogenic to them--and maybe dogs. Well, we see what happened to dogs and cats, anyway. What about the cyanuric acid, cyanamide, amiloride and amilorine and combinations thereof with melamine, your kidneys, your biological chemistry, etc? Does anyone know. We may find out if the government starts releasing info. We don’t even know who, if anyone, has been consuming it or feeding it to their children. How will we track adverse events? So many somewhat educated people I talked to yesterday were not even fully aware of the extent of the situation--that 3 million melamine-fed chickens entered the food supply. It was buried on page 6, lower inside panel of our local St. Petersburg Times. There is very little news coverage locally or on cable. Why isn’t Bill ORielly taking this on--or one of those other in depth reporters who devotes whole shows to issues like immigration, scandals of various ilks.. The whole country may have consumed contaminants with unknown repercussions and no one wants to talk about it or investigate it or understand it. I’m fed up, literally.

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-> Posted by debbie rubin / May 03, 2007

Great work Debbie… careful of Dr. Fox there though, I think his tin-foil hat is coming loose. Farmers who walk barefoot behind water buffalo do not engage in UC Davis style research. There is absolutely no evidence that the Chinese are doing anything beyond conducting a confidence game but selling cheap knock off filler as quality food, or that the Godless Commie Reds have the ability to get their ancient, Third World systems cranked up to combat it.

What they are doing is like taking a car with a broken down engine, slapping a coat of nice paint on it and selling it as new.

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-> Posted by Mark Williams / May 02, 2007

really now, these are Dan, the Quaker Oats Man’s, latest reassurances. “All over the world....except China.”

RE: Quaker Rice Cakes , REF.# 026071794C

Debbie:

Thank you for writing back. Your comments are certainly appreciated as your concerns are very important to us. We share your concern for the importance of maintaining a safe food and beverage supply.

As much as we would like to help, we are unable to share the specific information you requested. We currently do not use rice protein concentrate or rice protein as an ingredient in Quaker products. It may help you to know that we do not purchase any grains (oats, wheat, corn, rice) from China.

Thank you for your interest in our products.

Dan
Quaker Consumer Response
=============================================
Can you give me the parameters of your PepsiCo or approved audit firm’s analyses? What does it involve? I bet up until last month, they would not have been looking for melamine or cyanamide or cyanuric acid.

Debbie Rubin

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-> Posted by debbie rubin / May 02, 2007

Here’s Dan, the Quaker Oats man’s, latest email. Looks like he was up early, 5am. I’m not sure what to believe now. Maybe in his last email he meant all over the world...except China.

RE: Quaker Rice Cakes , REF.# 026071794B

Debbie Rubin:

Our grains and other ingredients are sourced from all over the world. As previously stated, all of our ingredient suppliers, regardless of their location/country, must:
1) meet all applicable US food laws.
2) have an approved audit by PepsiCo or approved audit firm which includes all quality documents.

We hope this information is helpful.

Dan
Quaker Consumer Response

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-> Posted by debbie rubin / May 02, 2007

hopefully dr. micheal w. fox will forgive my repasting of his article blogged by someone else, so i cannot account for its veracity. i only offer it as---food for thought, not government fodder!

A Genetic Engineered Food Disaster?
By Dr. Michael W. Fox
I have received several letters from dog and cat owners thanking me for ‘saving their animal’s lives’ because they were feeding them the kind of home-made diet that I have been advocating as a veterinarian for some years. These letters came after the largest pet food recall in the pet food industry’s history.
On March 23, the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets announced that rat poison in contaminated wheat gluten imported from China was responsible for the suffering and deaths of an as yet uncounted numbers of cats and dogs across North America. The poison is a chemical compound called aminopterin.
Veterinary toxicologists with the ASPCA and American College of Internal Veterinary Medicine shared my concern that there may be some other food contaminant (s) in addition to the aminopterin that was sickening and killing many pets. Experts were not convinced that the finding of rat poison contamination was the end of the story.
On March 30, the FDA reported finding a widely used compound called melamine (formed by dehydration of urea and used in the manufacture of plastics, as a wood resin adhesive, and in slow-release urea fertilizer), in the suspect pet foods. The FDA claims the melamine was the cause of an as yet uncounted number of cat and dog poisonings and deaths. The FDA could not find the rat poison, aminopterin, in the samples it analyzed; however a lab in Canada, at the University of Guelph, has confirmed the presence of rat poison. There may be other substances of a hazardous nature not yet discovered in these manufactured pet foods that include other ingredients considered unfit for human consumption, and from around the world.
The Associated Press cited the Environmental Protection Agency as having identified melamine as a contaminant and byproduct of several pesticides, including cryomazine. People began to question if there is also pesticide contamination of the wheat gluten. Is there a possibility of deliberate contamination, or is it the result of gross mismanagement and lack of effective food-safety and quality controls that accounts for levels of melamine reported to be as high as 6.6% by the FDA in samples of the wheat gluten?
A brief internet search quickly reveals that the widely used insect growth regulator cryomazine is not only made from melamine, but it also breaks down into melamine after ingestion by an animal. Wheat gluten is wheat gluten, fit for human consumption, so the question remains, what was wrong with this gluten that it was only bought for use in pet food?
On April 3 Associated Press named the US importer as ChemNutra of Las Vegas, reporting that the company had recalled 873 tons of wheat gluten that had been shipped to three pet food makers and a single distributor who in turn supplies the pet food industry.
What of the uncounted number of people whose cats and dogs became sick, and even died? Several letters that I have received indicate costs of in the thousands of $ per animal; and what of long-term care costs for animals suffering from chronic kidney disease?
While Congressional hearings are now being called for by grieving pet owners, and class action suits put together, this debacle could have catastrophic consequences not only for conventional agribusiness, of which the pet food industry is a lucrative subsidiary, but also for the agricultural biotechnology industry, with its millions of acres of genetically engineered crops around the world.
I reach this conclusion, until there is evidence to the contrary, for the following reasons:
1. The wheat gluten imported from China was not for human consumption, because, I believe, it had been genetically engineered. The FDA has a wholly cavalier attitude toward feeding animals such ‘frankenfoods’ but places some restrictions when human consumption is involved (yet refuses appropriate food labeling).
2. The ‘rat poison’ aminopterin is used in molecular biology as an anti-metabolite, folate antagonist, and in genetic engineering biotechnology as a genetic marker. This could account for its presence in this imported wheat gluten.
3. The ‘plastic’, ‘wood preservative’, contaminant melamine, the parent chemical for a potent insecticide cyromazine, could well have been manufactured WITHIN the wheat plants themselves as a genetically engineered pesticide. This is much like the Bt. insecticidal poison present in most US commodity crops that go into animal feed.
4.So called ‘overexpression’ can occur when spliced genes that synthesize such chemicals become hyperactive inside the plant and result in potentially toxic plant tissues, lethal not just to meal worms and other crop pests, but to cats, dogs, birds, butterflies and other wildlife; and to their creators. (For details, see my book Killer Foods: What Scientists Do to Make Food Better is Not Always Best. Lyon’s Press, 2004).
How else can one account for samples of pet food containing as much as 6% melamine? It was surely not mixed in such amounts when the wheat gluten was being processed, but rather was already in the wheat, along with the aminopterin genetic marker. My suspicion is that the FDA was aware that the gluten came from genetically engineered wheat that was considered safe for animal consumption.
I could be wrong. But a greater wrong is surely for the pet food industry to use food ingredients and food and beverage industry by-products considered unfit for human consumption; to continue to do business without any adequate government oversight and inspection; and for government to give greater priority to agricultural biotechnology and the patenting of genetically engineered crops and animals, and not to organic, humane, ecologically sound and safe food production.
I believe that there is evidence of gross negligence, not simply on the part of the pet food industry, but by all who are responsible for food quality and safety in the global market that is clearly dysfunctional. The Pet Food Institute should start an emergency fund to compensate all veterinary expenses incurred as a result of this—and any future—mass poisonings of people’s beloved animal companions.

Dr. Michael W. Fox

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-> Posted by debbie rubin / May 01, 2007

please remove my email address from one of my above copies to you if at all possible. i think i got a little overly zealous and copied it by mistake.

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-> Posted by debbie rubin / May 01, 2007

as you can see from general mills, more of the same care and concern, but they do source from whereever.

Dear Mr. Rubin:

Thank you for contacting General Mills with your inquiry.

General Mills does source some ingredients and packaging from outside the US. General Mills has strong internal requirements and programs to ensure that all of its imported ingredients and products are obtained from safe and reliable sources.

In addition, where country-of-origin labeling requirement exists, General Mills fully complies with all applicable laws by placing the required label on the back of the package, along with other pertinent consumer information.

The health and well-being of our consumers is our highest priority. General Mills’ own internal sourcing programs and safeguards, in combination with existing laws and requirements, ensure the safety of our products.

We hope you find this information helpful. Please let us know if we can help you again.

Sincerely,

Alexandria Richards

Consumer Services

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-> Posted by debbie rubin / May 01, 2007

RE: Quaker Rice Cakes , REF.# 026071794B

Debbie Rubin:

We hope this information is helpful.

Dan
Quaker Consumer Response
=============================================
General Mills has assured me that their grains are grown in the US. Can you do the same? I will only buy grains grown in the US and am beginning to investigate the origins of additives. Are all of your ingredients grown in the US. I will buy organic until I have assurance of that from you and other manufacturers. I prefer to buy organic anyway, but my children like your cereals and rice cakes. For now, they are off limits until I hear back from you. Many people I know feel the same way. Hopefully you are hearing from them as well.

Awaiting your reply,

Debbie Rubin
mamarubin@msn.com
EMAIL*MESSAGE*END

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-> Posted by debbie rubin / May 01, 2007

is the aminopterin “marker” you speak of a genetic marker for gmo crops; i have read about it being used as such. there is an article i will try to forward you by a scientist who has written a book about the danger of gmo crops overexpressing the built-in toxins. also, quaker oats emailed me that they source their grains, etc on the open market, an email i out of disgust forwarded to all of my family and friends. i will forward to you as well. it took 4 or 5 emails to get. and phonecalls. i am having the same brick walls thrown up as you and can no longer even reach a person at the fda. all of my emails are unanswered from the congress and fda.

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-> Posted by debbie rubin / May 01, 2007