Kathleen Hart

About the author: Kathleen Hart, author of Eating in the Dark, is a journalist who has written about health and the environment for more than fifteen years. She was editor of the Environmental Health Letter and covered agriculture and biotechnology for Food Chemical News.

It is estimated that by mid-1998, the FDA had allowed at least thirty-six gene-altered foods to enter the market without labels and without sufficient scientific study of their potential safety risks. The FDA has granted genetically engineered (GE) foods the status of GRAS, or "generally recognized as safe." However, government scientists have acknowledged that there is no way to assure the safety of GE foods. In May 1998, a coalition of biologists, consumers, rabbis, and Christian clergy sued the...