You may have heard that the FDA has approved Aquabounty's GMO salmon -- but not as food, but as an animal drug, though the FDA also claims that the salmon is safe to eat. And supermarkets won't be selling Aquabounty's salmon as a "drug," but as food -- and they won't label that food as GMO food. That's as good an occasion as any to tell your Senators that you want genetically-modified organisms in food labeled as such, as Consumers Union helps you do. The fact that the FDA put Aquabounty's GMO salmon through a less rigorous process (for "animal drug" testing, versus food testing) for determining its safety doesn't bode well, nor does the FDA's reliance on Aquabounty's own studies which -- hard to believe, Harry! -- found the GMO salmon completely safe. Many grocery stores (including a few big chains like Kroger's, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods) won't sell any GMO salmon, but you may not be near any of these stores, and if you remain concerned that self-interested corporations have too much control over the GMO science, you ought to tell your Senators how you feel about it.
Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee advanced H.R. 3713, the Sentencing Reform Act, to the House floor, around a month after the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced its version, S. 2123 (called the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act); if these bills pass, House and Senate will need to go to conference to hammer out the differences. Both bills would reduce (but not eliminate) the burden of mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent federal drug offenders, both bills would expand the "safety valve" for judges to waive mandatory minimums, and both bills would allow judges to reduce crack cocaine sentences for prisoners sentenced before mid-2010, but each bill also creates a few new mandatory minimums (the House for heroin-related offenses, the Senate for domestic violence- and terrorism-related offenses) and the House bill also leaves off the Senate's reforms for federal prisoner treatment. Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you tell your House Rep and Senator, respectively, to support and improve their chambers' sentencing reform bills.
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