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To the Editor: 

I often buy a rice cereal that has the words “Wheat-free” on the carton. It never occurred to me that this implied wheat was bad for people, only that some people are allergic to it and want to know which foods are safe for them. I think the biotech folks are being hypersensitive when they demand that Spectrum and others stop putting “GMO-free” on their labels (Daily Planet, Oct. 5-6). After all, people allergic to a certain food need to know that genes from that food have not been inserted into a food that was otherwise safe for them. This is the difference between biotech and traditional selective breeding methods, as the FDA very well knows.  

Nancy Schimmel 

Berkeley