Congress OKs bill requiring first GMO food labels

“This bill … contains language that the Food and Drug Administration says could leave most GMO products exempt from any labeling requirements at all”.

Right-to-know activists representing more than 100 organizations plan to deliver a petition containing more than 200,000 signatures on Friday at 1 p.m.to ask the President to veto the bill. USDA will determine which ingredients are considered genetically modified. This important legislation passed the Senate last week with strong bipartisan support.

Pamela G. Bailey, president and CEO of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), urged Obama to “sign this bill quickly”.

“This GMO bill is a nothing more than a sham and makes it more hard for consumers to know how their food is grown, ” DeLauro said. But they won’t necessarily see that information on the package.

Neither side in the labeling battle sounded completely satisfied.

The release says if the legislation is signed by President Obama it would replace Vermont’s existing state GMO labeling law.

The federal legislation requires mandatory disclosure on food labels but manufacturers have been given flexibility over the form this takes.

Congress was forced into this compromise by Vermont, which passed its own GMO labeling law. Federal labeling provisions will not go into effect for at least two years. But companies would have a range of options in just how they make that disclosure: “They could place text on food packaging, provide a QR (Quick Response) code, or direct consumers to a phone number or a website with more information”.

“There’s a segment of the population that enjoys reading food labels”, said Michael Swanson, chief agricultural economist at Wells Fargo. “Thanks to this bill, products produced through this method will not be unfairly stigmatized with mandatory on-pack labels”.

The federal law also pre-empts a drive in the ME statehouse to remove the trigger provision that requires adjacent states to also pass their own laws.

Companies including ConAgra, Mars, Campbell’s, and Kellogg have adopted nationwide labeling, and Danone SA-the French food company better known as Dannon in the US -announced on Thursday that it will do the same in the American market. General Mills and Hormel have already changed labels to comply with the Vermont law, along with other major brands, such as Mars sweets and Campbell’s Soup. The Senate passed it earlier.

“While (the bill) is not ideal, it still prevents a nationwide patchwork of inconsistent state food labeling laws, which would have disastrous effects on food supply chains, our agriculture communities, and American families”, he said.

Additionally, Wilkinson said in a previous interview, state-level bills might have called for the labeling of feed that included biotech ingredients or that products like meat, milk or eggs, from animals fed a diet including biotech items be labeled. “QR codes and telephone numbers do not meet that definition”. Shoppers would have to scan it with their smartphones.