Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he hasn’t given up on passing a bill to pre-empt states from requiring special labels on food made with genetically modified organisms. During an “Open Mic” interview with Agri-Pulse, McConnell said, “I think you’ve got a major part of the food business now that is deeply invested in hostility toward GMO. And so they have a reasonable share of the market, they come in and argue their side of it. So I think it’s mostly Republicans versus Democrats … We can’t pass a bill like this without a super-majority of 60, which we don’t have. We’re continuing to work on it.”
McConnell did not identify which segment of the food industry that he meant. Some lawmakers, such as Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat, say the labeling campaign’s ultimate goal is to stamp out use of GMO crops, grown on half of U.S. cropland. Proponents say labels are part of a consumer’s right to know about the ingredients in their food.
Vermont’s first-in-the-nation GMO label law take effect July 1. The food industry has pressed for Congress to intervene, saying it will be expensive to change supply channels and distribution routes.
In a vote with election-year implications, on March 15 senators defeated a state pre-emption bill, 48-49, with 60 votes needed for passage. The vote broke along party lines; three farm-state Democrats voted for the bill. McConnell switched his vote at the last minute to oppose the bill, a tactic that gives him the right to ask for a new vote.
Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow says mandatory disclosure is the legislative price for passage of a pre-emption bill. “I don’t think the votes are there unless we set a national standard for transparency,” the senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee told reporters a week ago. Agriculture chairman Pat Roberts says he and Stabenow are looking for a resolution to the standoff.
Long a minor issue in Congress, GMO labeling mushroomed as a partisan issue as election-year sentiment rose in the Senate. The House passed a pre-emption bill last summer by a landslide margin but no Democrat was willing to sponsor the idea in the Senate.
To listen to the Agri-Pulse interview of McConnell, click here.