If a gate-keeping committee has its way, the House will have one hour to debate a GMO-disclosure bill with no opportunity to amend it before being asked to pass the most talked-about food-and-ag legislation of the year. House approval would send the bill, which pre-empts state GMO-labeling laws and mandates nationwide disclosure of GMO ingredients, to President Obama, who is expected to sign it.
“The wreck is occurring. We need to get it fixed now,” said House Agriculture chairman Michael Conaway, pointing to Vermont’s first-in-the-nation label law, which took effect July 1. Farm groups and foodmakers say pre-emption will prevent conflicting rules on food labels and ensure a market for genetically engineered crops. They accepted GMO disclosure in order to get pre-emption, their top priority.
“It’s probably as good as we’re going to get,” agreed Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, the senior Democrat on the Agriculture Committee. Like Conaway, Peterson said he would have preferred pre-emption coupled with voluntary labeling.
The House Rules Committee, which controls access to the floor, decided to allow one hour for debate before a roll call on the Senate bill. Representatives are expected to vote on the Rules Committee plan today, with the bill likely to come to the floor Thursday. The Republican-controlled Rules Committee members defeated, 5-3, a request by committee member Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, for a floor vote to bar GMO disclosure by digital code.
“I don’t think a human can read a QR code. You need a device [smartphone] that costs hundreds of dollars,” said Polis. The Senate-passed GMO bill allows foodmakers to use a symbol, a digital code or wording on the package to inform shoppers of GMO ingredients.
“If we’re going to be transparent, we ought to be transparent,” said Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern, another Rules Committee member. “Instead, we have this mishmash.”
The debate “rule” proposed by the committee will be one of the last chances for opponents to defeat the bill. GMO labeling was a minor issue in the House last year. Conaway and Peterson were the only lawmakers to testify on the disclosure bill at a 40-minute Rules Committee hearing, and Polis was the only lawmaker to propose an amendment.
The Just Label It campaign said the Senate bill “falls short of what consumers rightly expect — a simple at-a-glance GMO disclosure on the package.” The pro-labeling group said loopholes in the Senate bill would allow many products to escape labeling. Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a co-author of the bill, says it gives leeway to USDA in setting up a disclosure system and will be more comprehensive that critics expect.