With the Senate at an impasse over GMO-food labeling, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack encouraged senators to “figure out a way to reach common ground.” In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Vilsack said a mandatory national system of disclosure of GMOs is “the only way to deal with this. This has to be mandated. And I think, frankly, that food companies recognized that and that’s why so many … have come out since the failure of the Senate bill to say, OK, fine, we’re going to put a label on it to comport with the Vermont law.”
Food companies should be given flexibility in how they provide information about GMOs and time to prepare for the new system, Vilsack told the Tribune. “There should be enough time to educate consumers about where this information is, so when it kicks in, they know precisely where to look for the information. There’s a process the industry would have to go through and, frankly, they should have done this 20 years ago. But they didn’t, so now they’re playing catch-up.”
Scott Faber of the Just Label It campaign, which supports mandatory labeling, said “any disclosure should be easy for the consumer to identify and use.”
Foodmakers want Congress to pre-empt state label laws, to avoid a potential thicket of conflicting rules, and say labeling should remain voluntary on the federal level.