Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who tried to broker a compromise on GMO food labeling, says labeling must be mandatory nationwide to avoid the chaos of states and food processors deciding on their own what to label and how. “There is a need for action,” Vilsack said at the Commodity Classic, an annual conference for corn, wheat, soybean and sorghum growers. Vermont’s first-in-the-nation labeling law takes effect July 1.
Mandatory labeling is the key to getting enough support — at least 60 votes — in the Senate to overcome parliamentary roadblocks, Vilsack told reporters. Agriculture.com quoted Vilsack as saying, “If you don’t get this requirement, then you create a situation where every company could decide for itself to do something, which could create confusion. Plus, you don’t want state laws that would potentially be at odds.”
Vilsack’s call for mandatory nationwide labeling jibed with the position of Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, who says an overwhelming number of Senate Democrats support mandatory labeling. Republicans control the Senate 54-46 and would need the support of at least seven Democrats to pass a labeling bill.
Neither side has a clear path to victory on an acrimonious, albeit minor, issue with election-year partisanship slowing legislative action. Unless there is consensus or an undeniable need to act, Congress seems unlikely to move on many issues.
When a standalone bill is stalled, backers sometimes add it as a rider to a must-pass bill. “The policy rider approach would be anything but a slam dunk in the Senate,” said the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. Four Democrats on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the USDA and the FDA are sponsors of a bill to mandate labeling in exchange for pre-emption of state and local laws.
Senate Agriculture chairman Pat Roberts says he is trying to build bipartisan support for his bill to pre-empt state regulation of GMO foods. It would leave labeling voluntary at the federal level. Three Democrats voted for the Roberts bill in committee, joining all 11 Republicans, but they said revisions were needed before it could pass on the floor. The House passed a pre-emption bill, H.R. 1599, last July by a landslide margin.
Vilsack said that, with mandatory labeling, foodmakers should be given time to decide how to satisfy the requirement and to prepare consumers for the label. “I myself prefer the SmartLabel,” he said in a clip provided by the USDA radio news service. The SmartLabel is an initiative launched last year by the food industry that uses QR codes, which can be scanned by smartphones, to provide information about the ingredients of food products, such as GMOs. The SmartLabel system also uses toll-free numbers and Internet sites to provide the information.
Agriculture.com quoted Vilsack as saying he believed the House would pass and President Obama would sign a mandatory-labeling bill that gave the food industry flexibility in labeling. Last month, Vilsack said his discussions with the food industry and pro-labeling groups ruptured on the question of requiring a special label on packages to denote GMO foods. The White House took no position on the House pre-emption bill last year. The FDA, which oversees most of the food supply, has a policy of voluntary labeling of GMO foods.
The food industry spent tens of millions of dollars to defeat state referendums on GMO labeling.