Reversing a two-decade federal policy on labeling, President Obama has signed a law that mandates disclosure of GMO ingredients in food via a symbol, a digital code or wording on food packages. The law immediately preempted Vermont’s one-month-old GMO food-labeling law while giving the USDA two years to develop the nationwide disclosure system, which means that Obama’s successor will be in charge of writing the rules.
The president signed the bill with no comment, and the White House listed the action at the bottom of a desk-clearing roster of 20 bills that were enacted. This particular bill, S. 764, “directs the Secretary of Agriculture to establish a national mandatory bioengineered food disclosure standard.”
The food industry, which spent tens of millions of dollars fighting GMO label laws at the state level, hailed “a new era for transparency in ingredient information for consumers.” It was part of a recent change in tone for the industry, which long argued there was no need to say if foods contained GMOs because GMOs are safe to eat.
Pro-labeling groups, such as the Center for Food Safety, called the law “a sham and a shame, a backroom deal that discriminates against low-income, rural, minority and elderly populations.” The group held out for wording on food packages. A symbol or a QR code discloses nothing, they said, and many people don’t have the smartphones needed to scan a digital code to reach an Internet page that would say if GMOs are in the food.
The largest U.S. farm group, the American Farm Bureau Federation, said the new law would “prevent consumer confusion and protect agricultural innovation.” More than 90 percent of the corn, soybeans and cotton planted in the United States are GMO varieties. A large fraction of U.S. canola and sugarbeets also are GMO strains. As a result, almost all of the processed foods sold in grocery stores, from salad dressing and bread to breakfast cereal and frozen entrees, contain GMOs.
“Feel the tone of GMO debate is changing,” tweeted Robb Fraley, chief technology officer at Monsanto, a couple of days before Obama signed the GMO law. Fraley pointed to congressional passage of the disclosure bill, a National Academy of Sciences report on GE crops and a Philippine Supreme Court ruling that allows field-testing of genetically engineered eggplant.
At an impasse for months, Congress passed the GMO bill just a couple of weeks after the Vermont law took effect. In the final round of action, farm groups and foodmakers decided that state preemption was their top priority and that they would accept mandatory disclosure. Labeling proponents say the only acceptable disclosure is wording on the package. They say the new law is so poorly written that many GE foods will be exempt.