Leaders of the potato and sugarbeet industries say they consider a bill that passed Congress requiring labels on food containing genetically modified organisms to be a good compromise.
The House of Representatives approved the bill July 14 by a 306-117 vote and sent it to the White House. President Barrack Obama has indicated he intends to sign the legislation, which agricultural interests laud for creating a single national standard to prevent a patchwork of state regulations.
The GMO labeling bill recently implemented in Vermont will be suspended. New rules for the federal standard will go into effect within two years.
The bill allows companies to label GMO content using an icon that will be developed by USDA, on-package language or a bar code linking to online messaging when scanned by a smartphone—a major point of contention among critics, who argue the requirement is too weak.
“It gives the food companies options,” said John Keeling, executive vice president and CEO of the National Potato Council. “They have to convey information, but it gives them options in how they do that.”
“Food companies now can breathe a bit easier,” said Luther Markwart, executive vice president of American Sugarbeet Growers Association. “They’re not going to have to do different sourcing of ingredients and drive up consumer food prices over a ridiculous Vermont bill.”
The vast majority of U.S. sugarbeets are genetically engineered to withstand glyphosate herbicide. Idaho-based J.R. Simplot Co. is in the early stages of marketing the only commercially available GMO spud, called Innate.
Source: www.capitalpress.com