We’re officially a country that labels GMOs now. We
Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who was instrumental in pushing the bill through Congress, praised its passage in a statement. She said the law “gives our nation’s farmers and food companies a fresh opportunity to start a conversation with consumers about the importance and safety of biotechnology.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture now has two years to figure out how to define a GMO. Are they crops that have had their genes tweaked or silenced, or mutated with radiation? Should the definition be narrowly focused on the original transgenic crops? There will undoubtedly be fights during the rule-making process.
This new law overrides Vermont’s GMO-labeling law and prevents any other state-level GMO-labeling attempts, but it allows voluntary labeling to continue.