However, Bloomberg is reporting that is the easy part—and, that defining a compromise package that the Senate could actually pass will be much more difficult.
The ag committee itself couldn’t agree on such a package since ranking Democrat Debbie Stabenow of Michigan was unable to make a deal with committee chair, Kansas Republican Pat Roberts. So, the panel decided to leave final details to the full Senate. Senate leadership hasn’t announced any floor time for a bill at this point.
Bloomberg calls the situation chaotic, “with everyone calling for urgency before Vermont’s state GMO labeling law goes into effect July 1” but no clear path to law evident. Compromise proposals abound, including at least one that seems strange in its proposed use of “asterisks and parentheses” on ingredient labels to soften consumer concerns. Bloomberg concludes that the jury is out whether Congress is “more interested in a solution or in press releases from members saying they did what they could.”
Food Safety News (FSN) seems somewhat more optimistic and is reporting that ag chair Pat Roberts is arguing that his Senate bill deals with an important “market issue” and has a responsibility to ensure that the “national market can work for everyone, including farmers, manufacturers, retailers and consumers.” He said the alternative is to allow a state-by-state patchwork of labeling laws to play out.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who supports the Roberts bill, argues that state GMO label proposals are already patchy and that dairy products, for example, are “either specifically included or excluded from requirements depending on how important the industry is to a given state.” She thinks the Roberts bill will be successfully amended on the Senate floor and she says she is open to an amendment by Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., to include a national, voluntary bioengineered food labeling standard.
FSN says that, in the meantime, state lawmakers are “picking around the edges” and that by the end of the 2015 legislative season, the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) reported 101 bills were introduced in state houses to address GMOs in some way. Of the 15 bills adopted, nine urged that science-based data be used in all future GMO regulation while four focused on labeling standards. NCSL also reported that 57 bills were carried over and might be pending in 2016.
Continuing with the patchwork approach will be costly, according to Roberts. He cited a study that estimated that the cost to consumers would run as much as $82 billion annually or approximately $1,050 for each American family. “Now is not the time for Congress to make food more expensive for anyone—not the consumer, nor the producer,” Roberts said.
Roberts also told the press before moving the bill out of his committee that it had the support of 652 food and agricultural organizations, “representing one of the largest coalitions ever to support a single congressional act.”
However, Roberts’ opponents say state disclosure requirements provide transparency and should not be shutdown. They seem to favor an alternative bill offered by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and include some Democratic heavy-hitters including Vermont’s Patrick Leahy, Montana’s Jon Tester, and California’s Dianne Feinstein.
So, the fight seems to be increasingly intense, with current options anything but transparent, in spite of widespread claims. It would seem that the earlier proposal that Secretary Vilsack mentioned that would require retailers to develop electronic labels that detail production history would both allow retailers to control their labels while making additional information available. However, with both sides of the debate fighting for control of wording, the product coverage and exclusions, as well as the image to be presented, the electronic approach seems to have few backers, at least at this time, Washington Insider believes.