Washington Insider: USDA’s Growing Food Label Problem

There are litigation issues ahead for USDA, Food Safety News is reporting this week. It says that the Center for Food Safety and Center for Environmental Health sued U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and Bruce Summers, administrator of USDA’s Agriculture Marketing Service (AMS) for “failure to enact federal regulations on labeling genetically modified foods.” Then, in part because it took until mid-August before the plaintiffs could show Perdue, Summers and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions were served with notices of their status as defendants in the case, the two environmental nonprofits say they want federal Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte to give them a summary judgment against USDA and its officials as soon as Oct. 16. They argue that Secretary Perdue has unlawfully withheld regulations implementing the labeling of genetically engineered foods under the Federal Bioengineered Food Disclosure Act that took effect on July 29, 2016, and gave USDA two years to issue the implementing regulations. Attorneys for the two nonprofit centers argue that they are entitled to summary judgment because USDA has failed to implement the final mandatory federal standards for genetically engineered food disclosure by the deadline. By not meeting the deadlines, USDA is seen as violating both the Federal Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standards Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. Plaintiffs say Americans are being denied the information they need to make informed decisions. They argue that a nationwide “bioengineered,” food disclosure standard is critical and was enacted by Congress under “an express statutory deadline, a rare legislative command.” Congress imposed the deadlines, the advocates say, because states have begun to impose their own mandatory GE labels. The federal law preempts any state action on the issue. Without the regulations, the nonprofit centers say the new GE Labeling Act is just “an empty vessel.” “People are left without any information on whether their food is genetically engineered,” the plaintiffs say. “People want to know if food is produced using GE for numerous reasons: health, personal, economic, environmental, religious, and cultural.” While USDA has not responded to the lawsuit, it has both a proposed rule, the “National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard” and “proposed Bioengineered labels” pending. During a 60-day period ending on July 3, USDA received 14,019 public comments on the proposed standard. FNS says that AMS is charged with developing a national mandatory system for disclosing the presence of the bioengineered material. The two-year deadline passed without the implementation of a final rule. A USDA working group is reportedly working on a timetable for rule-making “to ensure an open and transparent process for effectively establishing this new program, which will increase consumer confidence and understanding of the food they buy, and avoid uncertainty for food companies and farmers,” according to AMS. Food experts tend to see the arguments for special actions on these labels as overblown, especially the “health concerns,” and that the anti-GMO advocates are using the same arguments as they have traditionally used. Still, the law requires labels and the government likely will proceed to mandate labels. What the nationwide impacts of such a rule will be remains to be seen, but most food experts say they expect the impacts to be small, and possibly negative, to the extent they increase overall food costs, Washington Insider believes.