The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted 65-32 in favor of cloture on a compromise bill on a national mandatory labeling regulation for genetically modified foods (GMOs). The procedural vote required that 60 Senators vote to invoke cloture limiting debate on the bill. Late Thursday evening, the Senate took up the compromise bill (S.764) which passed on a final vote of 63 to 30.
Twenty-one Democrats voted for the bill on final passage, while seven Republicans voted against, and seven senators missed the vote.
Action now turns to the House of Representatives, where lawmakers have one week to consider the bill before they go on a seven-week break for the national party conventions and their August recess. How the bill fares in the House, which last year voted in favor of a voluntary labeling regime by a large bipartisan margin, still remains to be seen. If the House makes any changes to the bill, the bill would be sent back to the Senate. It is also not clear at this time whether President Obama will sign the bill.
The bill, after months of negotiations, was introduced on June 23 by Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). The Agriculture Committee tried and failed to pass a voluntary labeling bill earlier this year. Roberts called the Senate action the “most important vote for agriculture in the last 20 years.” “Our legislation allows farmers to continue using sound science to produce more food with less resources, gives flexibility to food manufacturers in disclosing information, and gives access to more food information that consumers demand,” Roberts said.
The compromise bill amends the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 by adding a GMO disclosure standard and directs the Secretary of Agriculture to establish a national GMO disclosure standard within two years as well as establishing procedures to carry out the standard. Those procedures and regulations must also establish a process for determining under which conditions a food is considered to be bioengineered.
The bill gives food manufacturers three options for affixing a label to their products to inform consumers when GMO ingredients are present: a text statement, directions to a website or phone number, or a QR code, which consumers can scan with a smart phone to receive information about a product. The bill exempts from the labeling requirements all animal feed, as well as foods in which poultry and meat are the main ingredients. All other animal-derived products are exempt. The bill imposes no penalties or fines for noncompliance.
The bill prohibits states from having a different standard, including the Vermont GMO labeling law that just went into effect on July 1. Vermont has indicated it will not enforce the new law until 2017, but many companies have already started complying with the Vermont state law. State labeling proposals in California, Colorado, and Oregon were previously defeated.
