All eyes will be on Washington, D.C. today (Wednesday) as the U.S. Senate decides whether or not to push forward debate and a vote on the GMO labeling bill proposed by Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Pat Roberts and ranking committee member Debbie Stabenow.
According to POLITICO, the vote is expected sometime after 3 p.m.
The bill under consideration is a compromise between Roberts’ original call for a voluntary labeling system and the desires of other committee members to have a mandatory national standard.
If passed and signed into law, all foods with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) would have to carry a label. Under the law, companies would have one of three ways of complying: on package language, a symbol created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture or an electronic code that can be scanned by consumers.
Sixty votes are needed for cloture. If gained, the floor vote could begin as early as Thursday.
Vermont’s GMO labeling law, the first implemented in the nation, went into effect Friday, July 1. But it will not be implemented until next year.
Texas Farm Bureau (TFB) and other farm organizations support the bill as it establishes a federal preemption of what could grow into an unruly patchwork of state GMO labeling laws.
The agreement, reached between Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts and ranking Democrat Debbie Stabenow, would use a narrow definition of genetic engineering. It would exempt the newest biotech methods, such as gene editing, from the national disclosure standards.
“Although there are some reservations with the compromise language, the legislation is far superior to a patchwork of state-by-state mandates that would be unworkable and detrimental to production agriculture,” TFB President Russell Boening said in a statement. “There is no science-based evidence to support mandatory labeling of biotechnology products, but the label requirement is not as difficult as we had feared.”