• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, July 15, 2016

By a wide margin, the House yesterday passed a law requiring labels on products that are made with genetically labeled organisms that has most Big Ag and food companies dancing in the laboratory aisles. It will supersede any state laws, such as the tough one in Vermont that took effect on July 1, and faces days in court over several issues. The bill passed the Senate last week, and will be signed into law, according to a White House spokeswoman.

“The bill will require labels to be reworked or updated to show whether any of the ingredients had their natural DNA altered, but will take years to phase in and will give companies the option of using straightforward language, digital codes or a symbol to be designed later,” reports Heather Haddon for the Wall Street Journal.

Haddon’s story begins with “In a victory for food companies ….” And the second paragraph of the New York Times’coverage by Stephanie Strom is an ecstatic reaction by Grocery Manufacturers Association CMO Pamela G. Bailey: 

“Today’s vote is a resounding victory not only for consumers and common sense but also for the tremendous coalition of agricultural and food organizations that came together in unprecedented fashion to get this solution passed,” she said. 

Bailey elaborated in a statement hailing the 306-117 House vote that followed the 63-30 Senate tally: “Republicans and Democrats found consensus on the common ground that a patchwork of different state labeling laws would be a costly and confusing disaster for the nation’s food supply chain. They also joined together to give consumers more access to consistent and helpful information about genetic engineering.”

Conversely, food-transparency activists are not at all happy with the fed’s takes on labeling, as a Time headline informs us.

“It is a non-labeling bill disguised as a labeling bill,” says Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, “a sham and a legislative embarrassment.” The CFA and other organizations, such as the Environmental Working Group, want the President to veto what they have labeled a “new DARK [Denying Americans Right To Know] Act.”

“A patchwork of laws in several states had begun to emerge with different labeling requirements,” writes Time’s Justin Worland. That, of course, is precisely why manufacturers, for the most part, were in favor over an overarching federal law that is less stringent and, shall we say, more pliable to gobbledygook and obfuscation.

“We don’t think the QR code is a viable or even an honest disclosure,” Gary Hirshberg, a founder of Just Label It, tells the NYT’s Strom. “It’s just another way of keeping citizens in the dark — every 13-year-old knows QR codes are dead.”

Wired’s Sarah Zhang takes a different view. “Genetic modification is nuanced, and a QR code-linked Web page could relay the full complexity of the issues surrounding genetic modification — if companies actually disclosed everything and if consumers actually cared,” she writes. “The GMO conversation tends toward oversimplification (good? bad?), and our savior among labels could theoretically be the QR code.”

“The law leaves many details of the new labeling scheme to be worked out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These include, for instance, whether refined products like soy oil or sugar from beets will need to be labeled. While they are made from GMO crops, the final product doesn't contain any genetically modified material, such as proteins or DNA,” reports NPR’s Dan Charles.

And the NYT’s Strom observes that “the wrangling over how the language of the law will be interpreted and put into practice will probably go on for years,” and eventually wind up in court.

In any event, it must be noted that a study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released in May is the latest to declare that foods containing GMOs are safe to eat. But it also made clear, as we reported at the time and have suggested for years, that consumers want GMO labels.

Things are not always what they seem. The big reveal in Amy Harmon’s “How Square Watermelons Get Their Shape, And Other GMO Misconceptions” in the New York Times the other day is that they, like seedless watermelons, are not the result of genetic engineering. The angular melons are simply grown in boxes.

Hmmm. I wonder what went into concocting those “interesting lemon plums” my wife brought home last night. My QR scanner simply says “unknown product.” Oh, I see. A four-digit number — which they have — means it’s conventionally grown. Eight numbers would mean they’re genetically modified and nine would mean they’re organic. But everybody else probably knows that already, right?