WASHINGTON, May 4, 2016 - If a dairy cow eats feed made from
genetically engineered grain – and most do – does the milk it produces need to be
designated as a GMO product? What about bacon from a pig that ate GMO feed?
This is one of the latest issues that’s holding up senators
as they try to cobble together a federal bill to preempt a coming onslaught of
state GMO labeling laws, led by one that’s due to take effect in July in Vermont.
Feed isn’t an issue in the European Union’s labeling law or in
the Vermont law, but the question and what to do about it is still hanging over
the U.S. Senate.
Generally, Republicans and Democrats agree that milk, eggs
and meat from livestock that eat GMO feed should not need to be marked as GMO
products, but the divide is over how to handle it legislatively.
Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow, the top Democrat on the Senate
Agriculture Committee, said last week in a hallway conversation with reporters
that she doesn’t believe the issue needs to be addressed in the contentious
bill.
“There is work being done there, but USDA is going to have a
very important role in rule-making and I’m confident those issues can be
addressed,” said Stabenow, who suggested that it shouldn’t be a concern for the
livestock and dairy industries. Stabenow noted that neither Vermont nor the
European Union considers meat or dairy products that come from animals raised
on GMO feed to be GMO. “So I think there’s a path to address that,” she said.
But that’s not nearly good enough for some lawmakers, weary
of how USDA implements the laws that Congress passes. There is no way
Republicans will be able to accept a bill that does not have assurances in it
that milk and meat will not be affected, Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told Agri-Pulse.
“As we work with folks on the other side of the aisle that
are willing to support some kind of compromise, we haven’t been able to get
them to commit to say in the statute that animal feed doesn’t make the animal a
GMO food product,” Hoeven said. “There’s been some discussion that USDA can
decide that… but there’s no way we can sell that to our members, certainly on
the Republican side, and to our producers that if that language isn’t there and
if we just leave it up to USDA that would be satisfactory.”
The reason behind lawmakers’ fear of leaving something like
this issue unresolved in the bill could be the enormity of the impact of a
decision to label meat and milk as GMO’s. The U.S. annually produces about 9
billion food-producing animals such as cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys and
goats and 95 percent of them are raised on genetically modified feed, according
to a recent review
published in the Journal of Animal Science.
But the review goes on to conclude that, based on dozens of
long-term studies there is no reason to label meat or milk products from
animals fed genetically modified feed because there is no difference between
them and products from animals fed non-GMO feed.
“Studies have continually shown that the milk, meat and eggs
derived from animals that have consumed GE feed are indistinguishable from the
products derived from animals fed a non-GE diet,” concluded the author, Alison L. Van
Eenennaam, cooperative extension specialist for Animal Genomics and
Biotechnology at the University of California- Davis.
In other words, the genetic material that makes biotech
grain and oilseeds different from traditional varieties is completely absent in
the milk, eggs and meat that come from the animals that eat the crops. In fact,
Van Eenennaam said, the GMO-fed and non-GMO-fed products are so genetically
exact that if you had to tell them apart for labeling purposes, a massively
complex supply-chain segregation and traceability system would be needed.
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