WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2016 - President Barack Obama signed the
GMO disclosure bill
into law on Friday, but many uncertainties remain on exactly how the USDA will
implement it.
The agriculture sector can be certain that the final rule
will preempt any state labeling efforts that farmers feared would create a
patchwork of statutes that stigmatize food with genetically engineered
ingredients. The law is also clear in that meat or milk from an animal that was
fed genetically modified feed will not need to be labeled as containing GMOs.
But beyond those key victories for agriculture and food
industries, USDA will have flexibility when it comes to implementation of some
key provisions, and farm groups will be watching the process closely.
“Those are going to be very sticky things for (Agriculture)
Secretary Tom Vilsack,” said Chuck Conner, president and CEO of the National Council of Farmer
Cooperatives who also co-chairs the Coalition for Safe
Affordable Food.
Foremost on the minds of many is whether or not a disclosure
label will be needed for products like refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup
or soybean oil. Most of the sugarbeets, corn and soybeans produced in the U.S.
are grown from genetically modified seeds, but virtually all of the end
products have been so heavily processed that there are no traces remaining of
the gene-altered material.
The legislation is unclear about how USDA should address
these commodities, but there are clues as to what USDA will decide. The FDA, in
a “technical assistance” document that the agency submitted to the Senate
Agriculture Committee and obtained by Agri-Pulse,
said products like soybean oil should not be considered as being bioengineered.
The law, in defining “bioengineering,” uses the phrase “that contains genetic
material,” the FDA said. And if there is no genetic material, commodities like
soybean oil would not be covered by the law, the FDA said.
USDA General Counsel Jeffrey Prieto, in a letter to Debbie
Stabenow of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee,
stressed that the department has the authority to require disclosure for
“products which may or may not contain highly refined oils, sugars or high
fructose corn syrup that have been produced or developed from genetic
modification techniques.” Still, Prieto also noted that USDA has the authority
to make its judgement based on “the amount of a bioengineered substance
present.”
Clay Detlefsen, a senior vice president with the National
Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), said his group and others will be monitoring
closely how that ruling goes and weighing in as USDA writes the federal rule
over the next two years.
Representatives of the corn, soy and sugar product
industries have been amassing evidence for years that their commodities have no
GMO material in them even though they originate from biotech seeds. They are
expected to present detailed reports to USDA, sources tell Agri-Pulse.
Products that contain just a minute amount of genetically
altered material may be exempted from disclosure, and it would also be up to
USDA to determine just what that amount would be.
“USDA … has to determine what threshold quantity of
bioengineered ingredients by weight will trigger … disclosure,” Detlefsen said.
The NMPF is advocating that the threshold not be more than 0.9 percent.
Such a low level, he said, would mean that food
manufacturers could add small amounts of bioengineered vitamins to products
without worrying about the law.
But the NMPF has other concerns too – specifically, about
the production aids used in the cheese-making process.
Chymosin is the most popular enzyme used to make cheese and
it is genetically engineered. If USDA decides that using food production aids
like chymosin means that cheese is a bioengineered food, it could have
ramifications for producers of everything from pizza to nachos.
“We need to understand that is going to be exempt from
triggering a disclosure requirement,” Detlefsen said. “I will state that I’m
fairly optimistic that (chymosin) will be exempted.”
But he’s not certain, and that’s one of the reasons that he
and NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern say they are hoping USDA will hold
public hearings over the next couple years as the department goes about
creating the rule.
One thing that is certain, though, is that this is one of
the biggest undertakings by USDA in years, said Conner, who was a deputy
secretary and acting secretary for USDA in the George W. Bush administration.
“This issue will generate tens of thousands
of comments, and USDA has to be very methodical and respond to each one of
those comments or else they’re opening themselves up to potential litigation,”
Conner said. “It’s a heavy task ahead of them.”
One of the
challenges USDA is likely to tackle early on is a mandated study on the feasibility
of quick reader (QR) technology that Congress is proposing to allow shoppers to
scan food labels to find out if products contain genetically modified
ingredients. Of the three disclosure choices on food labels - QR codes, a
symbol denoting genetically modified ingredients or plain tests – the QR option
will likely be the most popular with large manufacturers.
The USDA will have a year to study QR codes to make sure
it’s a viable option for consumers. If it’s not, that will add more uncertainty
to the outcome of the final rule because it will then be up to USDA to come up
with alternatives.
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