Vermont Lawmakers Pass Country’s First No-Strings-Attached GMO Labeling Law
April 16, 2014 2:59 PM
Katherine Paul, 207.653.3090
Vermont Lawmakers Pass Country’s First No-Strings-Attached GMO Labeling Law
FINLAND, Minn. - April 16 - Today, by a vote of 28 to 2, the Vermont state senate passed H.112, a bill to require mandatory labeling of foods sold in Vermont that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The bill also makes it illegal to call any food product containing GMOs “natural” or “all natural.” Unlike bills passed last year in Maine and Connecticut, which require four or five other states to pass GMO labeling laws before they can be enacted, Vermont’s law contains no “trigger” clauses, making it the first “clean” GMO labeling law in the country.
The bill now goes back to the House which is expected to agree to the Senate’s amendments, then to Gov. Peter Shumlin who is expected to sign it.
Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), issued the following statement:
Today’s victory in Vermont has been 20 years in the making. Ever since genetically modified crops and foods entered the U.S. food supply in the early 1990s, without adequate independent pre-market safety testing and without labels, U.S. consumers have fought to require the labeling of foods containing GMOs.
Consumer demand for mandatory labeling of GMOs spawned a national grassroots movement that has persevered despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the biotech and food industries to lobby state lawmakers in Vermont, and to fund anti-labeling campaigns in California (2012) and Washington State (2013).
More:
https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2014/04/16-3
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