On July 7th, the U.S. Senate passed a bill concerning GMO food labeling protocol across the nationㅡit has since passed in the House of Representatives and has officially been signed into law by President Obama. Overall, the response to the bill has been that although it is a step in the right direction, it is not without its flaws. The bill mandates the food industry, "display[s] GMO contents with words, pictures or a bar code that can be scanned with smartphones. The U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA) would decide which ingredients would be considered genetically modified." Up until the passage of this bill, it was the responsibility of the states to regulate food labeling. The opponents to the bill claim that the vague language used in the bill will allow certain GMOs, such as beet sugar and soybean oil, to go unlabeled, "not fall[ing] under the law's definition of a bioengineered food..." Certain states, like Vermont, that already had strict GMO labeling laws in place, will actually experience a reduction in necessary labeling requirements. The proponents to the bill state that this nationwide change is very much needed in many states that, until now, had a very minimal labeling policy. Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan stated that, "'This bipartisan bill ensures that consumers and families throughout the United States will have access, for the first time ever, to information about their food through a mandatory, nationwide label for food products with GMOs[.]'" From the perspective of the food industry, the nationwide standardized change is welcome, as state-by-state mandatory GMO labeling would be much more costly. Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gmo-food-labeling-bill_us_577f6985e4b0344d514ec75b?section=
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