Congress Sends GMO Labeling DARK Act to President Obama

More than two decades after the U.S. government approved the first genetically engineered crops for commercial production and consumption, there will finally be a federal standard for labeling foods made with GMOs. Or not labeling them, as the case may be.

Spurred into action by Vermont’s mandatory GMO labeling law, which went into effect on July 1, Congress pushed through a bipartisan compromise bill that will supersede state-level laws and allow a variety of means for disclosing GMO ingredients: on-package labels, a call-in information line, or a scannable QR code. The Senate approved the bill last week, and on Thursday the House passed it as well, 306–117, sending the measure on to President Obama, who is expected to sign it.

The bill will continue the era of GMO labeling, which began with a number of major food companies announcing nationwide labels for products in the run-up to Vermont’s law being implemented. While the measure fits the DARK bill moniker—Denying Americans the Right to Know—that pro-labeling groups have attached to any law that overrides state-level laws and doesn’t require mandatory on-package labeling, it will bring about more nationwide labeling of products with genetically engineered ingredients.

Companies including ConAgra, Mars, Campbell’s, and Kellogg have adopted nationwide labeling, and Danone SA—the French food company better known as Dannon in the U.S.—announced on Thursday that it will do the same in the American market. It is possible that some of these companies will change the way they disclose GMO ingredients when the new regulations are put into place, but Campbell’s will continue to label products, as a spokesperson told TakePart recently, and Mars told The Wall Street Journal that it will do the same.

But with the phone and QR code options—which a study by the Food Marketing Institute, an industry group, found could only be scanned by 20 percent of shoppers—included in the bill, many pro-labeling groups remain staunchly opposed.

“With this legislation, both the House and the Senate have voted to do away with basic transparency about how food is produced,” Food and Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter said in a statement in which she called on the president to veto the bill. “They’ve also revoked a popular and clear state labeling law that is already in effect in Vermont, nullifying future state labeling requirements.”

According to the USDA, which will implement the federal GMO standards, 24,000 more products will require disclosure under the bill that is being put in front of the president.