While national produce groups are sitting on the sideline, several potato associations are among nearly 500 food groups urging the House of Representatives to pass the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, which calls for voluntary labeling of GMO food products.
The House is expected to take up the legislation July 23.
In a July 21 letter, the organizations said the legislation will create a uniform, transparent labeling standard for foods made with genetically modified organisms.
The legislation, introduced earlier this year by U.S. Reps. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., and G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., creates a food labeling standard that informs consumers while preventing the “confusion and costly price spikes associated with a patchwork of state labeling laws,” according to a news release from the Coalition for Safe and Affordable Food.
Backers also said the bill will put in place national GMO-free certification process that gives consumers who want to purchase non-GMO foods the ability to do so.
While the bill attracted 15 Democrats among its 106 co-sponsors, key Democrats oppose the bill.
Fruit and vegetable groups that signed the letter supporting the bill included the Yuma Fresh Vegetable Association, Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc., the National Potato Council, United Potato Growers of America, and state potato groups in Idaho, Washington, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Maine.
Potato industry support of the legislation comes in the wake of last year’s USDA approval of Innate, genetically modified potato varieties designed by the J.R. Simplot Co. for low-acrylamide potential and reduced black spot bruising.
“The bill has our complete support,” said John Keeling, president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based National Potato Council. “We think that in the end it will be helpful to consumers and certainly make the marketplace work better around how GMOs move into the market and the decision-making around that.”
Frito-Lay and McDonald’s have said they have no plans to use Innate potatoes, but Simplot officials have said the potatoes also are targeted to the fresh market.
“If people want GMO potatoes, then we want to have the opportunity to provide GMO potatoes with the benefits that those GMO potatoes contain,” Keeling said. “If people do not want GMO potatoes, we want the opportunity to do that also. We think voluntary is the approach, but at the same time we want enough federal oversight so the claims that are made are realistic.”
Keeling said the potato industry is not a cheerleader for or a detractor of the GMO potato.
“It’s a marketplace decision, and we think voluntary labeling is consistent with that sort of decision making.”
Chris Schlect, president of the Northwest Horticultural Council in Yakima, Wash., said the group has no position on the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act. In general, Schlect said no one in the food industry wants 50 different state rules on labeling of GMO food. However, he said some in the industry disagree on the merits of voluntary versus mandatory labeling.
Disagreement over mandatory versus voluntary GMO labeling may have caused some produce groups to refrain from taking a position on the labeling legislation, Schlect said. He said some in the organic industry believe that if marketers are going to sell a GMO fruit, it should be labeled.
“There are some in our industry who say, ‘Let’s have mandatory labeling,’” said.
Schlect said the certification process for non-GMO food is a concern in the legislation now being considered.
“What we are concerned about is that we see a big problem in the requirement that was put in the bill that if you are going to say ‘non-GMO,’ you have to have some kind of certification process through the USDA,” he said. “Essentiallyb the organic side of the industry wanted that, apparently.”
Schlect said the apple industry has no GMO fruit in the marketplace, though the non-browning Arctic apple has been recently approved for production by the USDA. But if the bill passes in its current form, there would have to be a process to verify fruit is non-GMO, which means “paperwork, auditing and a headache,” he said.
While that non-GMO certified provision may be appropriate for grains like corn and soybeans, which are dominated by GMO varieties, it doesn’t fit with apples and other produce items, he said.
Source: The Packer