The Vermont Attorney General’s office has released the preliminary results of a key questionnaire as the state moves toward implementing a law requiring labeling of genetically modified foods.
Among the new laws that came out of the latest Vermont legislative session is a first-in-the-nation GMO labeling law. Governor Peter Shumlin signed it into law in early May. It requires that by July 2016, food sold in the state entirely or partially produced through genetic engineering be labeled.
The Vermont Attorney General’s office must develop the rules to implement the law. From June 4th through June 30th, the office posted a questionnaire seeking public input. Preliminary resultsindicate that most of the 2,200 respondents thought information about genetically engineered food should be placed near the product's nutrition facts label or ingredients list. The information cannot be inserted on the current nutrition labels, which are federally controlled.
Assistant Attorney General in the Public Protection Division Kate Whelley McCabe says one of their points of review as they develop the rules is to ask consumers and stakeholders their opinions. “For example, how prominent the disclosure should be and where the disclosure should be located on different kinds of foods or food packaging. What kind of options are workable for folks in the food system to comply with the law? It’s certainly not the only thing that we’re going to be considering. We’re going to be considering legal and other practical considerations as well obviously. But it was one thing that we felt very strongly we needed to learn about in the very beginning stages of figuring out how we’re going to craft these rules.”
The Vermont Public Interest Research Group pushed for passage of the GMO labeling law. Consumer Protection Advocate Falco Schilling believes the questionnaire will aid the attorney general in crafting implementation rules. “I thought the questions were reasonable and addressed a number of the issues that the legislation left up to the Attorney General’s office to determine. Some of the specifics of where these labels would actually be, what size font they might be in, some of the other issues around that. There’s some mixed opinions, but I think there was a lot of consensus that this is information that people would like to see in and around where we get all the other information about our food. Whether it’s what ingredients are in there or salt or fat, other content like that. People want to be looking in the same spot and knowing if their food is genetically engineered or not.”
Rural Vermont Director Andrea Stander has ideas about what will meet the needs of consumers and believes the purpose of the survey is to get guidelines on the table. “Lets make it clear. Let’s make it easy for consumers to identify this information. There are a lot of details, some of which are legal, some of which are regulatory, that the attorney general will have to take into account. The legislative intent of this law is clearly to provide consumers with an important, and in some cases essential, piece of information about the food they’re purchasing.”
The Grocery Manufacturers Association and other industry groups have sued to overturn the law. The Vermont Retail and Grocers Association did not return calls in time for broadcast. Again, Assistant Attorney General Kate Whelley McCabe: “As an attorney who has litigated, I can say with certainty that the litigation will be affected by the rule-making process because more and more information about how the attorney general intends to enforce the law and implement the law, for example, will become public. That will become fodder for both sides of the legal argument. Whether the rule-making process is affected by the litigation is a much harder question to answer.”
Draft rules will be issued by the end of this summer, and a final proposed rule is due early next year.
