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Tiny Vermont Brings Food Industry To Its Knees On GMO Labels (ap.org)
schwit1 writes: General Mills' announcement on Friday that it will start labeling products that contain genetically modified ingredients to comply with a Vermont law shows food companies might be throwing in the towel, even as they hold out hope Congress will find a national solution. Tiny Vermont is the first state to require such labeling, effective July 1. Its fellow New England states of Maine and Connecticut have passed laws that require such labeling if other nearby states put one into effect. The U.S. Senate voted 48-49 Wednesday against a bill that would have blocked such state laws. The food industry is holding out hope that Congress will prevent states from requiring such labeling. Some companies say they plan to follow Vermont's law, while others are considering pulling their products from the small state.
If they're happy with it, if it has advantages they can sell the consumers, then they should sell it to consumers on its advantages.
Why would you try to conceal GMO products from the consumer? It's confirmation that the makers of GMO products have something to hide!
We've been genetically modifying food for centuries.
anything that has corn, wheat, barley etc etc has been genetically modified by ancient ancestors.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
we're not allowed to lose this race.. thank you
while a free market economy is much better at allocating scarce resources than any other method(especially government controlled or regulated economy), for a truly free market to work , there should be full information and perfect competition, impossible conditions.
it doesn't help that in real world people who are most vocal for free capitalism tend to be the same who are against full information disclosure. i am willing to bet that those who voted against this labeling were such 'supporters' of 'free market capitalism'.
Its always better to know more than less about the food you consume.. I would also like them to label animal products that have hormones because this can have a bad effect on some people who are fighting disease ..
The staples crops in the U.S are overwhelmingly GMO. If a product doesn't carry a "Organic" or "GMO free" label one can be quire confident the product contains GMO's. The purpose of the GMO label is not to help those in the market for GMO free products but as a scaremongering tactic for those that are not.
But what does Minuscule Rhode Island have to say about this? When will Petite Delaware speak up?
Whether ingredients in food are GMO (or not) is a data point.
Its strange a scientist would want to want people to have access to _less_ data rather than more.
Let people can form their own judgements here.
Just add the label "GMO Created by Intelligent Design" and the whole Heart Land will buy the products like gene spliced hot cakes.
Vermont is just tweaked that New Hampshire has a much better motto.
"Freedom and Unity" is just lame...
#DeleteChrome
No, it's not being done in Vermont. The Vermont statute controls foods produced elsewhere and sold in Vermont: it's a major interstate commerce demand, and will add its burden to a broad swath of folk who couldn't vote in that state. Sadly, it's probably enforceable: state liquor laws have long created similar schisms, which is why a favorite pastime of yesteryear was to load up a few cases of a favorite beer from state A to take home to state B. So, I wonder how long it will take to certify non-GMO status for pepper from India? Coffee from Brazil? Will stocks of unlabeled seed from before the law came into effect be presumed GMO untill proven otherwise? Will liars prosper, or will false claims actually be investigated? How? I think the law reeks. What information I would like to have, won't be on the label. And learning that the poppy seeds in my salad dressing were genetically modified... is worthless, a waste of ink and paper.
no dummy that guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYajHZ4QUVM&ebc=ANyPxKrnWom-LPptmNtmSTqu5beflsgme5QbbnlvYd6H1pnNxp6RlZVy0lPBCC20pag0x8pYnjrd
Tiny Vermont?
If it's small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee.
Just add the label "GMO Created by Intelligent Design" and the whole Heart Land will buy the products like gene spliced hot cakes.
This is bigoted, even for a /. comment.
A lot of these people who oppose these laws say they do so because they prefer the markets to remain unregulated. However, the proper functioning of a free market, particularly with respect to its ability to enact societal change, is predicated on the idea that informed consumers will make purchasing choices that reflect their preferences. Whether you agree with anti-GMO people or not (and I think they're full of shit), the market can only properly value GMO vs. non-GMO foods if the end consumer can choose which one they are buying and (if they care enough) pay a premium for non-GMO products.
Keep that in mind any time you read about international trade treaties: many of them carry labelling stipulations that are specifically designed to PREVENT informed consumers from making choices that might otherwise drive positive societal change, because tracking the whims and desires of an informed consumer is less profitable and more difficult than tracking the whims and desires of an uninformed one.
It's the freedom of the people - they will be free to make their own decisions based on sufficient information. Without the mandated information the freedom is actually limited to what the companies decide.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Just let whatever company wants to market their product as non-GMO do so ans leave the rest as they were? BTW, organic certified = non-GMO so there's that already. Food industry is scared of having to respond to consumer demands? OK cool go out of business, see if we care!
Don't require that each package positively state whether or not it contains GMOs. Some will contain them, some won't. It will vary form one batch of corn to the next. So allow the phrase "May Contain Genetically Modified Ingredients" to suffice. This will allow companies to slap it on EVERYTHING (including products without any ingredients for which there are GM varieties on the market). This will dilute the value of labeling until it no longer matters. Nearly every crop will be genetically modified eventually.
So when almost everything on the supermarket shelf is labelled as GMO product, and the non GMO versions cost significantly more and perform worse? Potentially even make people sick, like this whole raw milk stupidity?
Anti GMOers are in for a rude shock, and I wholeheartedly support this.
No, it's not being done in Vermont. The Vermont statute controls foods produced elsewhere and sold in Vermont: it's a major interstate commerce demand, and will add its burden to a broad swath of folk who couldn't vote in that state. Sadly, it's probably enforceable: state liquor laws have long created similar schisms, which is why a favorite pastime of yesteryear was to load up a few cases of a favorite beer from state A to take home to state B. So, I wonder how long it will take to certify non-GMO status for pepper from India? Coffee from Brazil? Will stocks of unlabeled seed from before the law came into effect be presumed GMO untill proven otherwise? Will liars prosper, or will false claims actually be investigated? How? I think the law reeks. What information I would like to have, won't be on the label. And learning that the poppy seeds in my salad dressing were genetically modified... is worthless, a waste of ink and paper.
I disagree and so do others. Thankfully this isn't an instance where you get to push your insane ideas on others (and in their bodies.)
I can't wait for the day the rest of America wakes up to the fact that the anti-GMO movement is the Hipster/millennial/elitist version of climate change deniers. 62% of everything you buy in a typical grocery store - pre-processed, canned, frozen, fresh - is GMO. Has been for many years now. The only "evidence" that exists showing any negative effects from GMO's can be found only in the realm of fringe or conspiracy sites that also "educate" the public about the evils of flouride and vaccinations.
I can suggest some other mandatory certifications to allay consumers' fears and help them make political statements:
The compliance with each label's statute shall be monitored and enforced by the Attorney General and penalties for violations shall be up to $1000 per day per person.
Now, of course, if we interpreted the Commerce Clause of the Constitution as broadly as we do the First Amendment, none of this would be possible... But, hey, what good is a Democracy, if the majority can not impose its will on an (unpopular) minority?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
A free and fully informed consumer market is only for the powerful corporations. Their consumers must be kept in the dark.
I don't know if you've had this over in your country, but in the UK we used to have "Economy" loaves which came in three sizes of slice, just like normal bread:thin, medium, thick. Thin was only of use if you were so dirt poor that you could only afford a nearly uselessly thin slice of bread. Spreading anything other than warm margerine on it would roll the bread up and break the slice into pieces. And forget about toast. Thick slices meant that you had a lot of the cheap-ass bread to taste, which isn't why you wanted it, it's basically something to keep your fingers clean when you eat the filling. So medium slices only were used. Indeed even on expensive "tasty" bread, thick slices were barely used.
But they got rid of the medium sliced economy loaf.
"Why? I buy that!" you complained.
"Our customers wanted that change. We had a survey" they responded.
Yeah, right. No way a survey got that response. What question did they ask? If you had to choose between a medium sliced loaf twice the price and thick sliced economy, which would you chose?"?
They got rid of thin slices. Nobody buys it.
And medium cut into their profits.After all, you have to buy 50% more loaves if they're thick sliced. Or you can buy the store brand medium which is cheaper per slice, but more profit for them.
All they had to do was get rid of the economy medium slice competition.
Of course, in older days, bread had some taste, whereas now, to bake a loaf from basic ingredients in the minimum time fucks up the taste completely. And if they take longer, they produce fewer loaves or need much bigger production lines, meaning a higher cost outlay and more maintenance. So they gave out tasteless bread, even the "high quality" stuff. So the difference between economy low quality with no taste and premium high quality with no taste is fuck all other than cost.
They HAD to kill the economy slice.
Of course, since they got rid of the only economy sliced bread they sold, nobody bought it. And so within a year they got rid of economy bread altogether. "Our customers didn't want the economy loaf!". Yeah, right.
As A Vermonter I love to see these stories. VT is increasingly a playground for the rich and those subsumed with WLG* to support the cause du jour.
Hate fracking? Vermont BANNED it in a very public legislative effort. (Even though Vermont will never have fracking due to geologic conditions in the state.) But of course the Illuminati who run the state strongly support a new, natural gas pipeline that will transport fracked NG to the most "sustainable" of towns.
Hate litter? We are all becoming professional garbage managers due to legislatively micro-managed trash laws. (Meanwhile, Keurig/Green Mountain Coffee STILL dumps millions of plastic, unrecyclable single-use K-cups into the environment.
The local "food co-op" broadcasts BUY LOCAL then sells grossly overpriced Yuppie-chow imported from California.
I can go on but you get the point. Do as I say - not as I do.
*White Liberal Guilt
"The one from the store is flavorless crap. Very few people stop buying it"
A large number of people is a million. But that's only 0.014% of the population of planet earth.
You moron.
they already label it. why not label it GMO. If it's supposed to be healthier and better for you, surely this is a GOOD thing to put on there?
Why label things Organic? Why not non-Organic and let people choose if they want non-Organic food???
Would that be because Organic methods are something you do to the produce used? Isn't genetically modifying them ALSO something you're doing to the produce?
And, no, Cross breeding is NOT GMO. Otherwise sexual reproduction would be classed as GMO, and even living is GMO. And cancer GMO. And eating GMO. Why do YOU get to say how much broader the genetic change of a living organism's genetic code gets to be? If the word becomes so broad it cannot pass any information along, it ceases to have meaning, and if there is no GMO, then there can be no GMO patents or "IP" protection.
And as people they cannot be compelled to say things that they do not wish to. The first amendment protects the corporation's free speech to print or not to print whatever they want to on packages. And the commerce clause of article I has already ruled that states cannot deny free trade with other states. If Vermont allows the sale of lettuce in their state, they must also accept lettuce from another state without tarrif.
I've never heard of a town in Vermont named Tiny. Is this a reference to its size by area? There are five other states smaller than it. It's the not the least populated. What does tiny mean?
the media haven't been left wing for thirty years or more,and it's getting far right wing for the last 10-20 years. You REALLY missed the 70's, didn't you? Stop pretending the world is still the same halcyon days where you didn't notice anyone different from you anyhwere in your sight and everything looked to be proving God Loves America (tm).
Since Brazil and India already have GMO labelling laws in place, I doubt it will be problem.
entropy happens
I starting to fell love with the state of Vermont; Sander's state
if someone wants to believe in the FSM or that the earth is 6000 years old, they should have the right to do it. If someone wants to filter their food selections on the basis of being GMO or not, that should also be their choice.
The GMO concerns, however, have some sense to them. While being GMO is not inherently bad, I have no confidence that GMO producers will test their GMO food products well enough. It’s not profitable. Also, for someone with a corn allergy (like my wife), the “GMO” label is the most reliable way to detect if there are hidden corn products in the food, because essentialy all corn is GMO. The FDA says that corn isn’t an allergen (even though the probability of encountering it times the probability of having a sensitivity is probably higher than the same metric for wheat), so it doesn’t have to be labeled, so this is the last safety net we have. And don’t tell me that we can avoid corn by avoiding processed foods: They sneak corn products into “100% pure chicken breast” for crying out loud.
Wolverine?
I remember there being a post on Slashdot a while bakc, where a survey at a university(!) showed that
80% of all people taking the survey thinks that food containing DNA should be labeled.
People in general have no idea what GMO is, or how it affects the body (hint: it does the same thing as other stuff with DNA).
Because really, nearly ALL the food we eat today has been "modified" at some point.
If it was old-fashioned breeding techniques, no problem. If scientists used a virus to splice genes to/from an organism, I want to know. That technique has not been proven to be completely accurate or side-effect free.
One of the healthiest vegetable oils, Canola Oil, is a product of genetic modification to remove a potential toxin, making it safe for humans to consume. Most of the characteristics were obtained by "conventional" genetic modification, similar to that used to create, for example, a seedless fruit variety.
However since Monsanto introduced the Gene-Spliced variety in the late 1990's, ("Roundup Ready Canola") that form has come to dominate the available crops in Canada and the USA. Also, the Monsanto variety has found it's way into the storage lots of the non-licensed seed stock. The result is the GMO Canola is virtually the only form available today in food grade Canola Oil (although it is worth noting that at least 87% is by grower's choice of the Monsanto seed, not seed stock contamination).
To avoid the GMO variety is to abandon the use of Canola altogether.
Canola pushes both all the "Heart Smart" buttons, and all the "GMO/non-GMO" buttons.
Because food manufacturers have largely embraced Canola as an input in processed foods, essentially everything from all the middle aisles in a North American supermarket contains GMO Canola. In other words, almost all the products in the supermarket in Vermont will have to be labeled as containing GMO ingredients.
The alternative is to use a less healthy vegetable oil, and that might include Hydrogenated varieties containing unhealthy Trans Fats, and earn the right to apply the NON-GMO label.
every major food manufacturer and wholesaler just pulled out of the vermont market instead........
Man all the posts suggesting or outright saying GMO's are safe(and people are fools to think otherwise? WTF).
GMO's as a singular definition is very poor, it needs to be labeled more like plastic/recycling programs; A reference number narrowing in on how the organism was modified/used.
Examples:
code#) Modified to resist pesticide (most, and worst use of gene modification; just easiest)
code#) Anti-Rot Gene (Those tomatoes suck)
#) Patented/method(bad idea but its 'the way it is'(
#) So many..
Technically GMO I believe can even be farmer selected/cultivated varieties.
Resisting pesticides means more poison to environment and likely consuming a greater amount in the food itself(even if it's 'within safe limits' bleah).
As I recall there was a cucumber developed and it went right into production for our dinner tables; It could have disastrous but the harvesters hand picking them developed rashes and it was destroyed.
IMO we should be reducing world population to levels where GMO would seems like a wasted effort.
Vermont resident here. Best argument I heard against the labelling requirement was that it's TMI. Similar to the arguments about packaging being "recycled content" or "recyclable", or "made in USA", the opponents make the case that every additional disclosure requirement obfuscates ingredient and nutrition information, or dolphin-safe etc. If Vermont required companies put the number of women employed as a percentage of labor, or minority representation on company board of directors, or employee-owned stock, etc. etc., SOMEONE will always be in favor of "disclosing" it on the label. But there's a legitimate concern that the net effect is "noise". Consumers engage in a form of "moral licensing", giving more weight to "recyclable" than "carbs". T
here is a social cost to obfuscation and "Too Much Information" on labels.
Many in Vermont have a legitimate purpose in branding the state as more natural and organic because it's basically impossible to operate factory farming here. But while legitimate, it's also legitimate to argue Vermont's concerns are basically protectionism against milk and cheese made more cheaply in Ohio. My concerns over GMO has to do with monoculture and unintended consequences of reduced genetic diversity, and eventual loss of rights to plant your own seeds. And I feel strongly about it. But trying to make other people who are less educated, who think GMO is a health concern, share my agenda is a "poster child" technique which will produce fewer returns the more information is packed onto a label. If we put every "true" thing on a label, people will be deluged and stop reading labels. And THAT is the tactic I hope food labels don't embrace - EULA Agreement scale labels that provide so much "information" that the consumers are lost in politics, packaging, nutrition, ingredients, weight, volume, etc.
Gently reply
Can't they have a label for when it may or may not?
And use that for those who don't want to have to be bothered with it?
Or companies feel that consumers in other states will avoid the products if they say they contain GMO ingredients?
I guess then they have made their choice. Personally I'm not sure I would care if I lived in the US. Also I would just take "may" for what it is, just as it was before.
and to *me*. but not to those who have irrational thought about GMO. Or Hallal. Take it as a religion : how would you feel as a jewish person if people were adding pork stuff everywhere without labelling it ? Or Add in food stuff like, rind or pork grease, when you are a vegetarian by conviction,without noting it ? Same things here. If a majority of epople want it, then maybe it is us , the minority which recognize as GMO as being generally safe , which should hear and bow to the masses.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
... except for salt. I guess salt has never been genetically modified compared to (say) 1000 to 5000 years ago, perhaps because it doesn't contain any genes.
Everything else -- arguably including wild game -- has been modified by humans manipulating its genes, most often by the tried and true method of waiting for "nature" to cause a mutation and then selectively breeding to stabilize it in a domesticated population.
So General Foods etc should retaliate by simply labelling all food products as having been modified relative to their "natural" state prior to the existence of mankind. Then consumers will get bored looking at the label (and possibly might be educated about the meaning of "GMO" relative to the biological human universe). End of problem.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Remember what happens at the end of the Spartacus movie, when the Roman army demands that, if they only turn over their leader, Spartacus, the rebellious slaves with be spared crucifixion? In the movie, the captured thousands rise up, each claiming to be Spartacus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKCmyiljKo0
Were I a bold and brave corporate executive at Kraft or a similar company, I'd solve this problem easily. Every product would get GMO content, however small the quantity and unnecessary the inclusion. Every product would then come with that Vermont-mandated GMO labeling. "I am GMO" would be on every product, making the label worthless and prosecution impossible.
Alas, that won't happened. Corporate executives are not renown for their courage. They get to the top by avoiding risk.
Now, get the fear-mongerers out of the way by asking them to prove that GMOs are harmful.
Why are they worrying about this when food containing DNA is being sold unlabeled? Has the world gone crazy? /s
I thought VT's motto was "Feel the Bern"\
Maine beats them all... Live free or die!
People are willing to pay more for "Natural" foods. If they label it, they have to sell at a discount. The entire point of GMO foods is to increase profit margins, and selling at a discount ruins that. The Lie that GMO foods will end world hunger needs to die. Third world farmers can't afford GMO anything, and western farmers have their production levels limited to protect prices.
I notice they exempted milk and cheese from the law. It couldn't possibly be because Vermont cheese is a big deal and virtually all cheese is technically GMO now (very few cheese makers get their rennet by cutting open a calf these days). The labelling law is stupid, but if you're going to do it, don't be hypocrites about it.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Food Allergies require knowing what you eat. If they put peanut DNA into a tomato then people will die from eating tomatoes, not knowing it's actually part peanut. This isn't something you can see or predict. Nobody with a peanut allergy would question eating a tomato, it's an unknowable hazard.
First the second DOESN'T mean you get to carry a gun. You get to be a Millita and you can protect your state from federal, other states or external threats. Not just carry a gun and PRETEND you're a military operative.
Many more articles on "Teh gubmint takin our gunes!", "War On Christmass", "Black Lives Matters Are Terrorists", "Ayrabs aer Terrrists (even if they're not arabs)", "Teh Left Libruls Aer Derstroyering Amuriga!".
When a shooting turns up "You gurta arm them there gude peepull (but not them niggers or ayrabs, right, only good christian white men)!".
RightWing demanding interviewers thrown in jail for asking gotcha questions. How Assange and WL should be shot and nuked on sight, Snowden broiled in a steam bath for a traitor, et al.
Where exactly IS the left wing media you speak of, and how the fuck do you claim the above to be NOT far right? HOW FUCKING FAR RIGHT ARE YOU????
Let's start with unsustainable agriculture:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SDILA.php
Now on to human health due to agricultural practices:
http://www.dw.com/en/pesticide-illness-triggers-anti-monsanto-protest-in-argentina/a-17013525
Companies, like Monsanto, have been abusing their own products and now farmers are using tons of herbicides, poisoning their workers and communities. The "weeds" are now roundup resistant. The weeds have the GMO genes from the soy; transgenic traits likely from cross pollination, that make them resistant to more herbicides.
By knowing if a product contains GMOs, namely corn and soy, I can choose not to support the agricultural methods that bring the product to market.
Damn, your shilling didn't get past the first, even though very short, sentence.
Do better next time or you'll be replaced by a cheaper shill from Korea.
Spoken like a true GMO frankenfood lobbyist.
Seriously, mark it all as GMO-bearing. Even if there's a chance it ain't.
Have every company do this.
Then let the fuckers scramble to find some high-dollar "all natural" alternative or starve.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I don't give a crap if something is GMO or not... we'd have a hard time feeding the world without GMO. What I care about is if my purchase profits Monsanto or not, considering the predatory, deceptive, and sometimes downright evil acts that company has perpetrated.
GMO isn't bad... but the unfortunate fact is that the most visible and prolific company working in GMO crops is tarnishing the science of GMO by association.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
The most striking thing in that story was that Senate was 1 vote away from passing a bill that would *prohibit* states from setting up such labeling requirements. How on earth do those 48 "people's representatives" explain how making it illegal for people to vote in a consumer protection law is in somehow in their interest!? There's not even a pretense of proper representation now. Just shameless corruption.
Seriously, it is far more important to know WHERE your food comes from, then if it is GMO.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They are just going to buy off, sorry contribute to the campaigns of, a few federal politicians to get a law passed that will outlaw the labelling of whether food contains GMO ingredients. Problem solved.
The issue I have is that the term has become so confused in the minds of people I talk to. All selective breeding id 'GMO' -- hell, all sexual reproduction is 'genetic modification'.
I think wr need to be more specific in the respect of (for want of a better term) xeno-genetic of cross-species modification. This is the sort of thing people are thinking of as having unpredictable consequences I bet, but legislators and ignorant lobbyists might end up banning a lot more than they mean to.
"This product genetically modified using Mendelian technology"
90%? 90% of who, exactly? It sure as hell isn't 90% of their customers, or they'd have a really, really small customer base now, wouldn't they? Or are these 90% just authoritarian assholes who want to force companies to do stuff, even though it doesn't affect their buying habits in the slightest?
Maine beats them all... Live free or die!
Sorry, man, but that's New Hampshire's motto.
#DeleteChrome
which may or may not be harmful to your chi.
Around 90% of GM food crop yield goes into animal feed.
Less than 10% goes into the processed foods that will be impacted by the very naive Vermont law.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to find out whether meat, milk or eggs in Vermont, which came from GMO-fed source animals, need to be labelled. You shouldn't have to think too hard to realize the answer.
The leading global GMO-supported food chain is RoundUp-Ready Soy going into "broiler" (chicken meat) production. It has not quite 100% share of soy going into chicken production. That will not change.
The food industry has not been "brought to it's knees" by Vermont.
And GMO "labellers" are just GMO opponents, and are very very ignorant people.
-- Mike Greaves
Such a pro-consumer law would be viewed as an "impediment' to profit under the TPP. The interested party (the company) will be eligible for an Investor State Dispute Settlement for non conformance to the TPP. The interested party nominates a number for compensation and then the taxpayer (also the consumer) has to maintain compensation to the company (i.e. pay them) until the "impediment" (i.e. the pro consumer law) is "nullified" (i.e removed).
Essentially the TPP makes all pro-consumer laws and protections un-affordable to the state and the taxpayer. People are free to protest why laws can't be put in place to provide those protections and politicians will respond by saying they are unaffordable. What they won't say is that they are un-affordable because they are the ones who agreed to signing away their own nations sovereignty to a third party out of their control.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Kraft recently changed its Mac & Cheese by changing it to use natural ingredients. They sold the new formulation for three months before saying anything.
From a practical level, that's the first question anyone should add.
Revel in your Frankenfood. Make special General Mills version of Frankenberries (with added GMOs) and Booberries.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Thought GMO was pretty dead with the advent of CRISPR. Just my understanding.
What's wrong with people knowing what's in their food?
We all know that science has ALL the answers.
But maybe our all-knowing science isn't good enough to tell if GMO foods have a deleterious effect on the human body.
We may not know for generations...at which time it may be too late to reverse.
Let those who WANT to eat GMO foods do so, but let those who do not want to have to opportunity to opt out if they choose.
Or however it goes. (Or went. Don't recall seeing it lately.) This isn't the first time one state has affected a national producer.
Oh, and there's also Texas and history textbooks.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
This GMO thing is nothing some stickers couldn't handle. Some foods, like Coca-Cola made in Mexico and ramen noodles imported from Japan, already carry extra sticker labels on the packages to allow these imported items to conform to US labeling requirements.
This happens routinely with imported food from all over. There is no reason a similar kind of GMO label could not be developed for Vermont and make it the duty of the retailer or distributor to ensure the labels are applied. Stores too could do this as they stock the shelves. In this way, the factories don't need to change at all, and there is no need to change anything for any other states nor worry how to conform to different laws in different states. Just make stickers very cheaply in bulk and apply where an when needed.
Problem solved.
And oh yes, sure DO pass on the cost of the stickers and labor to apply them to the consumers. Why not? It's a cost center.
Sig for hire.