USDA to publish draft of GMO labeling rule this fall

USDA has not yet given a compliance date, however, a spokesman told FoodNavigator-USA. “Implementation timelines have not been determined at this time. However, the statute does provide that small scale food manufacturers (a term that will be defined during the rule making) would have at least a year after publication of the final rule to come into compliance.” Feasibility study A feasibility study from Deloitte exploring how electronic or digital disclosure (eg. via QR codes) might impact consumer access to the information about GMOs is “ set to be delivered by the statutory deadline of July 28, 2017 ,” he confirmed. The study findings “ will be used to draft the proposed rule, and therefore will be subject to comment as part of the overall proposed rule when it is published ,” he added. Meanwhile, interested parties have until July 17 to submit feedback on a series of questions relating to what the disclosures might look like, what thresholds for GM material might be, and what ‘bio-engineered’ means, he said. “AMS is still collecting comments to the questions and is reviewing options on how those comments may be made publicly available.” The Trump effect Asked whether any of President Trump’s executive orders from January 2017 designed to scale back regulations might impact the whole process or the timetable, he said: “The impact of the executive orders is being evaluated on this rule making.” Unanswered questions Right now, fairly significant questions remain, such as precisely what does ‘bio-engineered’ mean, and will highly refined foods derived from GM crops such as high fructose corn syrup or soybean oil (“ that contain undetectable levels of bioengineered genetic material such that they are indistinguishable from their non-engineered counterparts ”) require GMO labels? The wording of any on-pack disclosure is also up for debate, with USDA currently considering whether terms already used by some firms such as ‘ Produced with Genetic Engineering,’ ‘Partially Produced with Genetic Engineering,’ or ‘May be Produced with Genetic Engineering ,’ might be acceptable. There is also disagreement over what a symbol might look like such that it is “ not disparaging toward bio-engineering,” and ongoing confusion over 'non-GMO' claims, which are not addressed in the legislation, but are currently very widely used, and don't always mean the same thing.

USDA to publish draft of GMO labeling rule this fall

USDA will publish a draft of its proposed federal GMO labeling rule in the fall of this year (which will be subject to public comment) and says it is “working hard to meet the schedule in order to issue a final rule on the law in July 2018.”

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