Major win for consumer transparency
A US appeals court has ruled that exempting highly refined or ultra-processed genetically modified foods from GM labelling is unlawful—a significant victory for the public’s right to know what’s on their plates.
The court overturned a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) rule that exempted some foods—such as corn and soy oils—from the requirement to disclose “bioengineered” ingredients. The USDA had itself engineered a loophole that said if the modified material wasn’t “detectable”, then it wasn’t “contained” and so didn’t need to be disclosed. The appeals court also ruled that sticking a QR code on a product to give information didn’t constitute “meaningful access to all Americans”.
The Center for Food Safety, which brought the case on behalf of a coalition of not-for-profits and organic retailers, described the win as “a landmark victory for the public’s right to know what they eat and feed their families”. Announcing their decision, the court said: “There is an obvious and important difference between whether a substance is actually present and whether, using a particular method, one is able to detect that the substance is present.”
According to food sustainability website Global Agriculture, the loophole was significant because GMO ultra-processed foods such as cooking oils constitute around 70% of all GMO food ingredients.
Global Agriculture went on to explain that more than 60 countries around the world require GMO food labelling, including Europe, Japan, China and most US trade partners. Polls have consistently shown that more than 90% of Americans want to know whether a product contains GM material.
