Fresh Produce Discussion Blog

Created by The Packer's National Editor Tom Karst

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

American Farm Bureau Supports National GMO Pre-emption Bill



WASHINGTON, D.C., June 28, 2016 – The American Farm Bureau Federation is supporting proposed Senate legislation that establishes federal pre-emption of what was expected to grow into an unruly patchwork of state-by-state mandatory GMO labeling laws.

“Our nation’s top scientists agree that crops enhanced through GMO technology are safe, and this bill will act to stop the expansion of state laws that threaten interstate marketing and effectively ignore science,” said AFBF President Zippy Duvall, following a vote by the AFBF Board of Directors to support the bill.

“The bill is far from perfect, but it correctly puts the federal government in the driver’s seat in important areas such as protecting interstate commerce and new crop development techniques. There is no public health or scientific justification for the bill’s mandatory disclosure provisions, but the national uniformity established by this bill is paramount.”