Attorney General Bill Sorrell said he won’t seek to enforce Vermont’s law requiring labeling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients now that the president has signed legislation addressing the issue.
Vermont’s Act 120, which went into effect July 1, was pre-empted when President Barack Obama signed a federal law requiring producers to label GMO foods. The federal law says that can be done with symbols or electronic codes rather than text, as Vermont’s law had mandated.
The federal law will accomplish at least some of what Vermont sought, Sorrell said in a statement Wednesday.
“We successfully defended our law for two years, and as a result many companies are now disclosing that their products are produced with genetic engineering,” Sorrell said. “We hope that they will continue to do so going forward, not because our law requires it, but because it is the right thing to do.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the agency tasked with creating new federal labeling standards, has said that the rulemaking the new federal law requires could take up to two years.
Vermont’s law was the first in the nation, preceding similar laws in Maine and Connecticut. At least 30 other states have introduced some form of legislation to require labeling of genetically engineered foods.
Food producers including Campbell Soup Co., General Mills, Kellogg and ConAgra have already agreed to comply with Vermont’s now-defeated labeling law.
The new federal law pre-empts as well a 2004 Vermont law requiring manufacturers to identify genetically engineered seeds.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association sued Vermont over its most recent labeling law, but the group is expected to drop the suit in the wake of the new federal law.
