Vermont just handed Monsanto and the biotech industry a massive defeat! Now mandatory GMO labeling will be required in the state of Vermont, USA... and the GMO industry is panicking as they want to continue to sell GE food unlabelled/ invisible to the eye/ consumer

www.naturalnews.com/044870_Vermont_GMO_labeling_consumer_slavery.html

www.centerforfoodsafety.org/press-releases/3100/vermont-set-to-be-first-state-to-enact-statewide-ge-food-labeling

Legislature Passes First No Strings Attached Law

Today, the Vermont legislature passed the first no strings attached law to require labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods. The House voted 114-30 to accept the Senate version of the bill passed last week. It now heads to Governor Shumlin, who is expected to sign the bill. The law would go into effect July 1, 2016.

"This is an historic day for the people's right to know. It is now very clear that federal labeling of genetically engineered foods is going to happen in the foreseeable future," said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director for Center for Food Safety (CFS).

“The people and legislators of Vermont have taken a tremendous step forward in allowing their citizens to know what is in their food. All families deserve this simple right to know,” said Rebecca Spector, who heads state labeling efforts at Center for Food Safety. “We congratulate all of the activists and lawmakers in Vermont who made this victory possible.”

“Should the industry try to challenge this law, Center for Food Safety will be there to help defend it and we are confident that it would survive any such challenge," added Kimbrell.

Center for Food Safety helped draft the legislation in consultation with state representatives. CFS has been at the center of the fight to inform consumers about GE foods for over a decade. CFS has worked with Vermont legislators and organizations on GE food labeling since 2005, providing legal testimony, resources, and expert advice.

Unlike other state labeling laws, the Vermont labeling bill (H. 112) is the first bill that will go into effect regardless of actions by other states. Previous GE labeling bills in Connecticut and Maine have required that a certain number of states enact similar legislation before they would take effect.

Once signed into law, Vermont’s mandatory labeling policy will likely set the stage for more states to introduce and adopt no strings attached labeling laws.

The findings of the bill state that “Because both the FDA and the U.S. Congress do not require the labeling of food produced with genetic engineering, the State should require food produced with genetic engineering to be labeled as such in order to serve the interests of the State.”

The bill also states, “In addition to requiring that foods produced using genetic engineering be labeled, the bill also mandates that GE foods cannot be labeled as "natural," or any words of similar import that would have a tendency to mislead a consumer.

Sixty-four nations including China, South Africa, and all countries in the European Union currently require GE foods to be labeled. Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) recently introduced federal legislation that would require nationwide labeling of GE products. That bill has 65 cosponsors.

ENDS

see also

www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/business/vermont-will-require-labeling-of-genetically-altered-foods.html?_r=0

Vermont Will Require Labeling of Genetically Altered Foods

Going further than any state so far, Vermont on Wednesday passed a law requiring the labeling of foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients.

Though the move came in a tiny state far from the nation’s population centers, proponents of such labeling immediately hailed the legislative approval as a significant victory. Labeling efforts are underway in some 20 other states, and the biotech and food industries have been pushing for federal legislation that would pre-empt such action.

“This is a historic day for the people’s right to know,” Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, an advocacy group that helped draft the Vermont legislation, said in a statement.

Governor Peter Shumlin, who had expressed reservations about the bill, said after the vote that he would sign it into law.

“There is no doubt that there are those who will work to derail this common-sense legislation,” he said in a statement. “But I believe this bill is the right thing to do and will gain momentum elsewhere after our action here in Vermont.” He had earlier predicted that opponents of labeling would immediately take the state to court over the law.

The vote Wednesday by the House of Representatives was 114 to 30 and followed approval by the Senate last week. The law would start July 1, 2016.

More than 90 percent of the nation’s corn, soy, canola and sugar beets — from which the bulk of the nation’s sugar is derived — are grown from transgenic seeds, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association has estimated that some 80 percent of foods found in grocery stores contain ingredients made from such crops.

Products containing ingredients like canola oil, soy lecithin, dextrose and sorbitol would have to be labeled under the Vermont law and other labeling proposals.

Connecticut passed a law requiring labeling last June, but it was contingent on several requirements, and Maine passed a similar law last year. Labeling will not go into effect in Connecticut, for instance, until at least four other states, one of them contiguous, pass similar requirements. And the combined population of those states must be at least 20 million.