Speaker 1: This week on Parts Pervilion, we're asking some pretty mind
Speaker 1: bending questions about GMOs. For example, what is a GMO?
Speaker 1: The answer, which is that no one really knows, may
Speaker 1: surprise you. Hello and welcome once again to Parts Pervilion,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg DNA's bi weekly environmental policy podcast. I'm David Schultz.
Speaker 1: It can be really difficult to talk about GMOs, and
Speaker 1: one of the reasons is that there's so little agreement
Speaker 1: about even the definitions of the most basic terms. It's
Speaker 1: like two people playing chess who can't agree on what
Speaker 1: a pawn is or how a queen can move. There's
Speaker 1: not even agreement that we should be calling these foods
Speaker 1: GMOs at all. Some people call them genetically engineered, other
Speaker 1: people bioengineered. These all referred to the same thing, but
Speaker 1: what exactly is that thing? GMO usually refers to some
Speaker 1: type of organism, like a plant or an animal that's
Speaker 1: had its genetic code modified in some way by humans.
Speaker 1: So at this point you might be asking, why are
Speaker 1: we getting so deep into the semantic weeds here. It's
Speaker 1: because Congress just passed a GMO labeling law, which may
Speaker 1: not actually even be a GMO labeling law, and food
Speaker 1: companies that need to comply with it are trying to
Speaker 1: figure all this stuff out. Starting soon, food manufacturers will
Speaker 1: have to let shoppers know somehow if their food contains GMOs.
Speaker 1: Keith Matthews is one of the people helping these companies out.
Speaker 1: He's an attorney at the firm Sidley Austin who specializes
Speaker 1: in food and environmental law. Before moving to the firm,
Speaker 1: he headed up the EPA's division in charge of pesticide
Speaker 1: and GMO crops. When we went to go speak with
Speaker 1: Keith at Sidley's downtown Washington headquarters, he had just wrapped
Speaker 1: up a webinar sorting out the details of this new law. So,
Speaker 1: as someone who writes about this topic a lot, but
Speaker 1: also as someone who buys food and grocery stores a lot,
Speaker 1: I asked him the question that probably a lot of
Speaker 1: people are wondering, what are these GMO labels going to
Speaker 1: look like? That's actually a very interesting question. Any answer
Speaker 1: to that is no, one knows. The main factor that
Speaker 1: drove lawmakers to pass this bill now is that the
Speaker 1: state of Vermont had just enacted its own GMO labeling law.
Speaker 1: Congress was worried that without a single national standard food
Speaker 1: makers would have had to deal with a patchwork of
Speaker 1: fifty different laws across the country. So, now that the
Speaker 1: federal law has been passed and signed by the president,
Speaker 1: why don't we know what these GMO labels will look like?
Speaker 1: Matthew says, that's because, well, the labeling law it's actually
Speaker 1: not a labeling law at all. What we have now,
Speaker 1: it's not a labeling law. The bill that pass was
Speaker 1: enacted and signed by the president is a bioengineered food
Speaker 1: disclosure law, and disclosure not labeling. Disclosure not labeling does
Speaker 1: not preclude labeling, but it does not necessarily require labeling.
Speaker 1: The statute basically says that the disclosure can be by
Speaker 1: text symbol or electronic or digital disclosure, and so the
Speaker 1: latter is what's commonly known as a QR code, And
Speaker 1: those are the labels that are on the packages where
Speaker 1: you can sort of put your cell phone up against
Speaker 1: them and or scan it with yourself and then get
Speaker 1: more information that way. That's right, that's right. So how
Speaker 1: that is going to play out and what those will
Speaker 1: look like a it will determine. It will depend upon
Speaker 1: what USDA promulgates. Is a regulation requiring the disclosure and
Speaker 1: then b what the food manufacturers decide. Now, some food
Speaker 1: manufacturers have already committed to labeling. This was I think
Speaker 1: in part motivated by the Vermont law, which has now
Speaker 1: been preempted. But some food companies likely may very well decide,
Speaker 1: you know, we've already gone so far down this road,
Speaker 1: we're committed to this. This is what we're going to do,
Speaker 1: and so they will have labels. Other food companies may
Speaker 1: in fact say we're happy with QR codes. There's a possibility,
Speaker 1: probably a very good possibility, that some food companies will
Speaker 1: do a combination of the various alternatives, depending upon the
Speaker 1: different products. There is a provision in the law that
Speaker 1: addresses very small packages, you know, where you have very
Speaker 1: small packages where a label may not fit. There's provisions
Speaker 1: or usdas to come up with provisions to kind of
Speaker 1: address that circumstance. But I wouldn't be surprised if you
Speaker 1: have a number of food companies that have a number
Speaker 1: of alternatives depending upon the size of the product. One
Speaker 1: of the most significant aspects of the bill was that
Speaker 1: it actually includes the definition of what a GMO is.
Speaker 1: Matthew says that definition is actually pretty narrow. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that many people would consider to
Speaker 1: be a GMO that would fall outside of this definition.
Speaker 1: For example, a lot of the organisms created using new
Speaker 1: genetic engineering techniques called gene editing, those aren't GMOs according
Speaker 1: to this law. Neither are meat products made from animals
Speaker 1: who were fed GMOs. Matthew says he thinks Congress went
Speaker 1: with a narrow definition on purpose to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: and this is merely speculation on my part. I was
Speaker 1: not involved in the negotiations or in the drafting of
Speaker 1: the statue, but I think that there was an intent
Speaker 1: to make this particular requirements narrow as possible, you know,
Speaker 1: and still get it through, still get it passed, because
Speaker 1: I do think that, you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who feel as if this is really a meaningless
Speaker 1: requirement because you are disclosing to people information that is
Speaker 1: not really relevant to anything. When you're talking about mandatory
Speaker 1: food labeling, our food disclosure that should be about aspects
Speaker 1: of the food that are relevant to health and safety,
Speaker 1: and whether or not something contains genetically engineered components really
Speaker 1: doesn't tell you anything at all about the possible health
Speaker 1: consequences or safety or risks of the food. But while
Speaker 1: Congress tried to get specific with its definition of what
Speaker 1: a GMO is, Matthew said, they left a lot of
Speaker 1: other details really vague. For example, the law doesn't state
Speaker 1: what the labeling threshold should be. Should a food be
Speaker 1: labeled if five percent of its ingredients are GMOs or
Speaker 1: only one percent or less. Those kinds of decisions will
Speaker 1: be up to the Department of Agriculture, aside from certain
Speaker 1: requirements that USDA must have. For an example, you know
Speaker 1: there's no disclosure requirement for food sold in restaurants. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a few specific explicit requirements, but otherwise it's just
Speaker 1: a broad ground authority to USDA to go off and
Speaker 1: come up with a disclosure standard. And Matthew says, given
Speaker 1: how rapidly the field of genetic engineering is evolving, USDA
Speaker 1: really needs to be strategic and forward looking when it
Speaker 1: develops these standards in your federal agency and you promulgate regulations.
Speaker 1: The regulations have the force of law. But because they
Speaker 1: have the force of law, in order to revise them,
Speaker 1: or to change them, or to update them, you have
Speaker 1: to go through a regulatory rulemaking process that can take years,
Speaker 1: and there have been examples of where an agency decided
Speaker 1: that they wanted to update its regulations because science had
Speaker 1: moved forward, and by the time they had finished the regulations,
Speaker 1: science had continued to move forward and the regulations were
Speaker 1: out of date and obsolete at the time that they
Speaker 1: were promulgated. Sidley Austin environmental attorney Keith Matthews. For more
Speaker 1: reported on food and agriculture, visit our website at BNA
Speaker 1: dot com. You can find the latest news on these
Speaker 1: and other issues at Bloomberg bna's Daily Environment Report, a
Speaker 1: source for comprehensive coverage of the day's top environmental news.
Speaker 1: Start a free trial of Daily Environment Report by visiting
Speaker 1: BNA dot com slash Daily Podcasts. That's BNA dot com
Speaker 1: slash Daily hyphen podcast. Parts Rebellion was produced by myself
Speaker 1: with help from Jessica Coombs and Rachel Daegel. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg BNA agricultural reporter Casey Wooten. The theme music
Speaker 1: for Parts Rebellion is a message by Jasar. It was
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