Oct 21, 2015

October 21, 2015 – ARLINGTON, VA – FMI President and CEO, Leslie G. Sarasin urged the Senate to join the House of Representatives and act this Fall to provide one uniform national food labeling standard following today’s Senate Agriculture Committee hearing.

Sarasin said, “FMI members sell a wide variety of foods throughout the United States and regularly hear from shoppers about food labeling issues. With regard to identifying non-GMO food products, retailers and the consumers they serve need one national standard for non-GMO containing food products to avoid the confusion and inefficiency of a state by state patchwork labeling system. We are already seeing, through the actions our members must consider in order to comply with the Vermont stand-alone law, that we cannot have a system of 50 different labeling approaches for these products. It would not be financially viable and it is incredibly confusing.

The House of Representatives passed its version of a uniform national standard for food labeling in July with strong bipartisan support. We applaud the Senate Agriculture Committee for holding this hearing and urge the Senate to also consider uniform food labeling legislation this Fall.”