WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. legislators are having trouble figuring out food labelling — in particular, what should be labelled and why it should be labelled.
However, they know there is likely to be more demand for it in the future, along with other demands that could affect how farmers farm.
“I think this is a real problem,” Minnesota Democratic representative Collin Peterson told a group of agricultural newspaper reporters April 25.
“It brings people to this debate that (don’t necessarily know or care about their positions’ impact on farmers.) If you get all these other people involved that want to bring in ‘sustainability’ and big farmers versus small farmers and GMOs and all this other stuff into the debate, it’s very hard to see how you work this out.”
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Peterson was speaking about demands for GMO labelling on food packages as well as the larger issue of whether the U.S. Congress will be able to pass a new farm bill next year.
He and other members of Congress highlighted the divisive nature of the issues, such as genetic modification and animal welfare, and suggested it makes future farm-focused legislation more difficult to get through the complicated U.S. government structure.
Pat Roberts, chair of the Senate agriculture committee, talked about struggling to write a GM labelling law that both the House of Representatives and the Senate could support, but he also seemed frustrated by demands for “chicken enrichment.”
Deb Stabenow,a Democrat on the Senate committee, said the GM labelling bill was a tough debate with multiple contrasting viewpoints that were hard to resolve.
Peterson thinks the scraps over organic labelling, GM labelling and the use of terms like “natural” in product promotion are bad for farmers, but he blamed food marketers more than activist groups.
“All of this stuff is marketing. All of this stuff is created by people in agriculture sales that are using these things to get market share from each other,” said Peterson.
“This whole marketing that’s going on to try to get customers is causing confusion, in my opinion, with the consumers. They don’t really know what the heck is going on.”
