The first-term senator is well-known as a champion of consumer protection. Warren joins GMO labeling fray

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has joined the GMO labeling debate, but consumer advocates aren’t entirely pleased with her position.

The first-term senator is well-known as a champion of consumer protection, especially in relation to banking regulation, but she is on to new issues, calling for the Food and Drug Administration to finalize a 12-year-old draft guidance in relation to the labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms.


The guidance could be complied with by the food industry on a voluntary basis, which would not be nearly as tough as the mandatory GMO labeling requirements being sought by consumer advocates. In fact, some advocates fear the FDA guidance promoted by the Massachusetts Democrat and others might even be used to circumvent the tougher standards they seek.

“FDA needs to require mandatory labeling and guidance isn’t enough,” asserts Scott Faber, director of Just Label It, one of multiple organizations fighting for mandatory labeling on a national basis.

The battle over GMO labeling has been heating up over the past few years, especially following the narrow loss of a 2012 California ballot initiative to require labels on food packaging. The biotechnology industry recently donated millions of dollars to campaign against a Washington state ballot initiative coming up for a vote in November.

In lieu of a national standard, some 26 state legislatures have recently weighed their own GMO labeling requirements.

Warren makes her request for national GMO labeling guidance in the form of a one-page letter, also signed by Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), sent to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg on Aug. 22. The letter calls for the FDA to finalize a draft document it issued in January 2001 and to “implement a regulatory framework for the standardization of labeling policies for GMO and non-GMO foods.”

In particular, the FDA’s 2001 draft guidance calls for food manufacturers, should they choose to identify foods as containing GMOs, to use statements that explain how the food was modified through genetic engineering and avoid the phrase “GMO free” for foods that have not been modified. “The term ‘GMO free’ may be misleading for most foods, because most foods do not contain organisms (seeds and foods like yogurt that contain microorganisms are exceptions),” the guidance explains. “It would likely be misleading to suggest that a food that ordinarily would not contain entire ‘organisms’ is ‘organism free.’”

Warren and Udall’s letter also includes language that generally calls for the “implementation of regulations to ensure that the labeling of GMO products is fair, standardized and transparent.” However, no details are offered and nowhere does the letter suggest the mandatory labeling sought by advocates.

FDA’s 2001 guidance stems from a 1992 “Statement of Policy: Foods Derived from New Plant Varieties” that suggested the agency lacks the authority to require labeling if there is “no basis for concluding that bioengineered foods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way, or that, as a class, foods developed by the new techniques present any different or greater safety concern than foods developed by traditional plant breeding.”

This is not an opinion shared by everyone, however. “FDA has the authority to require labeling under Sec 201n of the [Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act]; they have compelled other disclosures, such as orange juice from concentrate,” Just Label It’s Faber said. “No act of Congress [is] needed.”

Regulatory agencies don’t always move as fast as they promise in published schedules, and FDA spokeswoman Theresa Eisenman said she “cannot offer a timeline for when the agency would issue final guidance” in relation to GMO labeling. However, the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition’s Plan for Program Priorities, 2013-2014, indicates Warren and Udall might get their wish. It says the agency plans to publish final guidance in relation to the voluntary labeling of foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients in 2013.

Colin O’Neil, director of government affairs for the Center for Food Safety, another of the groups advocating for GMO labeling, isn’t surprised by Warren’s recent interest as Capitol Hill has started to pay more attention to GMO labeling.

“She’s really the darling of consumer transparency and consumer protection, and I think the food movement would be disappointed if she didn’t support GE labeling,” O’Neil says.

However, from her few statements on the issue thus far, “I don’t know what her intent is,” O’Neil adds.

Alexis Baden-Meyer, political director of the Organic Consumers Association, another of the groups advocating for GMO labeling, is more critical.

“I don’t like the direction Warren and Udall are going,” Baden-Meyer says. “It’s very concerning to me. … The letter is ambiguous as to what it is asking the FDA to do.”

Baden-Meyer, like others, expresses concern that any voluntary GMO labeling guidance from FDA might be used to trump new state laws. But Sonali Gunawardhana, a former FDA attorney now in private practice with Wiley Rein, in Washington, D.C., doesn’t think that’s a danger.

“It’s not law; therefore anything you put in the guidance documents really can’t stand on its own,” she says. “The bottom line is that you need a law or some other statutory authority” behind the guidance.

Whether it was Warren’s intention to promote voluntary GMO labeling at the cost of a mandatory labeling requirement remains unclear. Her office declined to comment on the letter or its timing, and a request sent to Udall’s office was not returned by press time either.

Meanwhile, the food and biotechnology industries like the tack the Massachusetts senator is taking.

Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, says his group “supports FDA’s existing science-based labeling policy with respect to foods and food ingredients derived from modern biotechnology. We believe that the FDA policy provides a comprehensive framework for consumer protection and choice, including the use of voluntary labels, and clearly serves the public interest.”

Further, Robert Fraley, executive vice president and chief technology officer for Monsanto, backs voluntary labeling requirements. “The reason the people who are funding the campaign for these mandatory labels is they basically want to get rid of biotech [food], and they want biotech to have the same view as salt or sugar on the label — and the science doesn’t support that,” Fraley said in a recent interview at POLITICO’s offices.

Food labels should be reserved for health and nutrition information, and GMOs fall under neither category, Fraley argued. The FDA and USDA should look at creating something similar to the voluntary labeling for non-GMO beef that USDA created earlier this summer.

The FDA “laid out a protocol and it’s the same thing for what they’ve done historically with organic,” Fraley said. “That’s the same thing that should be done for the food labels.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly said that the FDA was giving no indication that guidance was among the agency’s near-term priorities. The FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Plan for Program Priorities, 2013-2014, indicates that the agency plans to publish final guidance in relation to the voluntary labeling of foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients in 2013.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Jessica Huff @ 09/18/2013 01:01 PM CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly said that the FDA was giving no indication that guidance was among the agency’s near-term priorities. The FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Plan for Program Priorities, 2013-2014, indicates that the agency plans to publish final guidance in relation to the voluntary labeling of foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients in 2013.