U.S. Congress passes mandatory labeling bill for genetically engineered foods

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed the nation's first federal legislation that requires mandatory disclosure of foods that contain genetically modified ingredients.

The bill, which passed with a vote of 306 to 117, has earlier won approval from the Senate, so it now will be sent to President Barack Obama, who has indicated he will sign it into law.

The bill will allow food manufacturers to choose which method they use for disclosure -- a text, symbol, or the industry-favored QR code which consumers can scan with smart phones.

"While there is broad consensus that foods from genetically engineered crops are safe, we appreciate the bipartisan effort to address consumers' interest in knowing more about their food, including whether it includes ingredients from genetically engineered crops," White House spokeswoman Katie Hill told U.S. media Wednesday.

"We ... anticipate the president would sign it in its current form."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will have two years to develop the bill and set rules for implementation.

William Hallman of the Rutgers University said the wording of the bill is both rather specific and ambiguous at the same time.

One example is about the definition of "bioengineering" in the bill, which would exclude any genetic modifications that don't involve so-called recombinant techniques, Hallman said.

As a result, the new technique of gene editing called CRISPR would not qualify, he said.

Some farmer organizations expressed support of a legislation that establishes federal pre-emption of a patchwork of state-by-state mandatory labeling laws for genetically engineered foods.

"The bill is far from perfect, but it correctly puts the federal government in the driver's seat in important areas such as protecting interstate commerce and new crop development techniques," President Zippy Duvall of the American Farm Bureau Federation said in a statement.

"There is no public health or scientific justification for the bill's mandatory disclosure provisions, but the national uniformity established by this bill is paramount," Duvall said.

Some consumer groups opposed the bill, saying it gives companies the power to hide genetically modified labeling behind digital QR codes that can only be read by smart phones. Endit