After a 35-1 Senate vote in favor of moving the GMO labeling bill forward in Congress, the bill then went to the House for consideration, where it was seriously altered before voting in the House occurred early last Friday. The revised bill then passed the House.
It took serious compromise to reach an accord that did not end up with a worst case scenario - a dead bill. As it now stands, the House requirement now calls for 5 other New England states - two of them bordering Connecticut - to pass similar legislation in order to make the GMO labeling bill law in our state.
Although the revised bill contains serious modifications to the original bill, which would have required only three other states to pass GMO labeling legislation and would ultimately have allowed Connecticut to pass the bill in 2016 regardless of the passing of other states, the current modifications still allow for the possibility of GMO labeling to occur in our state since the requirement of five additional states carries no expiration. As soon as the fifth state signs on, whenever that may be, Connecticut will pass the bill into law.
Of course, no one really knows how long the five-state process could take, but since there are several other New England states already working toward the same GMO labeling efforts, it does seem plausible that this bill could actually pass into law at some point in the not-so-distant future. At least Phil Miller, our State Rep, Beet member and one of the bill's sponsors, seems cautiously optimistic about the bill's future.
For more on this story, visit the Connecticut Post article at: http://www.ctpost.com/default/article/Hartford-compromise-offers-food-for-thought-4547675.php.
