Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1599, Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015, and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1734, Improving Coal Combustion Residuals Regulation Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. I would like to thank my colleague from Alabama, a member of the Rules Committee, as well as joining Mr. McGovern with whom we share a Rules Committee assignment.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule that we are considering as well as the underlying legislation, both bills, but I would like to specifically speak to H.R. 1599, which is, I believe, accurately labeled the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act. I think, also, I would like to talk to the positive impacts that it will have on our Nation's food supply.

Many of you may know that, prior to coming to Congress, I was the director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture. Shortly after my time at the WSDA, several groups in my home State of Washington proposed a ballot initiative, I-522, which would have required mandatory labeling of biotech food products or of those using ingredients that had biotech ingredients, also referred to as GMOs.

Now, I opposed I-522 for a couple of reasons but mainly because of the impact that we could see it would have on our farmers and on our ranchers and on our grocers but, more importantly, on our consumers, the families who are making food decisions in the grocery stores, who, in the end, would pay higher food prices as a result of this mandatory labeling law that was being considered.

In our State, we have the Washington Research Council, and it conducted an independent study, showing that the mandatory food labeling of biotech ingredients would cost the average family at least--at a minimum--$450 a year in increased food costs. That is assuming that Washington was the only jurisdiction to create such a law.

Now, if other States and other cities--other localities--decided to follow suit and pass their own laws, such as Seattle or New York or Boston or San Francisco or Oregon, food producers would face an incredible, unworkable patchwork of legal definitions of what a ``GMO'' is and how to label it.

I can only imagine a food producer having to print, say, 100 different labels for its products depending on where they were destined, where they were to be sold, and the liability they would face if, for instance, a box of food labeled for Phoenix ended up in Las Vegas or in Los Angeles or in Salt Lake City.

Many producers are considering stopping or have stopped selling products in the State of Vermont, which is the most recent State to adopt mandatory labeling standards, because of this increased cost, because of the uncertainty and the liability that separate jurisdictions would create.

In my estimation and what the people of my State have said is that what we need is a national voluntary label, much like organic, a label which gives consumers who want to purchase non-GMO foods the freedom to do so, but that will not impose higher costs on producers or consumers.

Mr. Speaker, critics of this bill, H.R. 1599, unfairly claim it will limit the ability of consumers to know what they are purchasing; but let me say that that just simply is not the case, that it is not true.

If you go into a grocery store and want to purchase an organic product, that is something that you are easily able to do, and that is exactly what this bill will do for GMO foods. It will create a similar label.

So make no mistake. If buying non-GMO is important to any of you as a consumer, then you will have every ability to do so when you walk into a grocery store and make your purchase.

You will have the confidence of the United States Department of Agriculture's system of making sure that those labels are consistent from one State to the other; so you will know what you are buying by what that label says.

Mr. Speaker, the Founders of our Nation gave Congress a tool in our Constitution to regulate interstate commerce to prevent the types of legal patchworks and market distortions that we are beginning to see on this issue.

I strongly urge my colleagues to support the rule, to support H.R. 1599, and protect the Nation's access to safe, affordable food.

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