National Sea Grant College Program Amendments Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, every now and then we have a chance to support a bipartisan bill that tackles a tough issue in the face of stiff, stiff opposition. The biotechnology bill before us today is just such legislation, and I come to the floor to speak in support of its passage.

This measure will avoid a patchwork of State labeling regulations, and in doing so will save families thousands of dollars a year, protect American jobs, and provide consumers with accurate, transparent information about their food. This bipartisan solution is a product of the hard work of Ag Committee Chairman Pat Roberts and Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow, who have shown real leadership in putting this bill together and are now working to get it passed.

Specifically, the Roberts-Stabenow biotechnology disclosure bill accomplishes three important objectives: First, it protects consumers by immediately ending the problem of having a patchwork of inconsistent State GMO labeling programs that would increase prices; second, it ensures farmers and ranchers can continue to provide Americans with an affordable, reliable, and safe food supply; third, it creates a uniform national disclosure system that will provide consumers with more information about their food products.

This bill will ensure that the Vermont GMO labeling law, which went into effect last week, July 1, does not end up costing American families billions of dollars when they fill up their grocery carts.

Food companies are already having to choose between one of three bad options for complying with the Vermont law and laws from additional States that may follow Vermont's lead: First, order new packaging for products going to each individual State with a labeling law; second, reformulate products so that no labeling is required; or third, stop selling to States with mandatory labeling laws. All of these options will increase the cost of food and could result in job losses in the ag economy.

For millions of Americans, the GMO or bioengineered food labeling program created by Vermont will impact the affordability of food without improving its safety. Testimony provided by the USDA, FDA, and EPA to the Senate Ag Committee last fall made clear that foods produced with the benefits of biotechnology are safe. Just last week, 107 Nobel laureates signed a joint letter to Greenpeace urging it to stop campaigning against biotechnology and GMOs, stating that ``Opposition [to GMO's] based on emotion and dogma contradicted by data must be stopped.''

The real risk is that if we don't address Vermont's GMO law, real families will have a tougher time making ends meet. In fact, if food companies have to apply Vermont's standards to all products nationwide, it will result in an estimated increase of over $1,050 a year per household. For families having a tough time paying bills, this is in essence a regressive tax, and it will hurt the poor more than those with substantial means.

From a jobs perspective, the story isn't any better. It has been calculated that if Vermont's law is applied nationwide, it will cost over $80 billion a year to switch products over to non-GMO supplies. Those billions of dollars a year in additional cost will hurt an ag and food industry that creates over 17 million jobs nationwide. In my State of North Dakota alone, 94,000 jobs and 38 percent of our State's economy rely on the ag and food economy.

This is a bad time to be making it more expensive to do business in the ag sector. Earlier this year, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City testified that net farm income in 2015 is more than 50 percent less than it was in 2013, and it is expected to go down again in 2016. A State patchwork of food labeling laws will only make this situation worse, as many farmers who rely on biotech crops to increase productivity will be deprived of a critical tool. I know how hard farmers work and how much they put on the line every year when they have to take out an operating loan for crops that may or may not materialize. We shouldn't ask them to feed the Nation with one hand tied behind their backs by taking away biotechnology.

More than just overcoming the problems associated with having a patchwork of State regulations, I think it is important for Americans to know that this legislation ensures consumers have consistent, accurate information about the bioengineered content of their food. This measure creates greater transparency for consumers by putting in place a new national bioengineered food disclosure standard that will ensure products labeled as having been produced with biotechnology meet a uniform, national standard.

As I mentioned, foods produced with the aid of bioengineering are, according to the FDA, EPA, and USDA, safe. However, many consumers do want to know if the food they are buying is produced using biotechnology, which is why this legislation provides a national bioengineered food labeling standard.

Many of us who sit on the Ag Committee would have preferred a voluntary labeling standard. After all, as has been demonstrated by scientific experts, whether a food contains bioengineered material is not a food safety issue. Yet there are many perspectives on this issue, and in the true spirit of compromise, Senator Roberts and Senator Stabenow deserve a great deal of credit for coming up with a legislative solution.

This bill's national bioengineered food labeling standard will ensure that a consumer who buys a food product with text, symbol, or electronic link indicating bioengineered content in, say, North Dakota, for example, is purchasing a product that is held to the same disclosure standards as foods sold in another State--for example, New York or California. Meanwhile, this bill will provide regulatory flexibility to ensure farmers and ranchers can continue to produce affordable and reliable food for the Nation.

We need a solution, and this bill delivers that solution. It helps keep our Nation's food affordable, it supports jobs, and it provides consumers consistent information about bioengineered foods. I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense measure.

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