On the recordJuly 23, 2015
I appreciate the lively debate that has gone on today, and I want to speak in favor of this particular amendment. This is the Pingree-DeFazio-Polis amendment in the nature of a substitute, which strikes all of the anticonsumer and antifarmer provisions of the underlying bill. This comes down to a very simple proposition: Do consumers have a right to know what is in the food they buy and that they feed to their families? As we have heard many times today, 9 out of 10 consumers say, yes, they support GMO labeling. The public wants to know, as more and more people care about what is in their food and where it comes from. People want to know more, not less, about what they eat. We already know a lot about our food. We know how many calories are in it, thanks to the labels. We know how much vitamin C we get per serving. We know if a fish is farm raised or wild caught. We want to know those things. We actually know if our orange juice is made from concentrate or not. Maybe not everybody wants to know that, but it is right there on the label. Shouldn't we also be able to know if the food we are buying has GMO ingredients? I know some of the opponents of labeling have suggested that consumers might be frightened by GMO ingredients if they were to see them on the labels. Do we really think that consumers are not smart enough to handle this information?…
