Connecticut’s House of Representatives has OK’d a bill that would require foods with ingredients derived from genetically modified organisms to be labeled. However, the government’s action comes with conditions. House Bill 6527 (“An Act Concerning Genetically Engineered Food”) includes a provision that mandates that four other Northeastern states, including one that has a border with Connecticut, pass a similar law before the Connecticut bill could take effect. Another provision requires that the total population of those states that enact such a law be at least 20 million people.
The Connecticut House passed the bill yesterday with a vote count of 134–3. The state’s governor, Daniel P. Molloy, said he would have no problem signing the bill into law, which, if and when it takes effect, would require the phrase “Produced with Genetic Engineering” to appear on the food labeling.
At least twenty other states are working on similar food labeling laws but so far only Alaska has enacted a restricted form of this type of legislation. In 2005 that state’s government passed Senate bill 25, which calls for the labeling of all products that contain genetically engineered fish and shell fish.