Senate Appropriators Adopt Two Seafood Labeling Amendments, Advance Agriculture Spending Bill
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved its fiscal 2017 agriculture appropriations bill to the floor on May 19, after adopting two seafood labeling amendments offered during the full committee markup by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. One amendment would require products labeled as “golden king crab” to comprise only organisms caught in the U.S., to distinguish between Alaskan king crab, “Lithodes aequispinus,” and similar crabs caught overseas.
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The other amendment would impose a mandatory requirement for “genetically engineered” salmon to carry with their packaging a label denoting them as such, or the letters “GE” before the product name. “This is not GMO,” Murkowski said during the markup. “This is genetically engineered salmon, where an Atlantic salmon is spliced with the DNA of ocean pout and eggs are incubated in Panama, raised in Canada, and then theoretically if the [Food and Drug Administration] is able to move forward with their proposal, made available for sale in this country.” Despite FDA’s Nov. 24 final rule (here), which contains guidance on voluntary labeling of the GE salmon, FDA assurances have not allayed senators’ concerns about the first genetically engineered species designed for human consumption, she said.
Democratic Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA, and Related Agencies, voiced their support for the amendment. Merkley said it is “unprecedented” to combine two animals into one animal for human consumption. “To have it clearly stated on the label is accurate and it is important information to citizens who have been thrilled to eat the real thing for a very long time and want to keep doing so,” Merkley said.