Alaska Wins One for GMO Labeling

August 19, 2005

Alaskan Governor Frank Murkowski recently signed into law Senate Bill 25 which is the United State's first law for labeling genetically engineered food. A huge win for consumers and hopefully a step towards more labeling requirements throughout the country, the Alaskan law requires that all genetically engineered fish be "conspicuously labeled to identify the fish or fish product as a genetically modified fish or fish product," whether packaged or unpackaged.

Unanimously voted in by the Alaskan Senate, the new law passed with appropriate timing as the Food and Drug Administration is currently reviewing an application to approve the commercialization of genetically altered salmon or what some like to call "frankenfish." The case made for this type of fish is that it can grow twice as fast as wild salmon, cutting costs of fish-farming operations. But, the Center for Food Safety, who supported Senate Bill 25 in Alaska, has worked hard to promote advocacy for labeling and the prevention of these genetically altered fish from infiltrating and harming our natural fish supply. In December of 2002, Washington State became the first state in the nation to actually permanently ban the cultivation of genetically engineered fish.

Although the safety of genetically modified organisms for consumption continues to be up for debate in the United States, it seems to be apparent that American consumers, whether they agree or not with genetically altering food, can mostly agree that they should be labeled as such. In late 2004, Rutgers University published results from a survey that showed nine out of ten Americans want genetically engineered foods to be labeled. That's almost 90%. So what are we waiting for?

Requirements exist for labeling genetically modified fish products in the European Union, Japan, New Zealand and Australia, and legislation similar to Senate Bill 25 has been introduced in California and Oregon. The Alaskan fishing industry harvests more than half of the nation's fish (5,305,959,744 pounds in 2003). The new legislation identifies genetically modified fish as "a finfish or shellfish whose genetic structure has been (A) altered at the molecular level by means that are not possible under natural conditions or processes, including recombinant DNA and RNA techniques, cell fusion, gene deletion or doubling, introduction of exogenous genetic material, alteration of the position of a gene, or similar procedure; or (B) the progeny of a finfish or shellfish described in (A) of this paragraph.” The term "genetically modified fish product" is defined as any "product prepared from a genetically modified fish."

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Posted on Tuesday 8/23 by sherry
i def0initely believe that the food industry needs to label GMO products. i myself whether out of ignorance or paranoia do not want to consume these products. if they are able to genetically change the size and structure what could it possibly do to the consumer of this fish. children are already going into puberty too early just from the added hormones from ,.

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