Vermont’s GMO labeling law doesn’t apply to lucrative cheese industry

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This month, a contentious food labeling law went into effect in Vermont, requiring most grocery products containing genetically modified ingredients to bear the words “produced with genetic engineering.” . . . .

But even in Vermont, there are some key exceptions to the rule. . . .

Cheese is big business in Vermont, generating some $650 million in sales annually. . .

. . . .

. . . [I]n most cases. . . cheese ought to be exempt on its face. The only real hitch might have been chymosin, the rennet-like enzyme used to coagulate milk into cheese. It’s made by genetically-engineered yeast – or mold or bacteria – that are fermented to produce massive quantities of the enzyme. This technique was approved in 1990 as an alternative to slaughtering calves to extract the enzyme from their stomachs.

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That might seem to argue for GMO labeling under Vermont’s new law, but the devil is in the details: Once chymosin is purified and all cellular material is cleared away, it is just isolated protein.

. . . .

In fact, it’s chemically identical to the rennet isolated from calves, says [said John Lucey, a professor of food science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison]. . . .

Read full, original post: In Vermont, Blessed Are the Cheese Makers