After four years, Jan. 1, 2022, brings not just a new year, but a new set of regulations to U.S. food and agriculture: mandatory genetic engineered (GE) labeling.
These new standards, outlined first by the Obama administration, requires food manufacturers, importers and other entities that label foods for retail sale to disclose information about genetically engineered food and food ingredients.
While genetic engineering continues to improve and change, the USDA decided to adopt GE labeling as a part of the national bioengineered food disclosure standard in 2018. For a better understanding of what should be labeled, the USDA says some examples are: alfalfa, arctic apple varieties, canola, corn, cotton, BARI Bt Begun eggplant varieties, ringspot virus-resistant papaya varieties, pink flesh pineapple varieties, potatoes, soybean, summer squash and sugar beet.
