The U.S. Department of Agriculture erred in excluding all genetically modified products from congressionally required labeling if the genetic material in the modified food is not detectable in the product’s finished form, an appeals court has ruled.
The department’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) “committed legal error in concluding that, under ‘the plain language of the amended Act,’ ‘if a food does not contain detectable modified genetic material, it is not a bioengineered food,’” U.S. Circuit Judge Daniel Collins stated in the ruling, which was released on Oct. 31.
The service “relied entirely on the flawed legal premise that the non-detectability of a substance under the regulation was equivalent to its nonpresence,” Collins added later….