NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- In what could be a big win for opponents of genetically modified organisms, Vermont is one step closer to signing into law legislation that would require food companies to label products that contain GMOs in the Green Mountain State.

On Wednesday, the Vermont State Senate passed "An Act Relating to the Labeling of Food Produced with Genetic Engineering," H. 112, by a vote of 28-2. The state legislation, introduced in January 2013, proposes to provide that "food is misbranded if it is entirely or partially produced with genetic engineering and it is not labeled as genetically engineered." Sen. David Zuckerman is the bill's lead sponsor, according to the Brattleboro Reformer.

The bill will now go back to the House to approve the Senate's amendments and then to Gov. Peter Shumlin to sign into law. The act is supposed to become effective on July 1, 2016, according to Reuters.

Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are plants or animals that have been genetically engineered with DNA from bacteria, viruses or other plants and animals that cannot occur in natural crossbreeding, according to the Non-GMO Project, a non-profit organization dedication to the education of GMOs and helping consumers find alternatives and considered the main organization used by many companies to verify their non-GMO foods.

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GMO Labeling Bill Passes Vermont Senate

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

17-Apr-2014

Contact: Vicki Cohn vcohn@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 x2156 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY, April 17, 2014The development of stem cell therapies to cure a variety of diseases depends on the ability to characterize stem cell populations based on cell surface markers. Researchers from the Finnish Red Cross have discovered a new marker that is highly expressed in a type of stem cells derived from human umbilical cord blood, which they describe in an article in BioResearch Open Access, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the BioResearch Open Access website.

Heli Suila and colleagues, Finnish Red Cross Blood Service, Helsinki, Finland present evidence to show that the glycan O-GLcNAc, is present on the surface of stem cells and is part of a stem cell-specific surface signature. In the article "Extracellular O-Linked N-Acetylglucosamine Is Enriched in Stem Cells Derived from Human Umbilical Cord Blood" the authors suggest that the glycan plays a crucial role in a cell signaling pathway that regulates embryonic development.

"This work is particularly interesting as epidermal growth factor domains are found on the Notch receptors, suggesting that these novel glycans may be involved in Notch receptor signaling pathways in stem cells," says BioResearch Open Access Editor Jane Taylor, PhD, MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

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About the Journal

BioResearch Open Access is a bimonthly peer-reviewed open access journal led by Editor-in-Chief Robert Lanza, MD, Chief Scientific Officer, Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. and Editor Jane Taylor, PhD. The Journal provides a new rapid-publication forum for a broad range of scientific topics including molecular and cellular biology, tissue engineering and biomaterials, bioengineering, regenerative medicine, stem cells, gene therapy, systems biology, genetics, biochemistry, virology, microbiology, and neuroscience. All articles are published within 4 weeks of acceptance and are fully open access and posted on PubMedCentral. All journal content is available on the BioResearch Open Access website.

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Novel marker discovered for stem cells derived from human umbilical cord blood

The Vermont Senate voted to pass a new law requiring labeling for foods that contain ingredients produced with genetic engineering or genetically modified ingredients (GMOs). If enacted, the law would be the first in the nation to require GMO labeling without any contingencies or similar legislation by adjoining states. The proposed effective date is July 1, 2016.

Although the Vermont House previously passed the bill, it will be returned for representatives to approve changes made by the Senate. Once approved, the bill will reach the governors office for signature into law.

It is estimated that 80% of all food sold in the United States is at least partially produced from genetic engineering. The bill would require labeling on all such food sold at retail in Vermont, regardless of whether the food was manufactured in Vermont.

While the bill exempts processing aids and milk from cows that have been fed GMO feed, many dairy products and other foods that incorporate milk would be affected unless they were made with organic ingredients.

The Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Academy of Sciences all have said that GMO ingredients are safe and there are no negative health effects associated with their use.

This bill would confuse consumers, raise food prices and do nothing to ensure product safety, said Ruth Saunders, IDFA vice president of policy and legislative affairs. Its too bad for the dairy industry that Vermont would require such labels on chocolate milk, yogurt and other healthy dairy products while offering an exemption to the entire alcoholic beverage sector.

The neighboring states of Connecticut and Maine already passed labeling laws, but each delayed implementation until at least four other adjoining states passed and implemented similar laws. This strategy is designed to protect them from lawsuits from companies and associations that want to safeguard consistency in food labeling and avoid a 50-state patchwork of laws. Vermont, however, has decided to go it alone and is preparing a war chest in anticipation of the lawsuits to come.

IDFA and many other trade organizations oppose individual state legislation on GMO labeling and fully support The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2014, introduced by U.S. Reps. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) and G.K. Butterfield (D-NC). This bill would preempt states from requiring mandatory labeling and establish a federal standard for voluntary labeling of food and beverage products made with GMOs.

IDFA believes that a federal solution on GMO labeling would bolster consumer confidence in American food by affirming FDAs overall authority for setting the nations food safety and labeling regulations, said Saunders.

IDFA is working with the Safe and Affordable Food Coalition, headed by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, on all issues related to GMO labeling.

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Vermont Senate passes GMO labeling bill

When his tomato plants were just a week old, technicians manually punched a hole in each seedling to get leaf tissue that was taken to a nearby lab, converted into a chemical soup and then scanned for genetic markers linked to desired traits.

Krivanek uses the information to keep just 3percent of the seedlings and grow them until they fruit this spring, when he can evaluate fully grown plants, keep a few hundred, sow their seeds and then screen those plants.

Im improving my odds. Maybe I can introduce to market a real super-hybrid in five years, Krivanek said. A predecessor might take a whole career.

The technology called marker-assisted or molecular breeding is far removed from the better-known and more controversial field of genetic engineering, in which a plant or animal can receive genes from a different organism.

Marker-assisted breeding, by contrast, lays bare the inherent genetic potential of an individual plant to allow breeders to find the most promising seedling among thousands for further breeding. Because the plants natural genetic boundaries are not crossed, the resulting commercial hybrid is spared the regulatory gantlet and the public opposition focused on such plants as genetically modified Roundup Ready corn or soybeans, which are engineered to withstand herbicide sprays.

Marker-assisted breeding has been embraced not only by the multinational biotech companies here in Californias Central Valley but also by plant scientists in government, research universities and nongovernmental organizations fervently seeking new, overachieving crops. The goal is to sustainably feed an expanding global population while dealing with the extremes of climate change.

But critics of Big Agriculture worry about the needs of small-scale farmers and breeders. Low-tech conventional breeding judging plants by how they look and perform, not by their DNA has been the lifeblood of small seed companies and local growers, often in conjunction with breeding programs at land-grant universities. But those programs have shrunk by a third in recent years, and the remaining ones are increasingly gravitating to the trendy sphere of molecular breeding.

Organic farmers, who need crop varieties designed for specific regions and less-intensive growing methods, are not being served by the new applied science, said John Navazio, a senior scientist with the Organic Seed Alliance.

There used to be a significant winter spinach production area in southern Virginia and Delmarva, and thats completely gone, he said. The spinach-growing industry has moved to megagrowers in California and Arizona.

Progress comes sooner

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Trait by trait, plant scientists swiftly weed out bad seeds through marker-assisted breeding