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It looks as if the near future\u2014in fact, as soon as July 2016 if all goes well\u2014Vermonters are going to know a lot more about what\u2019s in their food than all the rest of us.<\/p>\n

\u00a0That\u2019s because on April 16, 2014, the Vermont State Senate passed, by an overwhelming majority of 28-2, H.112, the first no-strings-attached GMO labeling bill in the nation. The bill, which now goes to the Vermont House and then onward to Governor Peter Shumlin\u2019s desk, requires mandatory labeling of all food sold in Vermont containing GMOs. The bill goes even further, making it illegal to label any food product containing GMOs \u201cnatural\u201d or \u201call natural.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is Vermont\u2019s groundbreaking bill a big deal? You bet it is. The bill goes beyond the bills passed last year in Maine and Connecticut that contain so-called trigger clauses that require comparable labeling laws to be passed in four or five other contiguous states\u2014think Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island\u2014before the two states\u2019 laws can be enacted.<\/p>\n

Passing labeling laws in some of those Northeastern states\u2014or any other state, for that matter\u2014has proven to be a high hurdle, making Vermont\u2019s lead even more remarkable. In fact, H.112 may just be the bellwether that anti-GMO activists have been hoping for. After all, in poll after poll of American consumers, results show that a whopping 91% of us favor labeling of GMO products.<\/p>\n

Take a look at the map below and you\u2019ll see that there\u2019s a flurry of state-level, GMO-labeling legislative activity currently sweeping the U.S. To the dismay of St. Louis giant Monsanto and the other international chemical and biotech companies in the GMO club, this year there are more than sixty active bills in twenty-three states stretching from the East Coast to the West.<\/p>\n

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