Dive Brief:
- Chips, sodas and other ultraprocessed products reliant on highly refined corn oil or sugar cannot be exempt from federal labeling requirements disclosing when genetically engineered ingredients, or GMOs, are used, a judge said Monday in a ruling that will require a rewrite of federal guidelines.
- A federal appeals judge agreed with a lower court that the USDA's move to exempt highly refined refined foods from the 2016 rule was "arbitrary." The judge also ruled that it is unlawful for companies to comply with disclosure requirements through QR codes alone.
- The latest ruling will require the USDA to rewrite its National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard before 2028. A request by the department to delay rulemaking to 2029 was denied.
Dive Insight:
The court's ruling tees up a major rewrite of the U.S.’ bioengineered labeling rule, which for the first time mandated companies to disclose when they used genetically modified ingredients. It's also a significant win for consumer advocacy groups and the grassroots "Make America Healthy Again" movement, which has lobbied vigorously against pesticide use in foods.
Highly refined oils, which are predominantly used in ultraprocessed foods, have remained exempt from labeling requirements because these ingredients often do not have detectable levels of genetic modification following processing.
The Center for Food Safety, which led the lawsuit against the USDA, argued that the original rule's exemption of highly refined ingredients meant that the vast majority of processed foods in grocery stores would be allowed to circumvent labeling requirements. Around 70% of all GMO food ingredients were exempted from disclosure requirements under the current rule, CFS said, vastly undercutting the impact of the label.
The original rule, which went into effect in 2021, also allowed companies to disclose GMO ingredients through a digital QR code instead of on-packaging text or symbols. CFS said this format was inaccessible to many consumers. While some companies have voluntarily used the USDA's bioengineered label on packaging, "that's the minority," George Kimbrell, legal director for CFS and counsel in the case, said in an interview with Food Dive.
A court ruled in 2025 the USDA "committed legal error" by exempting highly refined foods and that a QR code alone was "deficient." However, a judge made it clear a new rule would not necessarily require disclosures for all highly processed foods made from bioengineered ingredients, saying USDA could have discretion to set detectability standards.
Bioengineered foods rely on crops that have often been gene-edited to better withstand pesticides or herbicides. Removing pesticides from the food supply has become a central position of the MAHA movement, though the Trump administration has been hesitant to regulate the industry. USDA did not immediately return a request for comment.
The ruling — and the GMO label more broadly — reflects how more consumers do not want "toxins in their food, and that is a bipartisan movement now," Kimbrell.
"More and more people care about toxins in our food and in our environment," Kimbrell said. "They don't want them there, and they want the choice to choose differently.”
