[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 114 (Thursday, July 14, 2016)]
[House]
[Page H4931]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  0915
                        DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THAT

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, Congress is leaving town for 53 days, the 
longest break that anyone can remember for Congress to leave town. But 
I guess, you know, there are no important issues confronting the 
country. Zika virus--no additional funding, spreading north into the 
U.S., don't have time for that. Background checks for firearms 
purchases, don't have time for that.
  But they do have time for a couple of little things here, you know. 
Every day, Republicans are for states' rights--except, well, maybe, 
kind of, today.
  The State of Vermont passed a law requiring labeling foods produced 
with GMOs. A number of the major companies are already doing it. Here 
are some M&Ms. But they are saying it is impossible, impractical, and 
the American people don't want to know, and even if they did want to 
know, we don't want them to know.
  So, today, they are going to pass a bill to take care of their 
corporate friends that will preempt any State from having a meaningful 
labeling law to inform their citizens, something over 90 percent of 
Americans would like when it comes to GMOs. And they are going to come 
up with a meaningless proposal to say, oh, well, you can put a QR code 
on there, and everybody will pull out their iPhone, and you can give 
them a lot of information.
  Instead, we could just do what Mars has already done here: 
``partially produced with genetic engineering.'' But there are a lot of 
big corporations that don't want to do that.

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