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A landmark ruling struck down the USDA’s loophole that allowed ultra-processed foods to bypass the bioengineered ingredient disclosure requirements. As defined by the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), a “bioengineered food ingredient” contains genetic material that has been modified through lab techniques not attainable in nature. Starting January 2022, food manufacturers have been required to disclose when they used an ingredient from a crop that was genetically engineered by including one of the following four disclosures. The text disclosure reads “contains a bioengineered food ingredient.” This will be on the label or the produce box. The symbol disclosure you see below on the screen. The electronic disclosure must include a statement such as “scan here for more food information” and then link to a page with the disclosure. The new ruling will remove this option. The text message disclosure must include the statement text [command word] to [number] for bioengineered food information. The USDA created a loophole that allowed food companies to voluntarily disclose if they used refined ingredients from a genetically engineered source that they deem undetectable. The voluntary disclosure would be labeled as derived from bioengineering or ‘ingredients derived from a bioengineered source’ on the label. Food companies took advantage of the exemption since they knew consumers might hesitate to buy the products. Two examples are high-fructose corn syrup from GMO corn and sugar from GMO sugar beets. Over half of the sugar in the United States now comes from GMO sugar beets. My Health Forward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.