VT House Agriculture Committe Passes "Right to Know"Bill

Montpelier, VT— The House Agriculture Committee passed the Right to Know Genetically
Engineered Seed Labeling and Registration bill out today with a party-line 7-4-0
vote. The vote happened after hours of negotiating a possible “deal” to send the
three bills this committee has been working on together to the House Floor.

The
bills were the Right to Farm bill, the Agriculture Water Quality (or Large Farm)
bill, and the Right to Know bill. The House leadership and administration had
attempted to broker a deal that would have ensured all three bills traveling through
the Senate and coming back to the House for a conference committee.

The deal breaker was that the Democratic leadership insisted that all three bills
pass out of the committee separately, while the Republican chair and committee
members were standing firmly behind “bundling” the bills into a large miscellaneous
agriculture bill.

David Zuckerman (P-Burlington) explained the desire to have three separate bills
when he was called into the committee room to discuss the deal, “I think the voters
deserve to know how we stand on issue after issue. We as legislators tend to combine
things so that voters don’t necessarily know where we stand on each issue.”

The Republican members of the committee countered that there was no assurance that
all three bills would “come back” if they went to the Senate as separate items.
House Speaker Walter Freed (R-Dorset) explained this fear to the committee, “If you
don’t hang together, pieces start dripping off. It’s all part of the compromise.”

Floyd Nease (D-Johnson/Eden) countered at one point, “We have compromised and
compromised. What we’re getting in this ‘deal’ is nothing.”

Brian Dunsmore (R-St. Albans) expressed his desire to ensure passage of one of the
bills, “I don’t want to play craps with the farmers, and that Large Farm bill is
very important to all farmers.”

In the end, the negotiations broke down and Nease made the motion to recommend the
bill to the full house. Committee Chairwoman Ruth Towne (R-Berlin) attempted to
recess, but Nease passed out a written notice that the committee would be reconvened
for a vote if the Chairwoman called a recess or adjourned. After several attempts to
“call the question,” Nease got his vote, and the bill passed with a 7-4 vote. The
“no’s” were Harvey Smith (R-New Haven), Dunsmore, Towne, and Norm McAllister
(R-Franklin). The “yes’s” were Carolyn Partridge (D-Windham), Mitzi Johnson (D-South
Hero), Bill Botzow (D-Bennington), Nease, Wayne Kenyon (D-Bradford), Betty Nuovo
(D-Middlebury), and Bobby Starr (D-Troy).

“This is a good first step towards a ‘time-out’ on genetically engineered crops in
Vermont,” commented Amy Shollenberger, policy director at Rural Vermont. “This bill
will ensure that farmers and home gardeners know what they are planting and that the
state will be able to collect the important information about how much genetically
engineered seed is actually being sold in our state.”

The bill will go on the notice calendar on Thursday, and then the Speaker of the
House will decide whether to bring it to the house floor for a vote.

GE Free VT Media Release: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 6:42 PM EST

Contact: Amy Shollenberger, Rural
Vermont: amy@ruralvermont.org