USA: ‘Landmark’ ruling on GMO labelling

As reported by the German online service ‘Keine-Gentechnik.de’ and other media channels, the US Federal Court has handed down a landmark judgement on the labelling of genetically modified organisms. This ruling was issued to the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) at the end of 2025: it must expand and improve the labelling of genetically modified (GM) foods. In future, highly processed products such as oil and sugar must also carry the GM label if they are produced with GM ingredients.

GMO labelling must be more precisely in future rules US-Court.

The plaintiffs, including the consumer organisation Center for Food Safety (CFS), see this as a milestone victory. In 2016, the US Congress decided to label foods containing ingredients from traditional genetic engineering. But the labelling rules of the Department of Agriculture (USDA) called "National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard" (2018) were weak so that the consumer organisation Center for Food Safety (CFS), together with other groups and companies, filed a lawsuit against specific rules and has now won its appeal on two key points, writes CFS Center for Food Safety: Victory! Center for Food Safety Secures Win for the Public's Right to Know in GMO Labeling Lawsuit (31.10.2025).

Court: ‘undetectable’ is not synonymous with ‘does not contain’

Till now highly processed GM ingredients in which the genetically modified genetic material was no longer detectable (approx. 70% of all ingredients) must not be labelled. This applies, for example, to sugar from GM sugar beet, corn syrup from GM corn and oil from GM soybeans, as well as all products containing such ingredients, such as soft drinks. In the EU, such products must be labelled as being produced from GM plants. According to CFS, the plaintiffs have now achieved the same for the USA. The Court of Appeals rejected the USDA's interpretation that ‘undetectable’ is synonymous with ‘does not contain’.

The court also ruled that a QR code on the packaging of GM foods is not sufficient labelling, as scanning the code with a smartphone to access product information is too much of a hurdle for many consumers.

The judgment will now be returned to the district court, which will rehear the case and issue a final ruling that the Department must then implement. The Department of Agriculture had not commented publicly. But George Kimbrell, CFS Director of Legal Affairs, called the decision ‘a milestone for the public's right to know what they are eating and feeding their families.’

Author: Karin Heinze

Sources: CFS, keine-Gentechnik.de, ohnegentechnik.org