Senate Agriculture Committee Members, Chairman Pat Roberts and ranking Democrat Debbie Stabenow released a GMO labeling law Thursday that would preempt state laws, such as the one taking effect July first in Vermont. The bill would require mandatory labeling of most foods with genetically modified ingredients but with labeling options. The bill offers companies a choice of providing an on-package label or a symbol or scannable electronic label, according to the Hagstrom Report. The law would preempt state labeling laws but gives the U.S. Department of Agriculture two years to develop the labeling standards. Stabenow said the bill ensures that organic producers can clearly display a “non-GMO” label, but is “also a win for our nation’s farmers and food producers.” Roberts says the legislation recognizes the 30-plus years of proven safety of biotechnology and urged Senators to support the bill. He called the legislation “a far better alternative than Vermont’s law.” Grocery Manufacturers Association CEO Pamela Bailey said the compromise is “the commonsense solution for consumers, farmers and businesses,” and urged the Senate to quickly pass the bill.

A federal official is facing contempt charges in the House of Representatives over failure to turn over documents and information pertaining to the Waters of the U.S. Rule, or WOTUS. DTN says the House Oversight Committee recommended that Howard Shelanski, Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, be found in contempt of Congress for not cooperating with the investigation into the Waters of the US rulemaking process. Contempt of Congress carries a maximum fine of $100,000 and a year in Federal prison, but the threat is often used to compel officials to comply with investigations. The Oversight Committee wants to know what role the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs played in developing the rule. The Committee notes that “of the over 7,600 pages of documents that have been produced, just over 5,100 are duplicates.”

The House of Representatives recently passed the Defense Department Appropriations Act with an amendment that said meat will remain an option for members of the military. The amendment was offered by Nebraska Republican Adrian Smith, and it prohibits the Defense Department from excluding meat in its food service program manual. The U.S. Coast Guard had cut meat consumption among its cadets by ten percent over three years, and that prompted concerns of potential meat cuts among other service branches. Smith said, “Meat contains vitamins and nutrients not available in a plant-based diet. The amendment is not a mandate or prohibition; it simply says there will be a meat option for our service members each day.” Both the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and National Pork Producers’ Council applauded Smith’s efforts to make sure anti-meat activists can’t decide what our military can and cannot eat.

Agriculture should be one of the largest industries to benefit from the new drone rules issued Tuesday from the Federal Aviation Administration. The American Farm Bureau says it will continue working with the FAA to tweak certain restrictions in the rules. The Farm Bureau suggested several changes to FAA rules, including not requiring drones be operated in the user’s line of sight or not operated directly over people, but those suggestions weren’t adopted. Politico’s Morning Agriculture Report says the obvious challenge is farmers have a lot of lands to cover and some of it isn’t contiguous. The group’s Director of Congressional Relations, R.J. Karney, gave the FAA credit for building in flexibility by allowing waivers to those restrictions. He hopes this will help build a case for more fine-tuning of the rules to help the technology take off for farmers and ranchers. Agriculture could make up almost 80 percent of expected commercial drone use. Drones could map terrain or monitor fields for pest and disease pressure, just to name a few of the expected uses.

CME Group will launch European Union Wheat futures and options in September, according to a company news release. CME Group is the owner of the Chicago Board of Trade and announced the new EU Wheat futures this week. CME Group’s Tim Andriesen says the new EU Wheat futures further positions the CME Globex trading platform as the global destination for wheat trading and risk management. Each contract will represent 50 metric tons of physical EU wheat with specific quality specifications. EU Wheat futures and options contracts will be available for trading electronically via CME Globex Monday through Friday between 10:30 a.m. and 6:35 p.m. Paris time. EU Wheat options will also be available for trading on the company’s Chicago trading floor from 8:30 a.m. to 11:35 a.m. Chicago time.

In a Wall Street Journal Opinion piece, a California Agriculture Education official says farmers and the food industry needs to stand up for GMO’s by labeling them. Richard Sexton, Chair of the University of California-Davis Agriculture Department, along with his son Steve, a public policy professor at Duke University, wrote the opinion piece. They say labeling GMO’s could be the best way to make consumers confront their irrational fears and stamp out public ignorance. By labeling GMO’s, the pair says consumers will realize they have been eating GMOs for years without adverse effect, adding consumers simply need to be educated about their food. The opinion piece cited Rutgers University research from 2013 that says 90 percent of Americans want GMO’s labeled, yet when researchers ask them to list the food characteristics they want labeled, only seven percent name GMOs. Further, a 2015 survey by Oklahoma State University found that 80 percent of respondents would require labels on foods containing DNA, even though all foods contain DNA. Concluding the opinion, they say once consumers understand that their own experiences with GMO foods demonstrate the technology’s safety, they will choose science over fear mongering.