The deadline to finalize regulations for the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard is only a year away, and it’s critical for the administration, under the leadership of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to get it done on time, IDFA and 18 other food and agriculture groups told the White House in a letter last week.

In a letter addressed to Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the groups expressed concern about how the administration has prioritized efforts to complete the rulemaking and urged OMB to consider the economic costs that compliance with the Vermont labeling law would have imposed on the food and agriculture industry.

Last month, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, a list that includes regulatory agendas from all federal regulatory agencies that currently have regulations under development or review. For the first time, OMB included an “Inactive Actions List” to provide public notice of regulations still being reviewed or considered. The disclosure standard was included on the list.

“We were concerned to see the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard placed on the ‘inactives’ list by the OMB, and hope that this does not indicate decreased priority for completing this rulemaking by the July 29, 2018 deadline,” the groups said. “Promulgating this regulation by the statutory deadline is imperative, given the litigious nature of our opposition, and the costs to the economy that come from extended regulatory uncertainty.”

In addition, the groups asked OMB to consider cost savings when evaluating the overall economic impact of the regulations. In particular, the groups referenced the $2.3 billion in economic costs that would have resulted from compliance with the Vermont labeling law. That would have translated into increased food costs of approximately $1,000 per family, they noted.

They also requested a future meeting with Mulvaney to discuss the standard.

Read the letter here.

For more information, contact Emily Lyons, IDFA director of regulatory affairs and counsel, at elyons@idfa.org.