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The Vermont Senate passed a bill on Wednesday that would make it the first U.S. state to enact mandatory labeling of foods made with genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Unlike bills passed last year in Maine and Connecticut, which require other states to pass GMO labeling laws before they can be enacted, Vermont's contains no such trigger clause. Vermont's effort comes as the developers of genetically modified crops and the $360 billion U.S. packaged food industry push for passage of an opposing bill introduced in Congress last week that would nullify any law that would require labeling of foods made with genetically modified crops.

The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) said on Thursday it had more work to do to find consensus on a set of standards aimed at protecting farm data privacy, after meeting in Kansas City with a dozen leading U.S. agricultural industry players. At stake is who will spearhead the drive toward a common standard for data produced on farms as the industry aims to turn information into profit and productivity, projected to be a multi-billion dollar industry in the coming years. Over the last year, there has been a surge in the collection and analyses of farm data across the United States.

A Republican congressman from Kansas introduced legislation on Wednesday that would nullify efforts in multiple states to require labeling of genetically modified foods. The bill, dubbed the "Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act," was drafted by U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo and is aimed at overriding bills in about two dozen states that would require foods made with genetically engineered crops to be labeled as such. The bill specifically prohibits any mandatory labeling of foods developed using bioengineering.

Monsanto Co, the world's largest seed company, reported higher-than-expected quarterly earnings on Wednesday as its corn and soybean businesses expanded globally. The company, which specializes in developing genetically engineered crops that withstand herbicides and ward off insects, said the profit margin in corn, its top revenue producer, increased 2.5 points in the second quarter ended on February 28. The corn business was on track to post record volume for the fiscal year, despite lower plantings expected in the United States this spring.

A public interest group is asking a court to force the U.S. Department of Agriculture to turn over documents explaining its approval of a genetically altered alfalfa even as the department acknowledged the crop's potential to do environmental damage. The Center for Food Safety said on Thursday that it believes the USDA may have succumbed to outside pressure, possibly from Monsanto Co., the developer of the genetic trait in the biotech alfalfa.

Dan Kittle has spent more than a decade waiting for this day. As the man in charge of research and development at Dow AgroSciences, the unit of Dow Chemical Co that develops agricultural seeds and pesticides, Kittle remembers the "big shock" when rival Monsanto Co unveiled a genetically modified seed in 1996 designed to be used in combination with a specific herbicide, a combination that rapidly led Monsanto to riches. Since then, Monsanto has become the world's largest seed company with $15 billion in annual sales, up roughly 200 percent from a decade ago, and Kittle and a team of Dow researchers have been working to catch up.

Three environmental and public health groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, seeking to press it to move forward with rules that would require public disclosure of certain pesticide ingredients. The Center for Environmental Health, Beyond Pesticides, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, all non-profit advocacy groups, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The groups claimed there has been an "unreasonable delay" on the EPA's part in finalizing rules to require chemical manufacturers to disclose hazardous inert ingredients in their pesticide products.

Growing crops free from contamination by genetically modified crops and the pesticides used on those biotech versions is getting more difficult and more costly for U.S. farmers, and new government rules to control contamination are needed, according to report issued on Monday by an environmental organization and an organic food group. Based on information from 268 farmers from 17 U.S. states, the report said more than 30 percent of farmers seeking to grow organic crops reported that unintended GMO presence has been found or suspected on their farms, according to the report by Food & Water Watch and the Organic Farmers' Agency for Relationship Marketing (OFARM).

DuPont Pioneer, the agricultural seed unit of DuPont, said on Thursday it was launching a suite of "whole-farm decision" services aimed at boosting crop productivity, a line of business many in the agricultural sector are racing to offer. The platform of data and technology services, to be called "Encirca," will have a dedicated website and a team of about 50 Encirca sales and service agents through key corn- and soybean-growing areas of the U.S. Midwest, DuPont said.

Nearly 500 foods found on grocery store shelves in the United States, including many foods labeled as "healthy," contain a potentially hazardous industrial plastics chemical, according to a report issued Thursday by a health research and advocacy group. Azodicarbonamide, also known as ADA, was found as an ingredient in breads, bagels, tortillas, hamburger and hot dog buns, pizza, pastries, and other food products, according to a report by the Environmental Working Group, based in Washington.