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If Monday’s Senate Health Committee Hearing on a bill to require labels on genetically engineered food is any indication, the debate over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Hawaii’s legislative session this year will be emotional.

That’s not a surprise, at least not to anyone who has been following the passionate debates about pesticides and GMOs in Hawaii counties this past year.

But now that the 2014 legislative session has begun, Hawaii lawmakers are deciding whether the state should have a role in regulating GMO use or even whether to overturn the counties’ new laws.

Monday’s hearing was the first time this session that lawmakers took up the GMO issue. The committee approved the bill, Senate Bill 2736, which would require labeling on all food that has genetically engineered material effective on Jan. 1 next year.

Yet the proposal is unlikely to get much farther. As of Monday afternoon, the bill was assigned to go next to the committees that handle finances and consumer protection, but Sen. Rosalyn Baker told Civil Beat after the hearing that the measure had been re-referred to the Agriculture Committee as well.

“It’s doubtful, I think, with that line-up that the bill would get another hearing, but one never knows,” she said.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Clarence Nishihara has been opposed to labeling genetically modified food, making it unlikely that he would agree to take up the measure.

But SB 2736 is just one of several GMO-related bills that the Legislature is considering this year.

Others would require more disclosure from biotech companies or ban the growing GMO crops in Hawaii altogether. Yet another would override the regulations imposed by counties, and still another would take the issue straight to the voters through a constitutional amendment.