In a stark demonstration of the power of the agrochemical industry to convert the U.S. government into a fiefdom for corptocracy rule, President Obama recently ignored 250,000 petitioners and signed into law Senate Bill 764, known to food safety advocates as the DARK (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act.

The DARK Act was boiled up by agrochemical industry lobbyists and their many allies in Congress (both Republicans and Democrats) to prevent Vermont from becoming the first state in the country to implement a mandatory GMO labeling on food packaging.

Employing the Orwellian style with which the corporate media promotes the false narratives of our nation’s corporate-corrupted politicians, ABC News made no mention of the Vermont law, instead reporting that the bill “creates a federal labeling standard for foods containing genetically modified ingredients.” White House spokeswoman Katie Hill told ABC News, “This measure will provide new opportunities for consumers to have access to information about their food.”

Professor Laura Murphy, director of the Environmental & Natural Resources Law Clinic at Vermont Law School, observed that the new law, in fact, does the opposite of creating consumer transparency for GMO food. “If Congress were really interested in providing consumers with information, it could have adopted Vermont’s on-package label that companies are already using across the country,” Murphy explained. “Instead, Congress created a mechanism for companies to hide behind QR codes and trample on state efforts to provide their citizens with actual information.  As if this weren’t bad enough, the federal law has a confusing definition of ‘bioengineering’ that gives USDA the authority to determine how much of a product needs to be bioengineered before a label is required, and prevents even the food companies from certain types of disclosure. “