Two bottles of soybean oil sit on a grocery store shelf. Both contain genetically modified (GM) soybeans from the same crop. One bottle is labelled as a GM product, the other is not.

Both are in compliance with the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) new GM food labeling rules (pdf).

Confused? You’re not alone.

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The loophole is so glaring that even a handful of the world’s biggest food companies were taken aback. Danone, Mars, Nestlé, and Unilever released a comment this week through their trade group, the Sustainable Food Policy Alliance, voicing concern that the USDA rule didn’t go far enough. “The standards fall short of consumer expectations, and the practices of leading food companies, particularly when it comes to how we are already disclosing highly-refined ingredients and the threshold for disclosure,” the group said in its statement.