Whole Foods to Require Labeling of GMOs, Eventually
Whole Foods Market announced on March 8th that all genetically modified foods they sell will need to be labeled within five years. That makes them the first national grocery chain in the U.S. to do so, and they played this as common sense. A. C. Gallo, the company's president, told the New York Times:
We've seen how our customers have responded to the products we do have labeled. Some of our manufacturers say they've seen a 15 percent increase in sales of products they have labeled.
The trade group BIO reacted by claiming that
The industry has always supported the voluntary labeling of food for marketing reasons.
That sound you hear in the background is Mr Orwell, spinning in his grave.
Whole Foods deserves some credit for getting out in front on the issue. There were reports in January that about 20 really large businesses, including WalMart, PepsiCo and ConAgra, had a closed-door meeting to discuss national labeling. Doubtless they were influenced by the growing push for labeling at the state level, which could complicate matters.
Perhaps even more important is that the Whole Foods brand has come under attack from natural-foods activists more than once recently, for deceptive advertising, cozying up to Monsanto, and even initially refusing to support California's labeling proposition last year, though they later came around. The company is also notorious for a long-standing opposition to unions. This announcement can be seen, therefore, as a relatively benevolent form of greenwashing.
And five years? That makes the effort sound more like a publicity stunt than ever: By 2018, it is entirely possible that the industry will have no choice but to label GMOs. In Washington State, the deadline, if I-522 passes, is July 2015.
Still, as Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association (an important force in this and related efforts) noted, the Whole Foods announcement is a major victory for consumers and a major defeat for Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry.
Previously on Biopolitical Times: