Campbell Soup & GMO Labeling
January 11, 2016 Last week, Campbell Soup – which markets Pepperidge Farm products and V8 in addition to its flagship soup varieties – announced it would become the first major food manufacturer to begin listing if its brands used biotech crops in their formulations on the product label. A sample provided by the company reads as follows: “Partially produced with genetic engineering. For more information about GMO ingredients, visit WhatsinMyFood.com.” Changes to Campbell Soup labels are expected to take between 12 and 18 months to complete, says the company.
Loading ...In many ways, this is a huge step in the war on biotech crop use in the public sector. Biotech crop opponents have long pressured food companies to label (or change) their product formulations to single out GMO use. For instance, cereal maker General Mills has for a few years now produced a non-biotech crop-sourced version of its popular Cheerios brand. Furthermore, any food products being sold in the state of Vermont will soon have to carry a label telling if the brand contains biotech crop materials.
But for several years, major food companies (including Campbell Soup) have fought hard against such biotech crop labeling disclosures in places such as California and Washington State. However, according to a Campbell Soup spokesperson, the company will no longer support these efforts.
“We will withdraw from any coalition that doesn’t support mandatory labeling,” said company Chief Executive Denise Morrison in an online statement. “We were involved in fighting the state ballots in California and Washington out of concern over a state-by-state patchwork, yet we didn’t participate in the fights in any other state beyond those.”
What will be more interesting to see is if these new labels have any impact, positive or negative, and Campbell Soup product sales. In 2015, the company created a Website that offers consumers information on the ingredients used in its products, including ones that may come from biotech crops. But according to Morrison, these disclosures didn’t appear to impact brand sales one way or another.
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