29.07 US Food Producers Turning GMO-Free with Little to No Advertising

MOSCOW, July 29 (RIA Novosti) - US food producers have been eliminating genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from their products without any special announcements, NPR reported.

While some companies, like ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s, are advertising their healthy switch as loudly as possible, others are experimenting with the elimination of GMO “cautiously and quietly.”

“A lot of exciting cool things that are happening that for whatever strategic reasons get kept pretty quiet,” NPR quoted Megan Westgate of the Non-GMO Project, a North American non-profit organization committed to verifying and labeling Non-GMO food and care products, as saying.

The newly GMO-free products include the original plain variety of General Mill’s breakfast cereal Cheerios. The company has only announced its switch in its official blog and did not add any special labels to its box. US retail giant Target now produces about 80 GMO-free products under its house brand – and stays quiet about it as well. The reason behind such modesty, according to NPR, is that companies do not want to give any promises that they will not be able to keep.