Cargill, one of the world’s biggest wholesale food suppliers, has bowed to consumer trends by offering its first products with a seal of approval from the leading US verifier of products free of bioengineering.
The US company handles millions of tonnes a year of crops such as corn and soyabeans that are typically grown with genetically modified (GMO) traits.
But it is also contending with shifting tastes, including rising suspicion towards the GMO products that have been common on store shelves for years.
On Thursday, Cargill said it had for the first time received verification from the Non-GMO Project, a voluntary labelling organisation, for three of its food ingredients. The approval means packaged food companies that are Cargill’s customers can slap the project’s widely recognised butterfly logo on their products.
“Consumer demand for non-GMO food and beverages is growing, and Cargill is responding,” said Mike Wagner, managing director for Cargill’s starches and sweeteners North America division.
The three Cargill ingredients meeting project standards were cane sugar, high oleic sunflower oil and erythritol, a zero-calorie bulk sweetener made from corn. Of the three, corn is the only crop currently grown with genetically modified traits.
“There is no GMO sugarcane, and there is no GMO sunflower,” said Peter Golbitz of Agromeris, a consultant to the natural food industry. “It’s somewhat capitulating to the growing consumer fear that there is something to be concerned about in all foods, as opposed to just the foods that may have commercial GMO varieties.”
Selling products verified as non-GMO could help boost profit margins for Cargill, which has struggled with declining returns in recent years. In a speech earlier this year chief executive David MacLennan said that while the company would keep buying GMO crops, “we are also excited about value-added opportunities presented by specialty supply chains, like non-GMO.”
Packaged foods bearing the Non-GMO Project label first appeared in supermarkets in 2010. More than 40,000 products are now verified, equal to more than $19bn in annual sales, the project’s website said.
“It’s somewhat capitulating to the growing consumer fear that there is something to be concerned about in all foods, as opposed to just the foods that may have commercial GMO varieties
In July, President Barack Obama signed into law a measure requiring food companies to label products containing ingredients from genetically modified crops, pre-empting a Vermont state labelling law.
Cargill supported the final version of the law but the Non-GMO Project blasted it, arguing that loopholes meant that some GMO foods might not be subject to mandatory labelling and that smartphone QR codes could potentially stand in for clear labels. The US Department of Agriculture is now writing rules to implement the law.
Cargill said its commitment to verifying the three ingredients, and “others expected in the future,” was likely to increase farm acreage devoted to non-GMO agriculture in North America.
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