General Mills to Start Labeling GMOs

[Ferd Berfel]

This is What Consumers Want': General Mills to Start Labeling GMOs

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/18/what-consumers-want-general-mills-start-labeling-gmos

Environmental and consumer advocacy groups hailed decision by food manufacturer and called on Congress to follow suit

General Mills will start labeling genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in all its food products, thanks to Vermont's impending GMO law and the failure of the 'voluntary labeling' law in U.S. Congress this week.

"We can't label our products for only one state without significantly driving up costs for our consumers, and we simply won't do that," wrote General Mills U.S. retail chief Jeff Harmening in a post to the company's website on Friday. "The result: Consumers all over the country will soon begin seeing words legislated by the state of Vermont on the labels of many of their favorite General Mills food products."

The company, which manufactures huge North American brands like Betty Crocker, Yoplait, and Cheerios, among others, now joins Campbell's as one of the major food companies in the U.S. to support mandatory GMO labeling, and ends its own long history of standing against similar laws throughout the country. In 2012, General Mills contributed $1.2 million to the campaign against California's Proposition 37, which would have required mandatory GMO labeling in the nation's largest state.