© 2021
In touch with the world ... at home on the High Plains
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

How food gets the ‘Non-GMO’ label

Post Foods

Demand for products that don’t contain genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, is exploding.  

Many food companies are seeking certification that their products don’t have any genetically modified ingredients, and not just the brands popular in the health food aisle. Even plain Cheerios, that iconic cereal from General Mills, no longer contains GMOs.

“We currently are at over $8.5 billion in annual sales of verified products,” said Megan Westgate, executive director of the Non-GMO Project, the main supplier of non-GMO labels.

To receive the label, a product has to be certified as containing ingredients with less than 1 percent genetic modification. Westgate says that’s a realistic standard, while totally GMO-free is not. She says natural foods stores began the process of defining a standard, involving other interested players along the way, including consumers. Now, General Mills is just one of the big food companies selling non-GMO products.

Sales of food labeled as “Non-GMO” ballooned to over $3 billion in 2013, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“Interestingly, with all of this traction in the natural sector,” Westgate said, “we’re increasingly seeing more conventional companies coming on board and having their products verified.”

But how does a company get into the non-GMO game? They might cal It’s one of the third-party auditors that certifies products for the Non-GMO Project.

Credit Amy Mayer/Harvest Public Media
David Carter, general manager of Food Chain ID, says the increased number of companies seeking certification for their products has him scrambling to hire more employees.

“We start looking at ingredients and we identify what are all the ingredients?” said David Carter, Food Chain ID’s general manager. “And of course the label itself doesn't always identify all of those, so we need to be sure that we have a list of all the processing aids, the carriers and all the inputs that go into a product.”

Next, they figure out where each thing came from. If there’s honey in the cookies, the company will have to show that the bees who make that honey aren’t foraging on genetically modified corn. When there’s that risk, even the chance an ingredient could contain a genetic modification, DNA testing is in order.

FoodChain ID has a lab where a machine can extract the DNA from ingredient samples in order to analyze it. If that test finds no evidence of GMOs, the ingredient can go in the cookies. Carter says he can barely keep up with the number of inquiries coming in from companies that want certification.

“The demand is now very, very high and it has been for probably over a year in particular,” Carter said.

To date, FoodChain ID says it has verified 17,000 ingredients from 10,000 suppliers in 96 countries.

It may take hundreds of dollars for some products to get a “Non-GMO” label, depending on how many ingredients are already verified as being GMO-free.

Even with the added interest, non-GMO products remain a small fraction of the marketplace. More than 90 percent of corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. contains genetically modified traits. And those two crops are ubiquitous in processed foods like packaged cookies. Still, if the current trend continues, it seems likely that some farmers will start considering going back to seeds without GMOs.

Plant breeder Alix Paez hopes his central Iowa seed company, Genetic Enterprises International, can tap that market.

Credit Amy Mayer/Harvest Public Media
Alix and Mary Jane Paez own and operate Genetic Enterprises International, which develops non-genetically modified corn varieties.

“We are a very small company,” Paez said, “so our strategy is to find niche markets for farmers that are looking for non-GMO products.”

Farmers pay a premium to grow crops genetically modified to withstand pests, and so they can use herbicides to kill weeds. Paez and his wife, Mary Jane, hope to develop seeds than can achieve the same yields without those expensive, patented traits. This past season, they grew test plots on a farm in Boone County, Iowa, which they harvested this fall with an ancient red Massey Ferguson combine.

Paez studies the effectiveness of each hybrid seed variety. It’s slow and meticulous work. But the careful data collection is key to determining whether a new hybrid can be competitive in the marketplace.

“One of the main things is yield,” Paez said. “Stand-ability, consistent performance, disease tolerance, things like that.”
If these seeds make the grade, farmers could potentially save some money on seed. And their grain might fetch a premium, especially as demand for non-GMO animal feed grows. Because the only way to end up with non-GMO certified meat is to raise animals on non-GMO feed.

Credit Amy Mayer/Harvest Public Media
GEI develops seeds for niche markets, like blue corn and high-carotene corn. They hope the non-GMO demand will fuel sales.

Amy Mayer is a reporter based in Ames. She covers agriculture and is part of the Harvest Public Media collaboration. Amy worked as an independent producer for many years and also previously had stints as weekend news host and reporter at WFCR in Amherst, Massachusetts and as a reporter and host/producer of a weekly call-in health show at KUAC in Fairbanks, Alaska. Amy’s work has earned awards from SPJ, the Alaska Press Club and the Massachusetts/Rhode Island AP. Her stories have aired on NPR news programs such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition and on Only A Game, Marketplace and Living on Earth. She produced the 2011 documentary Peace Corps Voices, which aired in over 160 communities across the country and has written for The New York Times, Boston Globe, Real Simple and other print outlets. Amy served on the board of directors of the Association of Independents in Radio from 2008-2015.