Kraft Foods critics say company might be backing away from biotech ingredients
October 08, 2002
WASHINGTON (AFX-GEM) - Kraft Foods Inc's critics, armed with independent laboratory reports, said Tuesday the
largest US food company appeared to be heeding consumer concern and phasing out the use of genetically modified
ingredients in its products.
"Kraft may finally be listening to American consumers," said Lisa Archer of Friends of the Earth, a member group of the
Genetically Engineered Food Alert coalition.
The company, which declined to comment Tuesday, told AFX Global Ethics Monitor last week that it stood by
genetically engineered ingredients as safe and that their use in food products was not of concern to US consumers.
Activists, however, said the ingredients appeared to have begun to disappear from at least some Kraft products.
In January, their coalition sent six Kraft products to an independent laboratory in Iowa and found their corn ingredients
had been genetically engineered, meaning that genes from other organisms had been spliced into the corn to make it
grow faster, resist pests or otherwise enhance its commercial properties.
The lab, Genetic ID, tested another four products late last month and found they did not contain the modified corn.
"It appears from these tests that they might be phasing out genetically modified corn," Archer told AFX Global Ethics
Monitor from Northfield, Illinois, as protesters assembled outside Kraft headquarters there.
She acknowledged different products were tested in January and September and that activists had inferred a change in
company practice.
But, she added: "It shouldn't be up to us to do this testing and publicize these results. It should be up to them. If they're
doing the right thing, that would be great but one way or the other,
they should be telling us."
Kraft spokesperson Kathy Knuth said last week, as activists prepared a week-long campaign of protests at 300-plus
supermarkets nationwide, that the company stood by its use of genetically engineered ingredients and its policy of not
indicating their presence or absence through product labels.
"If we believed there was any real risk associated with these ingredients, you can be sure they would not be in our
products," Knuth said.
The company had pulled the ingredients from products made and sold in Europe in deference to regulations and
consumer sentiment there, she said.
But US consumers were not concerned about the issue, she added, citing survey findings by the industry-backed
International Food Information Council (IFIC).
Kraft senior vice president for corporate affairs Michael Mudd served on the IFIC Foundation's board of trustees in 2001,
according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based non-profit watchdog group.
Archer, at Friends of the Earth, countered that surveys by state universities, Harris Poll and the US Department of
Agriculture showed a majority of US consumers had concerns about genetically engineered ingredients and wanted
products containing them labeled accordingly.
Groups targeting Kraft include organizations that in 2000 triggered a national recall of the company's Taco Bell brand
taco shells. The groups, using an independent lab, had found the shells contained a form of engineered corn not approved
for human consumption.
abid.aslam@afxnews.com
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AFX Global Ethics Monitor
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