Don’t ignore the GMO issue

In the past decade or so, the number of food ingredients many U.S. consumers are striving to avoid has been growing. Vilified ingredients now include trans fats, simple carbohydrates, artificial sweeteners, high-fructose corn syrup, gluten and others. And in recent years, genetically modified organisms, or GMOs*, have been turning up more often on those consumer avoidance lists.

Every two years, The Hartman Group, Bellevue, Wash., surveys U.S. consumers about the food ingredients they are avoiding (as well as those they are seeking out). In 2007, only 15 percent of respondents said they were avoiding GMOs. But by 2015, that number had risen to 41 percent.

“In terms of growth, for avoidance, it’s the No. 1 ingredient,” says Laurie Demeritt, CEO of The Hartman Group.

Chris DuBois, senior principal for Chicago-based market research firm IRI, agrees that consumer concern regarding GMOs has skyrocketed in recent years. In IRI’s tracking of 40 million websites, blogs, e-commerce sites, product reviews and more, GMOs have come out as one of the “biggest and fastest-growing topics” articulated by U.S. consumers. To put it into perspective, GMOs boast almost three times as many Internet “conversations,” in an average month, than mega-brand Gatorade, and one-third as many as the iconic Coca-Cola brand.

GMOs have been in play for a couple of decades now, so why the sudden rise in concern? DuBois notes that corporate activists have played a role here.

“I think it’s one of those topics that’s been caught in the media and that escalation and engagement with consumers has only increased,” he says.

Recent state-led ballot initiatives aimed at GMO labeling have also worked to ignite consumer concerns, notes Darren Seifer, food and beverage industry analyst for The NPD Group, Port Washington, N.Y.

And Demeritt believes two other factors also are contributing to consumers’ concerns. First, consumers believe that no one wants to talk about GMOs, so there’s a lack of transparency surrounding the issue.

“The result is that consumers think there’s something bad or something wrong with [GMOs],” she says.

Second, to many consumers, GMOs suggest that “some sort of processing or tampering” has occurred within the food products, Demeritt adds, which doesn’t mesh well with the current push toward food that is fresh, “real” and minimally processed.

“They start to think about people in lab coats almost injecting something into the products, which clearly isn’t what GMOs are about,” she says.

A muddy issue

That perception of product manipulation underscores the fact that many consumers actually understand very little about GMOs. That reality is reflected in recent consumer surveys The NPD Group has performed.

“When asked what GMOs are, the top open-ended answer is ‘I don’t know,’” Seifer notes.

“However, more than a quarter of adults are very or extremely concerned about GMOs.”

Whatever understanding consumers do have tends to be very shallow, Demeritt says.

“Typically what they’ll say is, ‘Oh, I’m worried about it potentially doing something to my health.’ But we asked them in quantitative research what health aspects they are worried about specifically, and less than 10 percent of people could name a specific health concern,” she says.

IRI also found little in the way of understanding here when it pulled out and examined the consumer conversations it tracked, DuBois notes.

“They’re not experts in [GMOs], but the fear and uncertainty that come out of those different conversations and articles is causing confusion on the consumer side,” he explains. “So there’s a great desire to know more.”

Transparency, please

The desire to know more doesn’t necessarily translate into the desire for a deep scientific explanation. Consumers primarily want transparency — they feel they have the right to know whether or not the products they buy contain GMOs, DuBois points out.

In fact, when IRI pulled out the various subtopics in the conversations surrounding GMOs, more clarity around labeling came out as the biggest “ask” on the part of consumers, he says.

Research that global market research firm Mintel recently performed also points to consumers’ desire for transparency when it comes to food ingredients in general. In fact, 69 percent of surveyed U.S. consumers want to see more transparency in food product ingredients, according to a December 2015 report authored by Billy Roberts, senior food and drink analyst for Mintel.

Time for a conversation

Many retailers might be unsure of how to respond to consumers’ GMO-related concern and confusion. But when it comes to their private brand programs, they probably cannot afford to ignore the issue. Right now, the market sees growing concern and avoidance, but not because of any specific narrative consumers have in their minds, Demeritt says. But all of that could change quickly.

“If you go back to the growth hormone issue, I think where that really took off was when all of a sudden consumers started connecting it, rightly or wrongly, to maturity and development in teenage girls — thinking it would make them hit puberty earlier,” she says. “And once that story was out there about a specific health issue, that’s when we really saw the floodgates open.”

Demeritt advises retailers not to try to educate consumers about GMOs — which could suggest to consumers that they aren’t entitled to have their own perception about GMOs — but to engage in conversations with them now instead. Rochester, N.Y.-based Wegmans Food Markets Inc. did just that when Mary Ellen Burris, senior vice president, consumer affairs, explained in a blog posting that the retailer was not going GMO-free and would not be labeling everything, and then outlined why.

“What you should say is, ‘Here’s what we’re doing and here’s why we’re doing it,’” Demeritt says. The conversation “should be subject to feedback and possible revision, allowing consumers to have the conversation with [you] instead of being definitive, and talking about it like a journey — ‘This is what we’re doing now, and there’s probably going to be more information that comes out, and that might make us go in a different direction.’”

Having that conversation, of course, involves taking a stand on the issue, even if that stand might be subject to revision. DuBois believes it’s important for retailers to take a stand on GMOs and notes that progressive retailers are doing just that. For example, West Des Moines, Iowa-based Hy-Vee Inc. recently came out against GMO salmon.

“It will only reinforce their brand and build a relationship with consumers,” he says. “Consumers just really want to know, so the more clarity, the more transparency, the better.”

DuBois also expects to see a shift in the next three years toward labeling of GMOs on products. On the national brand side, Campbell Soup Co. recently announced its support for the enactment of federal legislation to establish a single mandatory labeling standard for foods derived from GMOs, and said it is prepared to label all of its U.S. products for the presence of GMO-derived ingredients, not just those required by pending legislation in Vermont, if mandatory GMO labeling fails to become federal law.**

“I think the retailers who lead with their private label, are very proud of their branding, ought to be looking at getting a labeling program and options in place,” he says. “For retailers that are farther behind, this is probably not the most important concern, but it will be an important one over the next few years.”

*As defined by the World Health Organization, GMOs can be defined as “organisms (i.e., plants, animals or microorganisms) in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.” For example, some crops have been genetically modified so they require lower quantities of insecticides.

**In July 2015, the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 1599, which would block states from issuing mandatory labeling laws for foods containing GMOs and instead create a federal standard for the voluntary labeling of such foods. The bill was referred to the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.