Ensuring that non-GMO means what it says

Certifying that products don't contain genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, is becoming a big business in the United States. The Non-GMO Project, a non-profit organization, offering North America’s only third party verification and labeling for non-GMO food and products now has over 20,000 Verified products from 2,200 brands. That represents well over $7 Billion in annual sales.

The “Non-GMO Project Verified seal”, says the organisation, is an assurance that a product has been produced according to consensus-based best practices for GMO avoidance:

• We require ongoing testing of all at-risk ingredients—any ingredient being grown commercially in GMO form must be tested prior to use in a verified product.
• We use an Action Threshold of 0.9%. This is in alignment with laws in the European Union (where any product containing more than 0.9% GMO must be labeled). Absence of all GMOs is the target for all Non-GMO Project Standard compliant products. Continuous improvement practices toward achieving this goal must be part of the Participant’s quality management systems.
• After the test, we require rigorous traceability and segregation practices to be followed in order to ensure ingredient integrity through to the finished product.
• For low-risk ingredients, we conduct a thorough review of ingredient specification sheets to determine absence of GMO risk.
• Verification is maintained through an annual audit, along with onsite inspections for high-risk products.

Megan Westgate, executive director of the Non-GMO Project, told National Public radio this week that 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.

"Interestingly, with all of this traction in the natural sector," Westgate says, "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? It might call FoodChain ID, a company in Fairfield, Iowa, that can shepherd a firm through the process. It's one of the third-party auditors that certifies products for the Non-GMO Project.

"We start looking at ingredients, and we identify what are all the ingredients," says David Carter, FoodChain 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, FoodChain ID figures out where each ingredient and input came from. If there's honey in cookies, for example, the company will have to show that the bees that make the honey aren't feeding near genetically modified corn. When there's even the smallest risk that an ingredient could contain a modified gene, 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 says.

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 and how many are not.