If you're a label reader seeking to avoid genetically modified foods, you'll get no help if you buy Kroger-brand foods.
At Kroger's annual shareholders meeting on June 22, a proposal to require the nation's largest grocery store chain to label its private-brand products manufactured with genetically modified organisms (GMO) was voted down by 76 percent of the voting shareholders.
The resolution, sponsored and written by a social- and environmental-issues investment firm in Boston, stressed the labeling be done "where feasible" and continue until GMOs were eradicated from Kroger's private-label products.
"First ... there is no scientific evidence that genetically engineered foods are unsafe," said Gary Rhodes, spokesperson for Kroger. "The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) food labeling laws already require appropriate labeling if genetic modification changes the nutrition or function of a food. The Federal Trade Commission should develop guidelines for advertisers."
Last month, CityBeat reported that the FDA, charged with ensuring GMO-enhanced foods are fit for human consumption, says the companies marketing GMOs -- like Monsanto, which makes the bovine growth hormone Posilac -- bear the burden of proving their safety ("Hot Potatoes," issue of June 22-28).
So Kroger sees itself as a middleman of sorts -- it doesn't grow the food, but it does process and/or manufacture it. And it's not asking suppliers if they're using GMOs, Rhodes said, because it doesn't have to.
But with 42 food manufacturing plants across the United States, Kroger is in a unique position to sort out the sources of food and whether GMOs have been used to produce them, said Steven Heim, author of the shareholder proposal and a research analyst with Walden Assets Management.
Rhodes said Kroger might put itself at a competitive disadvantage if it begins labeling its private-label foods. To the contrary, Heim said -- it could be a competitive advantage, like it's been in Europe, where food companies are trying to be the most "GMO-free."
But two-thirds of all food produced is somehow genetically engineered, Rhodes said, so labeling becomes a practicality issue. According to the board of directors' recommendation against the resolution published in Kroger's 1999 annual report, the company would have "serious difficulty determining what constitutes (genetically modified) crops."
Robert Cohen, a staunch activist against GMOs and bovine growth hormones, plans to send Kroger a message.
"To Kroger and to others who are not responding to consumers' message: We're not going to shop at your freaking store!," he told CityBeat.
Cohen is expecting thousands of whistles to arrive at his New Jersey home any day, which he'll then send to vegetarian and anti-GMO groups across the country. The groups will "blow the whistle" on Kroger and other grocery stores by sounding them when they enter.
Heim's shareholder resolution cited a number of reasons for being wary of GMOs, namely that international response to the phenomenon has been laced with caution. According to the resolution, several of Europe's largest food retailers are removing GMOs from their private-label products. In the United Kingdom, McDonald's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken are eliminating genetically modified soy and corn ingredients from their products.
The resolution also decries the food industry's prevailing rationale that GMOs shouldn't be regulated or eliminated because they haven't been proven unsafe.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has begun to develop a method for evaluating the long-term and secondary effects of GMO-enhanced products. For instance, critics want to know what happens when genetically modified crops produced with higher levels of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a toxin that makes them insect-resistant, decompose into the soil. According to Heim's resolution, 1998 research shows the crops are causing an increase of the toxin in the soil, which is causing a decline in monarch butterflies.
Last year, the European Union suspended the approval of further GMOs until a new safety law is implemented in 2002.
Kroger's voting shareholders defeated the proposed resolution because, according to Cohen, all they're concerned about is the bottom line.
"We share and actively support our customers' interests in food safety," the Kroger board of directors' response reads. "We also believe consumers have a right to relevant information about the food they buy so that they can make informed purchasing decisions. As a retailer, however, we are neither qualified nor entitled to establish food safety regulations and labeling requirements."
But a few years ago, Kroger tried a different tact. In 1994, the company instituted a policy of discouraging its dairy manufacturers from supplying products from cows treated with bovine growth hormones, following a trend set forth by the European Union, Canada and other countries that banned the milk because of human health concerns.
"I don't think the situations are analogous," Rhodes said, adding that Kroger cannot guarantee the milk on its shelves is free of the growth hormone because there's no scientific test to detect it.
In the company's policy statement on the hormone, Kroger again acknowledged the federal government's role in judging the safety of the product in question and the fact that the FDA, at the time, hadn't found the hormone to be unsafe.
Both situations boil down to one, simple right, Cohen said: The right to know what you're ingesting.
If Kroger isn't listening now, it will be soon, Cohen said, referring to his whistle-blowing campaign -- the second food initiative he's taken on within a year. Last fall, CityBeat reported that he began a hunger strike in an effort to get the FDA to scrutinize the effects of bovine growth hormones ("Lactose Intolerant," issue of Dec. 2-8, 1999). He went 205 days without food and lost between 80 and 100 pounds. ©
