Major Grocer to Label Foods With Gene-Modified Content

Major Grocer to Label Foods With Gene-Modified Content

"Whole Foods Mar­ket, the gro­cery chain, on Fri­day be­came the first re­tail­er in the Unit­ed States to re­quire la­bel­ing of all ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods sold in its stores, a move that some ex­perts said could rad­i­cal­ly al­ter the food in­dus­try.

A. C. Gal­lo, pres­i­dent of Whole Foods, said the new la­bel­ing re­quire­ment, to be in place with­in five years, came in re­sponse to con­sumer de­mand. “We’ve seen how our cus­tomers have re­spond­ed to the prod­ucts we do have la­beled,” Mr. Gal­lo said. “Some of our man­u­fac­tur­ers say they’ve seen a 15 per­cent in­crease in sales of prod­ucts they have la­beled.”

Ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied in­gre­di­ents are deeply em­bed­ded in the glob­al food sup­ply, hav­ing pro­lif­er­at­ed since the 1990s. Most of the corn and soy­beans grown in the Unit­ed States, for ex­am­ple, have been ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied."