Dive Brief:
- On March 4, Green America’s GMO Inside campaign launched a push to get Starbucks, America’s largest coffee chain with more than 20,000 stores in 62 countries, to serve only organic milk sourced from cows not fed GMOs.
- The campaign has its own website and Facebook page devoted to pressuring Starbucks to stop serving milk derived from cows consuming feed based on genetically modified corn, soy, alfalfa, and cottonseed. The organization would like the chain to use a third-party verifier to ensure that the milk used at Starbucks stores is, in fact, sourced from cows eating non-GMO feed.
- Green America’s GMO Inside Campaign Director Nicole McCan asserts, “Starbucks already serves soy milk that is organic and non-GMO. Consumers also deserve dairy milk held to the same standard and level of quality.”
Dive Insight:
A number of major brand switches to non-GMO ingredients have come as a result of pressure from GMO Inside, as seen in Food Dive's 8 ways food companies said 'no' to GMO. The organization's strategy is to pick highly visible brands for their campaigns, as they have done in the past with General Mills and Post. Ben and Jerry's has also committed to phasing out GMO sourced ingredients, though they concede that achieving that end is rather more challenging when dairy products are involved, because the feed dairy farmers use is unlikely to be free of GMOs.
With enough pressure, though, GMO Inside appears confident that it will get what it demands. Certainly, food companies, like Boulder, have been announcing their intention to give their customers what they want with an assurance of non-GMO ingredients in their products.