Dive Brief:
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Soylent has introduced three beverage varieties in the United Kingdom, but because the U.K. has banned the cultivation of genetically modified crops and requires the labeling of foods containing GMOs, the company has changed its formulation to replace seven GMO ingredients, according to AgFunder News.
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An eighth GMO ingredient — soy protein isolate — will be in Soylent beverages sold in the U.K. because it's been approved for use in the EU, Andrew Thomas, Soylent's vice-president of marketing, told AgFunder News.
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Soylent announced in 2016 that its products are "Proudly Made with GMOs," and the company believes genetic engineering is important for boosting global food production. While the debate over GMO safety and ethics has been divisive, Soylent said that, "GMOs currently on the market provide ample cases of tangible benefit with relatively negligible risk."
Dive Insight:
Soylent is apparently not going to let a few GMO regulations get in the way of marketing three of its meal-replacement beverage varieties — Original, Cacao and Cafe Mocha — in the U.K. via Amazon. The cost of switching out GMO ingredients for non-GMO ones must not have been prohibitive and the potential rewards were great enough to make the reformulation worth it. However, the move does call into question the company's strong pro-GMO stance in this country, which has been advertised via billboards and its blog.
According to the BBC, Soylent does have some competition in the form of Huel, a U.K.-based meal-replacement powder product that debuted in 2015. Soylent plans to bring a powdered version of its beverages to the U.K. next year, AgFunder News reported. Soylent CEO Bryan Crowley told the BBC that competition is a good thing, although he noted his company's advantage is that it's the original meal-replacement product.
It will be interesting to see whether U.S. consumers start pressuring Soylent to bring its mostly non-GMO products to the U.S. market — and whether the company's move to accommodate the U.K. has any influence on the rest of the pro-GMO community. Some firms may not be willing to change up their recipes currently containing GMOs to satisfy regulators in countries with stricter GMO laws unless there's a big payday attached. Once GMOs start being labeled in the U.S., however, things could change.
Consumers who would rather avoid GMOs in their foods and beverages often don't feel they have sufficient health and safety information about them. GMOs are also hard to avoid in the U.S. since more than 93% of corn and soy is genetically modified, and about 60% to 70% of all processed grocery store products have some GMO ingredients, according to a 2015 story in Vox.
As a result, it's hard to see how GMO labels — most likely using the initials "BE" for "bioengineered" — will be able to help, although just having the information on product packaging could make a difference to some consumers and influence their purchasing decisions.