Some success is always better than nothing and our efforts with Aunt Millie’s demonstrates that we can set goals and make changes!
If you’re not familiar with my recent interactions with the Midwest bread company Aunt Millie’s, let me briefly catch you up. Back in August, I noticed that Aunt Millie’s had added an entire non-GMO line to their bread products, which largely disappointed me and led me to declare that I would no longer purchase the company’s products. However, worse than the product line was the horrible and inaccurate description of GMOs on the company’s website. I tweeted my article to the company and, after a series of tweets, the company agreed to review any suggested revisions I suggested for their website. I promptly complied. While the company informed me they would consider the changes, and lots of readers urged the company to do so, I never heard back from them.
So, that prompted me to add Aunt Millie’s to Santa’s Naughty List for 2015. After pointing out to Aunt Millie’s that they had been put on the list, I was informed by the company that they had, in fact, changed their website and did not blow off my suggestions.
@farmdaughterusa We reviewed input and we did make changes to our website, including photo and the text. We didn’t blow it off.
— Aunt Millie’s Bread (@AuntMillies) December 2, 2015
So, I headed over to the website to take a look and see if they really did utilize my suggestions (you can find those in their entirety here).
For reference, here was the old description on Aunt Millie’s website:
About Non-GMO
GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism. GMOs are crop plants that have been modified in a laboratory to enhance certain traits. Genetic modification can result in nutritional enhancement, decreased use of herbicides from amplified herbicide resistance, and increased crop yield.Throughout history, crops were improved through generations of careful breeding, but advances in science now allow this process to be sped up in laboratories.
Because GMOs are still a new science, there have been no long-term studies to substantiate their exact effect on our health. It is possible, however, that the modification of crops could lead to the development of new food allergies. GMOs also pose a potential threat to other plants and animals due to their unknown ecosystem interactions.
These uncertainties, in conjunction with conflicting religious and/or cultural views, leave some consumers wary of products containing GMOs. Non GMO is seen as the biggest emerging food trend. Below is information about Non GMO in grocery
The description on the website now reads:
About Non-GMO
GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism. GMOs are crop plants that have been modified in a laboratory to enhance certain traits. Genetic modification can result in nutritional enhancement, decreased use of herbicides from amplified herbicide resistance, and increased crop yield.Throughout history, crops were improved through generations of careful breeding, but advances in science now allow this process to be sped up in laboratories.
Because GMOs are a relatively new science, some people are concerned that there have not been enough long-term studies to determine their exact effect on our health. Some have concerns that the modification of crops could lead to the development of new food allergies.
Others fear that GMOs could pose a threat to other plants and animals due to ecosystem interactions. These uncertainties, in conjunction with conflicting religious and/or cultural views, leave some consumers wary of products containing GMOs. Because so many people are looking for foods made without GMOs, Aunt Millie’s launched a line of Best Grains Breads. These “clean label” breads are free from artificial ingredients and chemical additives and have no GMOs.
Wow…… so glad they “considered” my revisions and made such radical changes to their website! (The sarcasm is so thick you could cut it with a knife….)
The most significant change was the photo on the website. A picture is worth a thousand words and, considering today’s social media influenced attention span of 10 seconds, this is more true than ever. So, I’m very relieved that the company changed their photo from one of an ear of corn with “prescription kernels” to a much more mundane and less offensive photo. Just as with photographs of tomatoes being stuck with syringes, we do not need misleading and inaccurate photographs allegedly depicting GMO crops.
Unfortunately, the text still caters to the false narrative that GMOs are potentially unsafe.
The company just slightly reworded their inaccurate information as “justifications” from customers, most of which are completely inaccurate. For example, they claim that there haven’t been enough long-term studies to determine the health effects of GMOs. But that’s misleading at best, and completely wrong otherwise. There have been long term studies performed on animals and over 2,000 studies performed demonstrating that GMOs are just as safe as their non-GMO counterparts. Furthermore, long term testing on humans isn’t exactly ethical to start with, and also impossible because a human being cannot live on soybeans or corn alone!
Aunt Millie’s new description of non-GMO also claims that there is a worry about the development of food allergens in biotech crops. Again, this is simply a line of propaganda from special interests groups which has no basis in reality. One of the first things the FDA considers when reviewing a GMO for commercial production is whether it is modified to produce a known allergen, or modified in such a way so as to materially change the crop. To date, this has never happened. In any case, such a change would require a label on the final product – something that anti-GMO advocates seem to forget or ignore.
Again, instead of pretending that this was about consumer choice, I wish they had just been honest that they were responding to a perceived market where they hoped to tap into an unsatisfied customer base. It’s certainly no secret that anti-GMO sentiment has been spread by well-funded special interest groups and “GMO” has become a negative buzzword. Aunt Millie’s list of “consumer worries” amount to nothing more than the talking points put out by these groups. Companies putting a non-GMO label on their products aren’t doing it to allay customers’ fears – they’re doing it to pander to those fears in the hopes of increasing sales. If anything, Aunt Millie’s pathetic attempt at changing their website (and then the audacity to suggest they actually considered what I said!) just proves that this was their motivation.
At least be honest about your intentions.
Personally, I will never purchase a product that has the “non-GMO” label (at least not on purpose…). The fact that Aunt Millie’s even has an entire non-GMO line of breads is irksome. Additionally upsetting is their claim that these breads are somehow “great grains,” while breads containing GMOs are inferior. In reality, every single non-GMO label is just a slap in the face to American farm families. Aunt Millie’s products continue to be offensive and not worth my money.
That all being said, I’m glad that I contacted the company and took up this effort. The website, especially the photograph, was atrocious and horribly wrong. However, the willingness of Aunt Millie’s to at least consider revisions, not to mention actually change the photo, shows us that we can make a difference in our efforts. We absolutely do not have to sit by and allow anti-GMO messages to propagate. The anti-GMO activists might be loud and boisterous, but we’re also consumers and deserve to have our voices heard. Sometimes, companies will (kinda) listen to us.
Thank you to everyone that helped with this effort!
Plus you may not ever know. But some of the employees may have checked further and realize more than the big shots were willing to admit. You never know when these folks may gain authority and make changes.
If you really want to be upset check out the little “Confused by Gluten?” link at the top of their “About Non-GMO” page of the site.
“You have probably noticed the growing abundance of books, websites, and specialty foods aimed at the avoidance of all gluten, a protein found in grains, including wheat, rye, and barley. You might even have friends telling you “gluten is bad for you.” In reality, the buzz surrounding gluten is just a trend and marketing tool, making people believe gluten is bad. A client recently told me that he just turned 40 and decided to “clean up his diet and get healthy” by going gluten free.”
You could literally replace every “gluten” with “GMOs” and it would still be true!
Aunt Millie’s doesn’t even manufacture any gluten-free products so not sure where you’re going with that.