General Mills Makes Cheerios GMO-Free

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The GMO Inside campaign has launched a major push to get General Mills to drop genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from Honey Nut Cheerios - the company's and the USA's biggest breakfast cereal. Massive consumer pressure on General Mills persuaded this US food giant to eliminate GMOs from original Cheerios. In a campaign relying heavily on social media to inform and involve consumers, the company was deluged with over 50,000 online postings to make original Cheerios GMO free.

The GMO Inside campaign has launched a major push to get General Mills to drop genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from Honey Nut Cheerios - the company's and the USA's biggest breakfast cereal.

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Massive consumer pressure on General Mills persuaded this US food giant to eliminate GMOs from original Cheerios.

In a campaign relying heavily on social media to inform and involve consumers, the company was deluged with over 50,000 online postings to make original Cheerios GMO free.

General Mills' acknowledgment that it was dropping GMOs from original Cheerios created a firestorm of media attention and made millions more Americans aware of the GMOs that are common in the cereals that start their days.

The next logical step

Now, GMO Inside is urging General Mills to take the next logical step in relation to consumer demand and concerns - remove GMOs from Honey Nut Cheerios and use a third-party verifier to ensure that the cereal is, in fact, non-GMO.

Over 6 million people - many of them children - start their day with Honey Nut Cheerios. But Honey Nut Cheerios contain a number of the same ingredients that are at-risk for GMOs as regular Cheerios, just with a higher concentration of sugar.

Now that General Mills has completed a year-long process to remove GMOs from regular Cheerios, consumers will pressure the company to remove GMOs from their other cereals, starting with Honey Nut Cheerios.

In addition consumers will continue to push General Mills needs to use third party verification to provide consumers with the assurance that its products are genuinely non-GMO.

Grape nuts now GMO-free

Recently, Post Foods revealed to its customers that it is removing GMOs from its original Grape Nuts Cereal. Post is going one step further than General Mills by using third party verification to ensure Grape Nuts is non-GMO.

Post has also stated to its customers that it is exploring removing GMOs from other products.

Continue reading at ENN affiliate, The Ecologist.

Cheerios image via Shutterstock.