March 12, 2013

By 2018, supermarket chain, Whole Foods Market, will labelling food products in its US and Canadian stores, to indicate the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

With this decision, Whole Foods Market has become the first national grocery chain to set a deadline for full GMO transparency.

The new labelling task is set to encourage manufacturers to enquire about ingredients, and will help the retailer to provide better transparency about the products sold to its customers, according to the company.

Whole Foods Market co-CEO, Walter Robb, said that the prevalence of GMOs in the US, combined with non-existent mandatory labelling, makes it tough for retailers to source non-GMO options and for consumers to select non-GMO products.

"Accordingly, we are stepping up our support of certified organic agriculture, where GMOs are not allowed, and we are working together with our supplier partners to grow our non-GMO supply chain to ensure we can continue to provide these choices in the future," Robb said.

Over the past few years, Whole Foods Market has been teaming up with its supplier partners to source food products without GMO ingredients.

As part of this plan, in 2009, the retailer began putting its 365 Everyday Value line through Non-GMO Project verification and suggested that supplier partners do the same. Currently, the company sells 3,300 Non-GMO Project verified products from 250 brands in North America.

It plans to work with suppliers in all categories as they change to ingredients from non-GMO sources, or clearly label products with GMOs.