Harvest season is upon us! This Non-GMO Month, we celebrate kindness and community; coming together during times of hardship; and the necessity of caring for each other and our planet. This caring revolves around one of our most basic needs: food.
Communities grow around food. From our small local farms to folks delivering groceries to their neighbors in times of need, food is the basis of some of our strongest bonds. Many of us learned this year just how much we rely on grocery stores like ours. Our retail staff worked harder than ever to keep our community safe, healthy and fed through the ups and downs of supply chain disruptions and evolving directions from health authorities.
This year was not the first time that retailers have gone above and beyond: Did you know that these community hubs were also the Non-GMO Project’s birthplace?
GMOs were first introduced in the 1990s with a shocking lack of public awareness: The news that novel organisms were entering the food supply simply wasn’t shared with the people who would end up eating them. Thankfully, not everyone was in the dark: Natural foods stores, in particular, began looking for ways to answer customer concerns about GMOs. Two retailers led the charge: The Natural Grocery Company in Berkeley, California, and The Big Carrot Natural Food Market in Toronto, Ontario. Through their combined efforts to create a shared definition of GMOs and a labeling mechanism for non-GMO foods, the Non-GMO Project was born.
Today, new GMOs — created with emerging technologies — continue to enter the food supply. The transparency of the Non-GMO Project Verified Butterfly label means that trust and simplicity guide the choices we make at the grocery store. While the people at the Non-GMO Project continue their work to protect our genetic inheritance— tracking where our food comes from and how it is produced — the people in our store will continue to provide a safe, healthy shopping experience, offering non-GMO choices to our customers. We wish a happy and healthy Non-GMO Month to you and your family.
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