The presence of the GMO-derived Impossible Burger at this year’s Natural Products Expo West event – the world’s largest natural food trade show – has been criticised by prominent US industry insiders and food campaigners.
On its website, Impossible Foods – the company behind the plant-based Impossible Burger – is completely open about its use of a GMO derived form of soy leghemoglobin (SLH) to provide a more authentic meat flavour.
But when the company exhibited the product at the Expo West event in March this year, the GM origins of this key ingredient was omitted from promotional information and recipe cards (Expo West’s ingredients rules permit the inclusion of product ingredients made with genetically modified organisms in some situations – as long as they are labelled ‘natural’ or ‘all-natural’).
An article in this month’s issue of the Organic & Non GMO Report, by its editor Ken Roseboro, reports on the deep concerns of industry insiders about the presence of a GMO-derived product at a leading natural products event.
Roseboro says that promotion of the Impossible Burger at Expo West amounted to deceptive marketing. He quotes Frank Lampe, vice president of communications and industry relations for the United Natural Products Alliance, on the subject: “We’re disappointed that the company is using a ‘natural products’ show to promote its certainly not-natural product. The halo effect of being perceived as natural by its presence at the show does not serve the natural products industry or its consumers and is a disingenuous move by Impossible Foods.”
Dana Pearls, senior food and technology policy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, tells Roseboro: “Hosting the Impossible Burger at Natural Products Expo West raises questions of deceptive marketing. Consumers believe ‘natural’ means that no artificial ingredients or genetically engineered ingredients were used.”
Challenged on the apparent lack of transparency with its Expo West promotional material, Impossible Foods said that the recipe cards it gave out at its booth were not “appropriate literature for describing the genetic engineering process.”
The Impossible Burger case highlights wider tensions within the natural products industry. In recent years sustainability has become identified as an increasingly urgent priority by growing parts of the natural food industry – but sustainability principles can sometimes be at odds with concepts of ‘naturalness’ and of ‘working with nature’. This presents specific challenges for event organisers, who naturally want to be responsive to product and ingredients innovations that offer improved sustainability solutions.
In the case of the Impossible Burger, the company describes its mission as “addressing climate change by eliminating animal agriculture – the most environmentally destructive human activity and a major source of the greenhouse gases that drive global warming”.
