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“I wake up every day, wanting to make sure our products are the best and the safest possible products they can be,” John P. Bilbrey, head of Hershey’s, tells FOXBusiness.com at a sit down interview.
What’s also important to Bilbrey is what all consumers want; transparency and healthy options.
“We’re in the consumer products business so it’s not my job to defend science. I would very much tell you that in 40 years though there is no evidence that GMOs are unsafe. The National Academy of Science will tell you that too. But if you want to buy something from me, and you say I don’t want GMOs, I need to sell you something that is non-GMO.”
Bilbrey says that a lot of Hershey’s products could move to GMO-free with a couple of more tweaks almost tomorrow.
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“Our sugar, we have gone back from sugar beets which is typically a GMO to reorganize our plants to where we can do cane sugar almost by default. We have gone to largely hormone free milk and our cocoa is certified cocoa. We just have a couple of things with soy lactose and vanillin (a vanilla flavoring) which are ingredients that are a little more tricky but we’re getting ourselves there,” he says.
While he admits he doesn’t like the idea of mandatory GMO labeling across multi-state platforms because of the complexity, he would support it if there was a federal mandate.
“But at the same time, I would rather communicate with my consumers about what my products do but if that is what the consumer wants to know that’s fine,” he says.
Read full, original post: 15 Minutes With Hershey’s Head Honcho
