Cheerios Facebook Page Under Attack Over GMO Ingredients
Thousands of outraged consumers took to Facebook to share their concern over genetically modified organisms found in General Mills’ popular Cheerios brand of cereal over the last week.
General Mills even had to pull a popular app that made it easy for consumers to share what Cheerios means to them through the page. Angry consumers were using it to voice their opinions on the cereal containing GMOs after the GMO Inside campaign’s infographic brought attention to the brand.
The campaign’s goal is to help Americans know specifically which foods contain GMOs even if no laws require labeling. GMO Inside began getting traction after California’s Proposition 37 failed to pass in November by a 6 percent marginThe bill would have made California the first state in the country to require labeling on products that contained genetically modified ingredients. The bill’s failure has led to a groundswell of DIY activists bringing homemade labels or those downloaded off the internet that alert consumers to the likelihood of GMOs in their favorite supermarket products.
“The sheer volume of comments on Cheerios’ Facebook page raising concerns around genetically engineered ingredients is incredibly inspiring,” stated Alisa Gravitz, CEO and president of Green America in a statement. “It is also amazing to see the creativity that visitors to Cheerios’ Facebook page use to call out Cheerios on using their customers as a science experiment for GMO consumption. Cheerios is a cereal that is frequently fed to children, and many of the comments are from concerned parents who are worried about the fact that they have been feeding a cereal with genetically engineered ingredients to their children.”
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Image: GMO Inside