Posted June 18, 2014
Consumer
Reports National Research Center released a poll revealing that 59
percent of consumers check to see if they are buying “natural” products even
though there is “no federal or third-party verified label for the term,” said
the organization, according to a Farm Futures article available here.
USA Today also published an article available here,
Food Business News here,
and Consumer Reports here.
A recent blog post on products labeled as “natural” is available here.
The poll
was conducted by phone, and administered by Opinion Research Corporation of
Princeton, N.J. The survey sample included 1,004 adults selected by
random-digital dialing, and half of the respondents were women. The calls were
conducted between April 17 to 21, and the group says, “data were statistically
weighted so that respondents in the survey were demographically and
geographically representative of the U.S. population.”
About
two-thirds of people look for the term when they shop, because they believe it
means a processed food has no artificial ingredients, pesticides, or
genetically modified organisms. More than 80 percent believe it should mean
those things, according to Consumer
Reports.
Consumer
Reports is launching a new campaign to ban the term “natural” to assist
customers in making informed decisions at the grocery store. The campaign,
which has a social media platform partnership with TakePart, will petition the
government to prevent manufacturers from using the term.
Under
federal labeling rules, there is no definition for the term “natural,”
according to USA
Today.
"Our
findings show consumers expect much more from 'natural' food labels and that
there is a strong consumer mandate for better food production practices in
general and food label standards that meet a higher bar," said Urvashi
Rangan, executive director of the Consumer Reports Food Safety and
Sustainability Center in Yonkers, N.Y.
Additional
survey data showed that 92 percent felt genetically modified organisms should
be labeled; 92 percent want country-of-origin labels; and 83 percent felt meat
produced with antibiotics should be labeled, according to Food
Business News.
The Consumer
Reports petition to ban “natural” is available here.
For more information on food labeling, please visit the
National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
