unauthorized GMO rice contamination. We may have wheat soon. They have a
genetically engineered version ready to market for practically every food item
in the world and over the next several years, you won’t know if tea is free of risk
of contamination. There are also many minor ingredients made from corn and
soy. A lot of people don’t know that citric acid is made from corn. If you’re really trying to avoid GMOs, you could be buying a product that has some of
“Remember that you always have to build
relationships with the retailers. Manufacturers
need to get out, see people, be in the stores and
create relationships that will ultimately drive
these minor ingredients and not even realize it. It’s a little bit of a proactive approach as opposed to waiting for the contamination to hit and then dealing
with it from a reactionary standpoint.
What we need to remember is that GMOs are just one part of this conversation. It’s about what’s not on the label. If consumers are not able to choose or
discern whether there are GMOs in the product or not, that’s really the problem. Some people can argue that GMOs aren’t a big health hazard, but my
point is consumers have a right to choose, and if they don’t know, then they’re
not given that basic right. Now you can take that and say, “Well, what else is in
my product that I don’t know about?” BPA, a chemical used in canned foods
that is known to have carcinogenic qualities, is another hidden thing consumers want to avoid, yet there are very few companies using BPA-free cans. My
point to suppliers is whatever it takes, spend the money to get BPA-free cans.
There’s no way our consumers want to pay a premium for organic food and
then be ingesting chemicals from the can. You hear about these new technologies like nanotechnology that are frightening—and what’s frightening about
them is that we don’t know if they’re in our food or not. We have to either
make sure that the products are labeled or that they are outlawed and there’s
verification to back up the claim. My long-term goal is to make sure that there
is not anything in food that is not showing up on the label so that consumers
are brought up to speed on what they’re ingesting and they have choices to either avoid those items or buy those items.
”their success.”
think down the road specialty foods
are going to evolve into part of natural
foods. The ingredients are going to be
cleaned up and they will become items
that we can sell to all of our natural
products customers. This is where the
market is going.
In general, we’ll avoid the products
that our stores aren’t going to carry;
those with artificial colors and flavors,
etc. But in instances where we have
retailers who will want to carry some of
those products, our job is just to make
sure that our retailers totally understand that this product contains x, y
or z. Today there’s so much information that people want and demand—
whether an item has gluten in it or
sugar or GMOs. This is our area of
focus and what we have to continue
to do.
In some ways, when we branched
out into specialty it was a very difficult
thing because we didn’t want to carry
products that had artificial ingredients, for example. But I think the bigger picture is that if we stay strong as a
company, we’ll be able to promote the
products we believe in most, i.e. organic and natural items. And, hopefully be able to convince suppliers who
are selling the specialty items with artificial ingredients that they need to
clean those things up. If we have a little bit more market share, our voice is
going to be louder when we speak to
those manufacturers. We can influence the market much more by being
a participant in it, as opposed to just
not carrying any specialty products.
OP: Not too long ago you acquired a specialty foods distribution group. Are you plan-
ning on expanding into other areas beyond natural foods? Where is the cut off between
what you will carry and what you will not?
OP: What is UNFI doing to promote small
and/or local companies?
Funk: It’s about evolving along with your customers. Today we have a wider diversity of customers and a lot of supermarkets want us to carry items in the specialty foods arena. People are looking for more one-stop shopping from their
distributor and so we’re trying to meet those needs. Also, the line between
what’s considered natural and what’s considered specialty is blurring and I
Funk: We have been evolving over the
last 5 or 6 years. Climate change, the
local movement, fuel prices—all these
things are pushing us in a direction to
open up more facilities so that we
drive fewer miles and can handle more
of a specific product mix including
