Grocers irked to find out soy milk nonorganic

By BARRY SHLACHTER

barry@star-telegram.com

But Jon Mellor, a spokesman for New Jersey-based GS1 US, the nonprofit agency that issues Universal Product Code numbers and bar codes, said changing products so they are no longer organic is considered a big enough shift to require new codes.

TCU’s Shipp said retaining the old bar code is an even bigger issue than the packaging matter.

"Why didn’t Dean call the UPC agency? It would have taken 20 minutes, cost nothing and there wouldn’t have been this problem. It’s just silly," he said. "If this was some tiny producer in Oregon making a product change for the first time, I’d give them a pass. But Dean is one of country’s biggest producers, making this product for years."

'Bait and switch’?

Supermarket executives and food processors expressed surprise at Dean’s actions, saying that even when a package size is altered, a new bar code is affixed.

"Does it pass your internal smell test?" asked Doug Renfro, president of Fort Worth-based Renfro Foods, maker of Mrs. Renfro’s salsas. "My gut feeling is that switching from organic is a big change. I don’t think we’d do it. You’d want people to know it’s not organic anymore."

Some retailers reacted to the labeling issue with unadulterated pique.

"I call it bait and switch," said Bob Kleszics, 52, owner of the 14-year-old Harvest Market in Hockessin, Del. "I feel hornswoggled. I have never heard of a company switching from organic to conventional and maintaining the same UPC code.

"It’s clear Silk wanted to preserve the product’s look to keep customers grabbing the blue container off the shelf mindlessly. I am sure virtually nobody noticed it was no longer organic."

Missed communications

Dean says it had developed a "comprehensive plan" to communicate the launch of nonorganic Silk soy milk products.

"We absolutely informed our retailers — without them we wouldn’t have a marketplace for our products," a company e-mail said. "Our sales team informed retailers, distributors and brokers."

When given examples of markets not contacted, Dean said those are independent stores that should have been contacted by their distributors.

Some big customers said they were informed directly.

Dean told Kroger, the country’s largest traditional supermarket chain, around the start of the year that its WhiteWave unit would phase in a conventional soy milk and would later reintroduce a certified organic one, Kroger spokesman Gary Huddleston said.

Maintaining the original bar code on a reformulated product, while very unusual, made no difference to Kroger since Dean had informed its dairy buyer about the changes, Huddleston said. Kroger carries Silk’s conventional soy milk but no longer the organic version because the chain has rolled out its own organic product, Naturally Preferred, he said.

But there was confusion — even among big players. Target ran a newspaper insert ad picturing the discontinued "organic" Silk blue carton as recently as Sept. 19, nine months after the change. Whole Foods made a similar mistake with an in-store sale poster in July. Neither returned calls seeking comment.

Dean’s organic products have long been under scrutiny from Cornucopia. It earlier attacked Dean’s dependence on factory dairy farms to supply organic milk for its Horizon brand. Cornucopia also discovered that Dean was using Chinese soybeans for Silk and questioned the credibility of China’s organic certification program, citing U.S. Department of Agriculture audits.

Dean confirmed that it had sourced a "small portion" of its beans from China but said it stopped at the end of 2006.

There is clearly no mutual admiration. Dean says Cornucopia "continues to spread misinformation about our business, our brands and organic in general, which confuses consumers and ultimately leads to decreased consumer demand."

Mark Kastel, Cornucopia’s co-director, responded, "They don’t like us because we are pathological truth tellers."

The "vast majority of organic brands that the public depends on are produced with high integrity, and problems with Dean are bad aberrations," Kastel said.

In its e-mail to the Star-Telegram, Dean said: "We apologize for any confusion around our product offerings — that certainly was not our intention. We think offering both natural and organic products is the right thing to do for our consumers."

BARRY SHLACHTER, 817-390-7718

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