Court Dismisses Lawsuit Challenging Dannon’s “Natural” Label

The Court found the Plaintiff’s claims to be conclusory–based on her feelings that GMO products were not natural.  Further, she offered no evidence of the feed actually fed to cows whose milk was used to make Dannon yogurt; instead, she based her case on her own speculation that because most of the milk in the United States is from cows given feed with GMO ingredients, the milk used by Dannon to make the yogurt she purchased was from cows fed GMO corn.  Further, she offered no evidence that she was unaware that the products were not wholly produced by milk from cows fed no GMOs.  On the contrary, statements by Dannon that they were “working with feed suppliers and farmer partners to start planting non-GMO feed…”, along with a host of surveys on this topic offered as evidence by the Plaintiff indicated she did have information that Dannon’s products were like from cows fed GMO feed. As the Court explained, “Plaintiff does not allege that any ingredient used in the products is unnatural; her claim is that, several steps back in the food chain, there may have been something unnatural ingested by a cow….There is no legal support for the idea that a cow that eats GMO feed or is subjected to hormones or various animal husbandry practices produces ‘unnatural’ products.”