Kraft Heinz Seeks Dismissal of Sour Cream Class Action Lawsuit

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Kraft Heinz is seeking dismissal of a false advertising class action lawsuit which challenges the “natural” labeling on the company’s Breakstone’s sour cream.

Plaintiff John Newton clams defendant Kraft Heinz Food Company has no business labeling Breakstone’s sour cream as “natural” when the milk it’s made from comes from cows that are managed using certain allegedly unnatural processes, such as hormone treatments and the use of feed based on genetically-modified organisms, or GMOs.

By labeling Breakstone’s sour cream as “natural,” he claims, Kraft is deceiving consumers into paying too much for a product they might not buy at all if they knew the truth about its origins.

Kraft Heinz filed a motion in March of this year seeking dismissal of Newton’s claims. The company argues that all three branches of the federal government have in one way or another rejected Newton’s theories about the use of GMO feed.

Under the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, Kraft Heinz says, animal-derived foods are not necessarily considered GMOs just because they are derived from animals that have consumed GMO feed.

The company also cites a similar false advertising lawsuit against Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., in which the plaintiff claimed that Chipotle’s representations that its food was “non-GMO” was false because it came from GMO-fed animals. Kraft Heinz says the court dismissed those claims as “implausible,” finding there was “no dispute that the meat and dairy ingredients used by Defendant are not themselves genetically engineered in any fashion.”

Newton counters that his Breakstone’s sour cream class action lawsuit focuses not on the terms of the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard but on what a reasonable consumer would or would not consider a “natural” food. That question is an issue of fact that requires further development of evidence and can’t be decided on a motion to dismiss, Newton argues.

Kraft Heinz also seeks dismissal, or at least a temporary stay of the action, to allow the FDA to issue a final determination in its current review of the use of the term “natural” in food labeling.

In his Breakstone’s sour cream class action lawsuit, Newton says the cows that produce milk used in Breakstone’s products are raised on feed made from GMOs. Instead of being raised on their natural diet of grass, Newton claims, these cows are forced to subsist on GMO corn or soy.

He also alleges these cows are subjected to “continuous artificial insemination” and that they are forced into unnatural birthing and lactation cycles using “genetic manipulation, antibiotics, and hormones such as bovine growth hormone.”

No reasonable consumer would consider these processes or the resulting Breakstone’s sour cream to be “natural,” Newton claims.

He cites a 2017 survey in which 74 percent of respondents said they believe that animal products are affected by the food the animals eat. The same survey allegedly reported that a majority of respondents would not consider milk or other dairy products from a GMO-fed cow to be “natural.”

Newton is represented by attorneys Melissa W. Wolchansky and Amy E. Boyle of Halunen Law and by Michael R. Reese and George V. Granade of Reese LLP.

The Kraft Heinz Breakstone’s Sour Cream Class Action Lawsuit is John Newton v. Kraft Heinz Foods Company and Daisy Brand LLC, Case No. 1:16-cv-04578, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.