Statement to Customers from Hy-Vee CEO Randy Edeker Regarding Clean Honest Labeling
August 12, 2017 | News & Press Releases
I wanted to take an opportunity to thank you, our valued customers, for standing with us as we work to provide you transparency in our private brand labeling. We greatly appreciate all of your support and encouragement. In recent days, we have been criticized for our newly announced Clean Honest Ingredients labeling. Like many other retailers — Target, Kroger, Walmart, H-E-B and Whole Foods — who have already launched “clean” product lines, we also wanted to answer the call of our customers for simple, easy-to-read labels with fewer ingredients. It’s unfortunate that in our promotion of this new label, we characterized some ingredients in a way we never intended. We take responsibility for how naturally-derived ingredients, like high fructose corn syrup, were positioned in our press release and on our website and product labels. It was never our intention to portray these naturally-derived ingredients as dishonest or unnatural.
So, we are taking a hard look at the list of ingredients and are revising it to better characterize naturally-derived ingredients. We want you to clearly understand that naturally-derived ingredients are not the same as synthetic ingredients or artificial flavors and colors. They should never have been categorized together. With that said, we also want you to know the exact ingredients that can be found in all Hy-Vee brand products you purchase — regardless of whether they have the Clean Honest logo.
As always, we are committed to doing the right thing for our customers and will always keep you our priority. We are committed to providing you clean and transparent products. We believe our Clean Honest label does just that and allows Hy-Vee to compete with many retailers throughout the nation that have already launched these labels. Thank you again for your continued support.
Sincerely,
Randy Edeker
Chairman, CEO & President
Hy-Vee, Inc.