Yes, many Hershey products are made with GMO ingredients. In the United States, crops such as corn, soy, and sugar beets are primarily GMO crops.  As of 2018, the USDA estimated that 94% of all soybeans, 92% of corn, and 99.9% of sugar beets harvested in the US came from GMO plants.
Many Hershey ingredients come from the same sources broadly used throughout the US food and beverage industry. All ingredients meet our rigorous internal standards for safety and quality that frequently exceed local regulatory requirements.
At Hershey, we are committed to openness and transparency. We know that our consumers want to know more about the foods they eat, where they come from, and how they are made. We support the disclosure of GMO ingredients and comply with the regulatory requirements in each country where our products are sold. In the US, we have chosen to use SmartLabel as the primary tool to provide consumers easy access to information about our products, including the use of bioengineered ingredients. A quick scan of the QR Code on a package in the US will take you beyond the label and put detailed information at your fingertips. For items that do not have a QR Code, consumers will find bioengineered food disclosure information on the label, either as text or a logo defined by the USDA Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard. Our global consumers can access our website or contact the consumer relations team to find out more about our products.
Foods that are sold in the U.S. with ingredients containing detectible bioengineered DNA will have the following disclosure: “contains a bioengineered ingredient.”
In the U.S., foods containing ingredients in which the modified genetic material is not detectible are not considered bioengineered even if the ingredient is derived from a bioengineered crop. To reflect that difference, these products will have the following disclosure: “Ingredient(s) derived from a bioengineered source.”