The Japanese brewer Kirin and the Danish brewer Carlsberg eliminated genetically engineered ingredients from their beers. In the United States, the fast food giant McDonald's banned them from its menu food manufacturers Heinz and Gerber (then a division of Switzerland based Novartis) dropped them from their baby food lines and Frito Lay demanded that its growers stop planting corn engineered to contain a bacterial protein that confers resistance to insect predation.

Adam Smith famously argued that, It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. So why would growth not include people out of self interest, rather than requiring deliberate collective action?