September 2, 2026 | by Organic Consumers Association
Iowa could be helping egg farmers transition from factory farming to raising their birds outdoors on regenerative organic pasture.
Instead, they’re choosing to subsidize Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to the tune of $2.23 million in its bid to replace real eggs with a synthetic ovalbumin protein made from genetically modified microorganisms fed genetically modified corn dextrose.
ADM will be manufacturing the synthetic egg white protein for the Every Company. Marketed under the brandname OvoPro, the Every Company’s synthetic egg white protein is being quietly slipped into products stocked at Walmart, Target, and Amazon. Rich Products Corporation — one of the largest privately held food companies in the world — also plans to use OvoPro across its bakery, snack, and foodservice lines in the U.S.
Why? As an article in Tech Times explains, OvoPro can deliver “protein fortification at the 10-to-20-gram-per-serving range” and its “practical advantages over conventional dried egg white are that it needs no cold chain, stays stable for up to 24 months, carries no bird-flu contamination risk, and arrives at a consistent purity level not subject to seasonal supply variation.”
What Tech Times fails to mention is that OvoPro hasn’t been safety tested as all new food additives should be. Instead, it has entered our food through the “Generally Recognized as Safe” loophole. The Food & Drug Administration let the Every Company decide OvoPro was GRAS and didn’t independently verify the company’s claims. The FDA accepted the Every Company’s assertions that the genetically modified yeast used to produce OvoPro doesn’t end up in the final product and that OvoPro is “substantially equivalent” to real egg white protein.
This is hard to believe given that an independent analysis of another product of “precision fermentation,” a synthetic whey protein, was found to contain 93 uncharacterized fungal metabolites and 236 fungal proteins.
This could have serious food safety implications. As the 1989 Showa Denko scandal demonstrated, the products of genetic engineering can be different enough to sicken and kill. When Showa Denko started making its L-tryptophan from a GMO microbe, the previously safe product killed 37 people and left 1500 permanently disabled!
Consumers beware! OvoPro may not be labeled—or it might be falsely labeled. According to one news report, the Every Company’s “customers keep the supply relationship confidential.” The assumption is that the synthetic egg whites are used in products that are marketed as “vegan,” but the same news report noted that companies may simply be abandoning real egg whites to cut costs in the face of the rising price of eggs.
There are a few consumer-facing companies bringing the Every Company’s synbio ingredient to consumers, but they’re not being honest about what their products actually are. Healthier Comforts sells an “animal-free egg white protein powder” that they market with conflicting claims. On the front of the package it says, “Free from GMOs.” On the back of the package, in fine print, it says, “Manufactured by precision fermentation using a genetically modified microorganism under containment.”
How will you know if OvoPro is in your food? If your food has a label, check it for:
Non-animal egg white protein
Non-animal egg white protein from yeast
Animal-free egg white protein
Fermentation-derived egg white protein
Microflora-derived egg white protein
Microflora-based egg white protein
Egg white protein (from yeast)
Egg white protein (from fermentation)
Genetically modified microbes shouldn’t be used in food! The only responsible thing to do is ban this technology from the food system.
