General Mills made a big move toward appeasing organic food supporters and environmental activists this week, announcing that it would begin manufacturing and distributing Cheerios without GMOs, or genetically-modified organisms.

The popular breakfast cereal, which has been around now for 73 years, advertises itself as a “heart-healthy” option. However, many non-profit organizations, organic food farmers, and environmental safety proponents contend that GMOs – which have thus far been contained in Cheerios – represent a major threat to both human health and the environment. Organizations such as these have been encouraging major corporations to either remove GMOs from their foods or label their packages with warnings about GMOs. However, until now, no major corporation had responded to these efforts.

GMO Inside, one of the organizations calling for the labeling of GMOs in food products, confirmed that Cheerios was the first major brand to take heed of the concerns that GMOs cause. The organization indicates that GMOs are popularly used in U.S. crops – especially for mass-produced foods – because they help render those crops resistant to pesticides. Crops such as sugar and corn, both of which are used in cereals like Cheerios, are commonly grown with GMOs.

According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, General Mills won’t eradicate GMOs from every single box of Cheerios it produces, but will label the “GMO-free” boxes. Mike Siemenas, a spokesman for the company, said that the process of eliminating GMOs from the cereal was a costly and difficult process. Original Cheerios were a good candidate for a GMO-free experiment, since their primary ingredient is oats which aren’t grown with genetically modified ingredients. However, General Mills still had to find an alternative and organic source for both sugar and cornstarch – not such an easy task for an industry that has built a reliance on GMOs in its crops. More sugar-heavy cereals, such as Honey Nut Cheerios, would be even more difficult to produce en masse without using GMOs.

The monetary challenges of creating GMO-free products will likely keep most food corporations from joining the movement any time soon, especially if no FDA regulations or guidelines are put in place to restrict the use of GMOs. Thus far, the science regarding genetically-modified crops has been conflicting, to say the least. Many scientists contend that GMOs are perfectly safe for human consumption. Organizations like GMO Inside, however, claim that GMOs crops are unstable and are a threat to human health for the same reason that all artificial foods are: they do not occur in nature.