Every good cook knows – it’s not enough to have the best recipe. You have to start with the best ingredients. Our Ketchup begins with our very own Heinz® proprietary seeds produced by the HeinzSeed program. Each year we send out six billion tomato seeds to the farmers who grow our tomatoes. They produce tomatoes

Before we even begin making Ketchup, our tomatoes are being nurtured by a group of farmers we consider members of the Heinz family. The farmers who grow our tomatoes have been doing it for generations. And they’re as proud of Heinz® Ketchup as we are. It’s interesting to note that the generational thing isn’t limited to our growers. Many of the people who work for the Heinz Company today are the sons, daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of former Heinz employees. We believe the loyalty and consistency of our people have added to the quality of our Ketchup.

We won’t put anything in our Ketchup that we wouldn’t want our own kids to have. So you can be sure no genetic-modification techniques are used to grow Heinz tomatoes. Our partners at HeinzSeed use only traditional breeding techniques. Years of trial and error have resulted in a tomato with extraordinarily flavorful taste, thick texture and firm flesh – compliments of Mother Nature. All this research also has resulted in tomatoes that are good for the environment. Heinz tomato varieties are high-yield, which means we can produce more with the same or less water and fertilizer. We also have been able to improve disease resistance so our growers can reduce their use of pesticides.

Consumers can rest assured that each tomato in a bottle of Heinz® Ketchup, from seed to vine to bottle, can be chronicled through a code on the cap. A look at this code allows Heinz to determine the farms the tomatoes were grown on, the details about where the Ketchup was bottled and even what varieties of HeinzSeed seeds were used. A History of Caring About Purity Our founder, H. J. Heinz, was a pioneer advocate of food purity. He was one of the first to call for adoption of the Federal Pure Food and Drugs Act in 1906 to make sure food was labeled correctly. We’ve kept up that tradition over the years. In fact, Heinz was the first company to manufacture Ketchup free from chemical preservatives. Tomato on the Label You may have noticed a little change in our label. The pickle that’s been there since the beginning has been replaced with an illustration of a tomato on the vine. It was a logical step. Though we love keeping traditions alive, it is our tomatoes that make our Ketchup special. We thought the image was a good way to honor Heinz’s heritage and bring home the idea that the Ketchup America loves is indeed Grown, Not Made®.
To learn more about Grown, Not Made®, visit the Heinz Ketchup site!