Via Reason comes this charming look into the soul of a federal food bureaucrat:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reviewed the labels and website labeling for your Just Mayo and Just Mayo Sriracha products in June, 2015. The label for these products directs the consumer to your website at the Internet address www.hamptoncreek.com. We examined your website in June, 2015. Based on our review, we have concluded that these products are in violation of section 403 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act) [21 U.S.C. § 343] and its implementing regulations found in Title 21, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 101 (21 CFR 101). You can find the Act and FDA regulations through links on FDA’s home page athttp://www.fda.gov.
[snip of violations]
The above violations are not meant to be an all-inclusive list of violations that may exist in connection with your products or their labeling. It is your responsibility to ensure that your products comply with the Act and its implementing regulations. You should take prompt action to correct the violations cited in this letter. Failure to promptly correct these violations may result in regulatory action without further notice, such as seizure and/or injunction.
Normally this would be the point where I note that I wouldn’t eat ‘vegan mayonnaise’ – or, indeed, ‘vegan’ anything – on a bet; except that after reading that letter I’m tempted to take a selfie of myself doing precisely that, and then send the video to the FDA. And I’d be doing it aware that the average consumer of vegan mayo probably wouldn’t return the courtesy, too. It’s a really obnoxious letter, not least because of the entire sense of absolute entitlement that comes off of it.
Having established my good faith on this issue, let me gently point out to the vegans that this sort of thing is not something that happens despite of Big Government; it happens because of Big Government. This is what Big Government does. It meddles. And it is curiously amoral in its meddling, too: the bureaucrat who sent that letter (one William A. Correll, Jr., Director of the Office of Compliance in the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition) probably doesn’t care about vegan mayo in the slightest. But it doesn’t matter: when the State wants something, it will try to accomplish it whether you like it or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s vegan mayo or raw milk or medical marijuana or same-sex marriage or regulating ditch-water or any other topic. The State does not ask ‘why’ one must obey; it simply requires that obedience takes place.
And that’s why small-government conservatism exists. Because it doesn’t matter if you think that the issues mentioned in the paragraph above are not equal in importance; the State does, and it will expend resources as available and prudent to enforce compliance with the State’s rules on the subject. And everybody has an issue or situation in which they’re in disagreement with the State. Everybody.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
Vegan and Mayonnaise … two bad tastes that taste bad together
Apropos of nothing (I completely agree with Moe here) my M-i-L buys that Vegan Mayonnaise stuff because she likes the taste better, not because she gives a whoop about vegan.
I have no opinion.
First, they came for the vegan mayo, but I said nothing, because it was silly….
As much as I dislike the FDA, I have to side with them on this one.
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Mayonnaise only has two ingredients, and the main one is eggs. In a world where truth in labeling exist, vegan mayonnaise is as impossible as vegan pork or vegan beef.
Truth in labeling laws. Dang touchscreen.
I’m sympathetic to that, but ‘vegan’ in this culture pretty much stands for ‘sad imitation of the noun this adjective is modifying.’ I WANT to know that particular nugget of information ahead of time. 🙂
Easy enough: “vegan imitation mayonnaise”.
Simple, accurate, and not even the FDA would object.
Mayonnaise only has two ingredients, and the main one is eggs.
Have you looked at a jar of mayonnaise lately? The jar in front of me right now says:
INGREDIENTS: soybean oil, eggs, water, distilled vinegar, contains less than 2% of salt, sugar, lemon juice concentrate, calcium disodium EDTA added to preserve flavor, natural flavors.
There’s a more-interesting-than-I-had-expected article at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayonnaise …
The family of a friend of mine owned Walnut Acres in Pennsylvania, one of the pioneer all-organic farms. For years they had been selling peanut butter (among other “organic” products). Eventually the FDA established Official Standards for peanut butter, saying it had to consist of specific percentages of various ingredients: X% peanuts, Y% vegetable oil, Z% preservatives, et cetera. So back in the 1960s the FDA took Walnut Acres to court for violating the Official Standards, because their peanut butter consisted of … peanuts. Nothing but peanuts. Eventually Walnut Acres won, I believe because their product pre-dated the FDA’s composition rules.
But you don’t want to tangle with any federal regulatory agency, or they will “blacken the skies with lawyers in wing-tips” …
“Vegan” ranks right up there with “organic” in my tiny bit of reality. Both terms are laughable.
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But I don’t begrudge the people who live-and-breathe this stuff; my only complaint about Vegans is that they are less likely to have their brood vaccinated, so they end up petri dishes for whatever the latest bug happens to be and happily spread it to my brood (and thus to me.)
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“Organic” however kills me. On a planet absolutely POLLUTED with carbon-based life-forms, most things are organic. My favorite organic product? Gasoline. They tend to not sell much of that at my grocer, tho.
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Oh, BTW for those organic-only feel-gooder-types who slept through Chem class in High School: water is not organic. Not a single C in that H2O. Come to think of it, organic water would be DISGUSTING.
What I dislike about Vegans is they’ve ruined a word that should be used to describe beings from Vega.
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And there are only two inorganic materials we put into our stomachs — water and salt.
The manufacturers could take the margarine route… “I can’t believe its not Mayo”