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Friday, April 27, 2007
They want to sell you fake chocolate as the real thing.
Chocolate ... comprises a number of raw and processed foods that originate from the seed of the tropical cacao tree. (Wikipedia)
Except when it doesn't. Which could very well happen if the Grocery Manufacturers Association/Food Products Association (GMA/FPA), on behalf of a number of organizations including the Chocolate Manufacturers Association (CMA), convince the FDA of that fact.

Rarely do documents making their way through federal agencies cause chocolate lovers to totally melt down. Then came Appendix C.

Accompanying a 35-page petition signed by a diverse set of culinary groups -- juice producers, meat canners and the chocolate lobby -- the appendix charts proposed changes to food standard definitions set by the Food and Drug Administration, including this one: "use a vegetable fat in place of another vegetable fat named in the standard (e.g., cacao fat)."

Chocolate lovers read that as a direct assault on their palates. That's because the current FDA standard for chocolate says it must contain cacao fat -- a.k.a. cocoa butter -- and this proposal would make it possible to call something chocolate even if it had vegetable oil instead of that defining ingredient. Whoppers malted milk balls, for instance, do not have cocoa butter.

Chocolate purists, of which there are apparently many, have undertaken a grassroots letter-writing campaign to the FDA to inform the agency that such a change to the standards is just not okay with them. More than 225 comments to the petition have been processed so far by the agency, and chocolate bloggers are pressing for more. In the annals of bureaucratic Washington battles, this is a sweet one.

"If this puts a smile on people's faces even though it's a serious matter, that's what chocolate is meant to do," said California chocolate maker and traditionalist Gary Guittard, whose Web site, http://dontmesswithourchocolate.com/, has led the counterassault.


As far as I'm concerned, this is Exhibit A for why business needs so much regulation. Conservatives moan that regulation is killing business. Well, maybe if business didn't try to sell us fake chocolate labeled as real, we wouldn't need to regulate them! Hell, they may get away with it even with regulation, if this proposal passes.

I'm going to go give the FDA a piece of my mind. Hershey, too, since they're part of this attempt.

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