Small Business Hampton Creek Fights Back against FDA

Small business Hampton Creek has been battling the federal government in one form or another over the last year.  I’ve written before about how the company was targeted by the government-backed egg cartel and Senator Mike Lee’s (R-UT) efforts to get to the bottom of why the government was trying to drive a private company out of business.

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Another battle facing Hampton Creek is with the Food and Drug Administration.

Hampton Creek makes a product called “Just Mayo,” an egg-less mayonnaise replacement for vegans or people who don’t want eggs but like mayonnaise.  The FDA has informed the company their product can not be called “mayonnaise” because it does not meet the government’s definition of a delicious sandwich condiment.

Once we were a great nation and now the government is defining the meaning of mayonnaise.

Hampton Creek has responded to the FDA by claiming their product is not called “mayonnaise” but rather “mayo.”

“The term ‘mayo’ should not now be held to the regulatory standard for ‘mayonnaise,'” wrote the company’s lawyer, Josh Schiller, a partner at Boies, Schiller, and Flexner.

What is mayonnaise and why is it so important that your tax dollars are paying for someone to enforce strict rules about it? The FDA says mayonnaise is “a mixture of vegetable oil, vinegar, egg yolk, and lemon juice.”

The FDA warned the company in August that “the use of the term ‘Just’ together with ‘Mayo’ reinforces the impression that the products are real mayonnaise by suggesting that they are ‘all mayonnaise’ or ‘nothing but’ mayonnaise.”  But Hampton Creek points out that the word “mayo” was excluded when the regulation of mayonnaise went into effect. (It hurt just to write those ridiculous words.)

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While there is a food standard of identity for “mayonnaise,” there is no current standard for “mayo.” Hampton Creek does not use the term “mayonnaise” on any of its products or any of its marketing materials … If FDA had intended to cover products that use the term “mayo” in its standard for mayonnaise, it could have done so, yet it did not.

This is the sort of garbage America’s small businesses have to deal with. Hampton Creek has to spend money (instead of hiring people and providing employment) to fight against such stupidity — and you are paying for the government to do so.

 

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