The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reportedly declined to send an objection letter to Arizona-based Wisdom Natural Brands™ concerning its request for generally recognized as safe (GRAS) status for its stevia sweetener, SweetLeaf®. Considered the gold standard in GRAS rulings, the lack of an FDA objection has confirmed earlier determinations by two independent scientific panels that reviewed SweetLeaf’s® GRAS status in March 2008. The company first lodged a notification of GRAS status with FDA for a “general purpose sweetener in various food categories” in March 2009. See FoodNavigator-USA.com, September 2, 2009. In a related matter, a Los Angeles Times article titled “Sweet stuffed: We eat lots (and lots of kinds) of sweeteners. What’s in them?” offers a primer of common and not-so-common sweeteners such as sucrose, glucose, fructose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, lactose, honey, and agave syrup. “America’s sweet tooth is growing,” writes Wendy Hansen. “Like many other…
Category Archives Issue 318
The Cornucopia Institute, which represents the interests of small organic agricultural operations, has called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to investigate charges that Aurora Dairy’s High Plains facility is operating in violation of National Organic Program (NOP) standards. In its August 31, 2009, letter, the institute refers to a similar complaint it filed about Aurora Dairy in 2007. According to the letter, the agency assured the institute that the 2007 complaint “would be incorporated into the probation that Aurora Dairy was operating under, pursuant to a consent agreement signed with the Department. Based on freedom of information documents, obtained by The Cornucopia Institute, no scrutiny of this facility ever took place and the allegations we communicated in 2007 were never investigated.” The letter outlines how Aurora Dairy has allegedly fallen short of NOP requirements and specifically points to the planting of an annual forage crop in the animals’…
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