A Massachusetts bakery has learned that love is truly a battlefield as it fights the federal government to keep “love” on its label.
The Food and Drug Administration sent a warning letter to Nashoba Brook Bakery in Concord, Mass., for safety issues that include preparing materials in unsanitary conditions. But nestled in the lengthy warning is an odd problem with one of the ingredients in its granola: “love.”
The warning letter issued Sept. 22 said the bakery was violating a federal regulation because the granola label lists “love” as an ingredient, which is not a “common or usual name of an ingredient.”
The FDA said love is “considered to be intervening material because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient.”
A “common or usual name” is defined in federal law as common ingredients such as milk, eggs and oils and fats.
But the CEO of the bakery hopes to keep love on the label.
“We would like to keep love in the mix,” CEO and co-founder John Gates told the Washington Examiner.
Gates said the company is preparing a response to the warning letter. A warning letter doesn’t mean the FDA is taking regulatory action. It serves as a list of violations found during the inspection and details a plan to prevent any enforcement actions.
The agency inspected the bakery in June. Gates said the FDA did not receive the bakery’s response to the violations found in the inspection. The FDA did not respond to requests for comment.
He said the company is working to address the agency’s concerns. “The process now will be they will come reinspect us on our dime,” he said.
Gates took umbrage with the FDA’s attack on “love” and said he hopes to keep it. He said the special ingredient of the bakery’s granola is love, which is why it’s on the label.
“We just always took that as a nice signal to the consumer base as what kind of place we are,” he said. “We don’t take ourselves so seriously that we can’t share the secret sauce.”
If the FDA orders “love” to be removed from the granola label, the bakery will comply. Gates said the bakery will try to get a special exemption to the regulations since the granola is a small part of the business.
“In order for the FDA to require that a food producer put a nutrition facts panel on the back of packaging, the producer has to make and sell more than 100,000 units of a particular product in a given year,” Gates said. “We don’t make that much granola.”
The FDA responded that it did single out “love,” but it is a small part of the warning letter’s violations, which include the potential for cross-contamination for people with peanut allergies.
“The information about ‘love’ as a listed ingredient was included, but is not among the agency’s top concerns, and focusing only on that particular violation detracts from the multitude of serious violations reflected in this letter,” an FDA spokesman told the Washington Examiner. “The agency expects the company to correct the serious violations found on FDA’s inspection, as noted in the warning letter.”
The bakery brings in about $5 million in sales each year and has 75 employees. Gates said it is regulated by the FDA, several other federal agencies such as the Department of Labor, and also state agencies.
While Gates joked that the FDA’s focus on love is odd, he said it illustrates a greater problem with red tape that businesses have to face.
“In the public’s interest it is a good idea to have food safety regulation. It has done well in most of the U.S.,” he said. “Telling an artisan bakery that we can’t list love in our ingredients in our granola feels overreaching.
“It seems kind of silly.”
• This article has been updated with FDA comment.
