Oct. 5 (UPI) — The U.S. Food & Drug Administration said this week that a Massachusetts bakery was misleading customers because the proprietors listed “love” as an ingredient in its granola.
In a letter to the Nashoba Brook Bakery in Concord, Mass. the FDA said “‘Love’ is not a common or usual name of an ingredient, and is considered to be intervening material because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient.”
The FDA also said the bakery violated several health protocols, including leaving remnants of Pepper Jack dough, which contains dairy allergens, on equipment used to mix non-dairy items, improperly cleaned and sanitized equipment, including an “encrusted buildup of brown colored debris” on metal screens for dough mixers, and other issues.
John Gates, the bakery’s chief executive and co-owner, told the Boston Globe that he will abide by the FDA warnings but found the demand to remove “love” as an ingredient from his products’ labels to be a waste of time.
“I have to be a little careful, but it does feel silly,” he said. “I get that asking a food manufacturer to take an ingredient off of a label, if the ingredient is not present, makes sense. But in this case, there feels like there needed to be someone who was at the FDA who could look at that and say, ‘Is this really something we want to put in a letter to a business?’ ”
An FDA spokesman pointed out that the “love” warning was just one violation of several included in the agency’s letter to the bakery.
“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 said. “The agency expects the company to correct the serious violations.”
