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GOURMET NEWS JANUARY 2016 www.gourmetnews.com NEWS & NOTES 6 Salt Continued from PAGE 1 salt." The addition of clay has been considered by some to be equivalent to the natural colors that occur in other salts. "I buy French gray salt which is scraped off a salt lake. The gray color comes from the clay at the bottom of the lake bed. I scrape the salt, and it is not purely white in color, and [it is] according to this document perfectly fine," asserts Brett Cramer, Vice President of The Spice Lab. Charcoal, the additive that makes black salt black, is now also being considered an adul- saying "We encourage people who are inter- ested to go through the petition process. There's also guidance on the actual petition, in order to make this as easy a process as pos- sible." The review process for a color additive generally takes 90 days, and carries a listing fee of $3,000. As of mid-November, no peti- tions for review for alea clay or charcoal have been submitted. Until further action or en- forcement takes place, Saltworks and other companies are continuing to sell red alea and black charcoal salts. "We've been working with our customers and letting them know if they have concerns at all about the salt," says Novotny. "We know this is safe." GN terant. Cramer wonders why the FDA re- quires another approval for an additive that is already being legally consumed. "If it's a prob- lem with the carbon, everyone, including my dog who ate too much chocolate last year, would be dead right now," says Cramer. While charcoal has been tested for use in medical ap- plications, the FDA's Office of Food Additive Safety is still required to review charcoal in its capacity as a color additive. A great deal of speculation has surrounded the FDA's sudden attention on these salts. "I don't know why," says Novotny. "Especially since everything comes through as food grade." The FDA declined to comment on what prompted the guidance. One prevalent theory is that knockoff prod- ucts have made their way into the market with inferior ingredients. Another belief is that a major salt producer brought it to the FDA's at- tention as a business tactic. "We make infused salts with spices in them. They're colored. Should they be outlawed? In the future, should the only thing we sell be pure white salt from two companies?" Cramer speculates. It is unclear whether the FDA is going to enforce this guidance in the near future. A rep- resentative of the FDA wants to make clear that the products are only considered adulter- ants because they have not been evaluated, An innovative SmartLabel™ technology ini- tiative by leading food, beverage and con- sumer products companies will enable consumers to have easy and instantaneous access to detailed information about thou- sands of products, with more than 30 major companies already committed to taking part in the transparency initiative. This transformative new program, created by manufacturers and retailers, enables con- sumers to get additional details about prod- ucts by scanning a bar code or doing an online search to reach a landing page with information on ingredients and other attrib- utes of a wide range of food, beverage, pet care, household and personal care products. SmartLabel will provide consumers at the touch of finger all the information they want to know about what they are purchasing. It is designed so that consumers can easily have access to a wide variety of information but can hone in on a question they have on an ingredient or product in just one or two clicks. "People want more information and are asking more questions about products they buy, use and consume, and SmartLabel puts detailed information right at their fingertips," said Pamela G. Bailey, President and CEO of the Grocery Manufacturers Association. "SmartLabel is a modern technology that will change how people shop and will help them get answers to questions they have on the products they purchase when they want that information." SmartLabel will be available on an array of food, beverage, personal care, household and pet care products with information on hun- dreds of attributes covering thousands of products, including nutritional information, ingredients, allergens, third-party certifica- tions, social compliance programs, usage in- structions, advisories and safe handling instructions and company/brand informa- tion, along with other pertinent information about the product. A recent survey by Benenson Strategy Group found that 75 percent of consumers said they would be likely to use SmartLabel, showing that the program will meet a con- sumer desire for more product information. How SmartLabel Works Each individual product in SmartLabel will have a specific landing page containing detailed information from the manufacturer on ingredients and other product attributes. All SmartLabel landing pages are organized in a similar format, with a consistent look across products, whether the consumer is looking at a gallon of ice cream or a gallon of laundry detergent. Consumers will be able to find this de- tailed product information in several ways: by scanning a QR code on the package, using a web search such as through Google, Yahoo or Bing, going to a participating company's web site, or eventually through an app. A number of retailers have said that they can help shoppers without smartphones via their customer service desk in stores. In addition, both online and brick and mortar stores are exploring ways to make SmartLabel more ac- cessible to their customers such as by posting the SmartLabel link on their page to allow access in one click or through customer serv- New SmartLabel Initiative Gives Consumers Easy Access to Information ice desks. SmartLabel Appears in Supermarkets Some companies are already beginning to offer products using SmartLabel, with pro- jections of nearly 30,000 total products using SmartLabel by the end of 2017. Early esti- mates indicate that within five years, more than 80 percent of the food, beverage, pet care, personal care and household products that consumers buy will be using SmartLa- bel. Overall, companies are projecting that, by the end of 2017, they will disclose via Smart- Label whether 20,000 food products do, may or do not contain ingredients sourced from genetically engineered (GE) crops, com- monly known as GMOs. Current estimates indicate that number could triple once a uni- form national standard is set for GMOs. GMA and a wide range of agriculture and business groups are urging Congress to pass legislation setting a uniform national stan- dard for GMO labeling to replace a patch- work of state labeling mandates that vary from state to state. GN Beekman Continued from PAGE 1 percent of the profits from the sauce to help other small farms, through their Mortgage Lifter Program, which assists small family farms with a viable, future-focused, growth- oriented business strategy. The project has raised more than $40,000 so far for small farms. Then Target picked up the sauce, and Ridge and Kilmer-Purcell took to their social media channels to ask people to buy it. It sold out within days. Around the same time, the part- ners entered and won Season 21 of "The Amazing Race," which enabled them to pay off their mortgage. Target asked for more product. Ridge, Kilmer-Pur- cell and Beekman 1802 Farm Pantry were on a roll. They were, however, still living in tiny, rural Sharon Springs, New York, among neighbors who didn't have a deal with Target and hadn't won "The Amazing Race." "We live in a very rural community, so we understood the struggles of small farms in our area," Ridge said. Part of what they understood is that their neighbors were growing produce that could be turned into the kinds of shelf-stable, high- quality products that interested Target, but they didn't have the food processing capability to make those products, and that was leaving them out of the competition for most of the $640 billion dollars a year that Americans spend in the grocery store. "More farmers markets spring up every year, and they now represent about $1 billion in grocery revenue each year. Still, the majority of people are buy- ing their groceries in the middle aisles in the grocery store," Ridge said. "Going to the farm- ers markets is so hard that we knew that the needle wasn't going to move much further un- less farmers could get better representation in the middle store." The obstacle between farmers and the gro- cery store's center aisles is the processing facility that turns seasonal produce into shelf- stable products that can be offered for sale year-round. "The path for getting a prod- uct to the shelf is really con- voluted," Ridge said. "Large manufacturers source ingre- dients from lots of different places. They source ingredients in vats, and then process and package. We were looking at how to insert the small farm into that process and claim a portion of that $640 bil- lion." Some farmers have solved this problem by building processing facilities on their own farms, but that requires a capital investment that many are not able to make. Others have solved the problem by processing their prod- ucts in rented kitchen spaces, including a growing number of publicly- and privately-fi- nanced incubator kitchen projects. But, of course, those aren't available in every rural community. Beekman 1802 Farm Pantry went a third way. Ridge and Kilmer-Purcell went looking for existing production facilities with available ca- pacity. They had to be not too small, because Beekman 1802 Farm Pantry had to supply enough product to satisfy Target's demand for national distribution. But they also had to be not too big, because Ridge and Kilmer-Purcell never lost sight of their idea that this was about a mission to help their neighbors, and they wanted to do business with manufactur- ers that would share that mission. "We feel like there's a bigger mission to what we're try- ing to accomplish, and accomplishing that mission requires the neighbors," Ridge said. "We're trying to help support as many crafts- people and entrepreneurs and local economies as possible and to figure out how to get the small farmer greater representation in the middle aisles of the grocery store." Ridge and Kilmer-Purcell undertook a na- tionwide search to find those manufacturers who'd agree to do small-batch processing for the products that Target wanted on its shelves with produce supplied by their local farmers. Casa Visco and Gatherer's Granola, in Sch- enectady, New York, and Drew's in Chester, Vermont, stepped up. So did Conifer, Inc. in Woodinville, Washington, and Dundee Fruit, in Dundee, Oregon. "It involves so much re- lationship management between everybody. The manufacturer has to agree to spend more time and maybe pay a little more. The farmer has to learn how to deal with the manufac- turer. Target has to do the learning about how to make relationships with small manufactur- ers work," Ridge said. "The result is a pre- mium product that you've not seen before in mass retail. We're really proud of this initial set of products.... When you taste the product, they really do taste like that product you bought at the farmer's market. We're using recipes for small batches and with fresher in- gredients, and that's the benefit of it." Target launched 48 Beekman 1802 Farm Pantry products in November exclusively at 250 Super Target stores and 650 Target P- Fresh stores nationwide. The products rolled out to an additional 500 Target Pfresh stores in January. The range includes salsas, salad dressings, cooking sauces, condiments, bak- ing mixes and seasoning blends. All products either contain ingredients sourced from small farms, are organic, GMO-free or a combina- tion of the three. "We're still a small goat dairy in upstate New York. That's still our story and we're just really passionate about helping other small farms tell that story as well, Ridge said. "They're trying to save their own farms. We're also invested in telling that story. That story is our story. So many companies try to tell an all-natural farming story." GN

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