The New Hampshire Maple Producers Association says it’s adamantly opposed to a new requirement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that maple and honey producers include “added sugar” labels on their packaging. Meanwhile, maple producers in the Monadnock Region argue the new labels are not only misleading but potentially harmful to their bottom lines.
“I have not found one maple producer who’s for this,” said Ben Fisk, owner of Ben’s Sugar Shack in Temple. “It’s kind of crazy.”
The FDA unveiled the labeling requirement in May 2016 as part of a campaign to educate consumers about how much sugar they’re eating. It will affect a wide range of products, from Coca-Cola to Cocoa Puffs.
According to FDA spokeswoman Deborah Kotz, the labeling is intended to reflect new or updated “daily values,” the reference amounts for individual nutrients that make up a recommended daily diet of 2,000 calories.
Manufacturers with $10 million or more in annual sales have until Jan. 1, 2020, to comply with the rule, while smaller companies have until 2021, Kotz said in an email.
The requirement excludes 100 percent fruit and vegetable juice, which the FDA considers part of a nutrient-rich diet. However, maple syrup and honey are categorized by the FDA as “empty calories,” with little or no nutritional value.
The administration defines “added sugars” as “sugars that are either added during the processing of foods, or are packaged as such, and include sugars (free, mono- and disaccharides), sugars from syrups and honey, and sugars from concentrated fruit or vegetable juices that are in excess of what would be expected from the same volume of 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice of the same type.”
Fisk said the new requirement would serve only to undercut the uniqueness of maple syrup and confuse consumers by suggesting that producers have doctored their product by adding table sugar or corn syrup.
“There’s no added sugar in maple syrup,” Fisk said, noting that its sylvan origins have an appeal for mindful consumers. “It’s a natural sweetener. This label takes away one of our big marketing tools.”
Fisk said he discovered a passion for making syrup on a preschool field trip to a sugar house in 1993. The very next day, his father built him a homemade evaporator out of a 55-gallon barrel, while the two hung 13 buckets from maple trees outside their Temple home to gather sap.
Today Ben’s Sugar Shack taps about 20,000 trees and employs 17 people year-round, according to Fisk. The company packages syrup from smaller farms throughout the region and provides maple products to grocery stores in New England and other parts of the country.
Bruce Bascom owns Bascom Maple Farms in Alstead, which packages hundreds of thousands of gallons of syrup per year from producers throughout New England and New York. Bascom said he agrees with Fisk’s assessment of the “added sugar” label, calling that language potentially deceptive.
“I haven’t run across anybody that finds it helpful to have the line on there,” Bascom said. “I’ve spoken to a large number people, and everybody thinks it’s very strange.”
Bascom’s family has been making maple products in New Hampshire for several generations. His great-great-grandfather came to Newport in 1854 and started tapping trees with wooden buckets. Meanwhile, Bascom said his grandfather often recalled hauling wagon-loads of maple sugar from Langdon to Bellows Falls around 1910, when cane sugar and corn syrup weren’t widely available in the region.
Today Bascom’s business employs 65 people and taps more than 100,000 maple trees in Acworth and Alstead. While Bascom said he is hopeful about the industry’s future in an age when consumers are more mindful about the kind of sweeteners they’re using, he expressed skepticism about the FDA’s new labeling requirement.
“People today are picking up the bottle and reading the back panel to see if it’s an artificial imitation or if it’s real,” Bascom. “(Maple syrup) is a simple ingredient. It comes naturally right out of the tree. But this blurs the line.”
According to Bascom, even a discerning consumer might be confused by the “added sugar” line and mistake 100 percent pure maple syrup for something more like Log Cabin or Aunt Jemima.
“The maple producers think that’s a definite detriment to selling the product,” he said. “They think it’s very, very misleading.”
As a response to these concerns, the FDA is floating a proposal to include additional language in a footnote to the “added sugar” labels that states the sugars in maple and honey products occur naturally. While the FDA has not said when it will make a final decision on the proposal, a public comment period ended Friday.
Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan argues the added language is not sufficient and urged people to oppose the “added sugar” rule.
“The sugar makers of Vermont support transparent labeling,” Donovan told reporters at a news conference last week. “But to add this language about added sugar will absolutely confuse the customer. It’s bad for business, it’s bad for the industry, and it’s bad for Vermont.”
Donovan has also written a letter to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb outlining possible changes to the rule, including an exemption for single-ingredient products like maple syrup and honey.
“I ask that you consider additional clarification in the proposed rule relating to a draft guidance for industry with respect to so-called ‘added-sugars,’ ” the letter reads. “While I appreciate the Administration’s proposal … I ask for additional flexibility on behalf of consumers and these unique industries.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Vermont is the country’s top maple syrup producer, generating nearly 2 million gallons in 2017. New Hampshire — which produces about 154,000 gallons — ranks fifth, trailing behind Vermont, New York, Maine and Wisconsin.
For Granite State producers like Bascom and Fisk, maple syrup is an integral part of regional identity. They worry the new FDA requirement could jeopardize that.
“This is not going to help pure maple syrup,” Bascom said. “It would actually hinder its sales.”
(0) comments
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.