Most of us are familiar with warnings on labels that make us laugh or shake our heads. Well known examples are “Do not use while sleeping” on a hair dryer, and “Do not iron clothes on body” on an iron. Others include “For indoor or outdoor use only” on a string of Christmas lights, and “Warning: May contain nuts” on a package of peanuts.

Labels are constantly being redesigned, and are therefore a continuing source of revenue for converters. Not all undergo a redesign for artistic or marketing purposes, however. Those mentioned above probably were modified after the fact because something happened to cause the brand owner to add the warning to the label. It’s difficult, though, to fathom what led to the cautionary note on the Christmas lights.

As we saw in last month’s column about Tito’s Handmade Vodka, sometimes what the brand owner does put on a label can cause a public outcry and in some cases land the brand in court. Tito’s will visit US federal court in the future to explain why the word “handmade” appears on its label, a challenge having been made by citizens in California and Florida. Other beverage owners could face judges and/or juries to answer other recent charges about the contents or the manufacturing of their products.

Just recently, a settlement was announced in lawsuits filed against Perdue Farms, a well known US chicken supplier, by individuals in New Jersey and Florida over Perdue’s claim on its labels that Harvestland chickens are “humanely raised.” The settlement calls for the plaintiffs to dismiss their claims with prejudice in exchange for Perdue agreeing to remove the label claim from its packaging.

The Humane Society of the United States, which joined the lawsuits, maintained that living conditions and treatment of poultry for mass consumption are not humane even though they are described as such by Perdue and by the poultry industry. Perdue, while pleased with the resolution of the suits, rejects the allegations and “maintains that its labels are not misleading in any way. Nonetheless, it has agreed to discontinue the labeling claim at issue.”

Far more widespread are legal challenges over use of the word “natural,” so much so that the word is no longer appearing on labels with the frequency it had in the recent past.

Since 2011, more than 100 lawsuits have been filed against brand owners alleging that the claims on their labels and packaging stating the products inside are “natural” are misleading and/or deceptive. Among the defendants are some big company names. Apparently none of the suits has made it through to trial so far; they are either pending or subject to settlement.

Consider Kashi, a product line owned by the Kellogg Company, maker of popular breakfast cereals for generations. Some Kashi products featured the terms “natural” and “nothing artificial” on their packaging. Plaintiffs in a 2011 lawsuit argued that the products inside those packages contained such ingredients as pyridoxine hydrochloride, calcium pantothenate and soy oil processed using hexane, a component of gasoline. While these compounds do occur naturally, food producers often make use of synthetic versions.

The case was settled earlier this year. Kellogg will drop “natural” and “nothing artificial” from its labels, and was to have made a $5 million payment. The New York Times, which covered the case and the settlement, reported also that “Consumers have sued Chobani and other companies, saying that their use of the phrase ‘evaporated cane juice’ to describe a sweetener is simply an attempt to hide sugar. Kellogg also settled a similar lawsuit over its Bear Naked brand for $325,000.”

What, one might wonder, is the official definition of natural? For official definitions in the US, one turns to the Food & Drug Administration. In this case, one would be disappointed. The FDA’s position for a good many years is that “natural” means that “nothing artificial or synthetic (including all color additives, regardless of source) has been included in, or has been added to, a food that would not normally be expected to be in the food.” Back in 1993 the agency said it might undertake a formal definition, but nothing has come forth in the 21 years since.

PCC Natural Markets is a small chain of food stores in the Seattle area of Washington State that recently addressed the use of the word “natural” in its name: “For decades, ‘natural’ was understood to mean essentially what organic means today. No GMOs, no sewage sludge, no irradiation, no synthetic pesticides or artificial hormones. When ‘natural food stores’ emerged in the 1960s, they sold what essentially were organically grown foods, although the term was not uniformly defined from state to state and certifications were just emerging. Even in 1999, when PCC added ‘natural’ to its business name, the term ‘natural foods’ was a common descriptor for the kind of foods we sold.

Not until national organic standards were implemented several years later, in 2002, did confusion begin to arise between organic and ‘natural’ claims. Today, PCC still features foods that are ‘natural’ and grown as nature intended.”

A Wall Street Journal article in late 2013 reported that food labeled “natural” brought in more than $40 billion in US retail sales during the previous 12 months. A 2012 survey by Mintel, it said, found that 51 percent of Americans prefer products that are “all natural” when they are shopping for food. Yet the “natural” claims have dropped measurably, said the WSJ: “Only 22.1 percent of food products and 34 percent of beverage products launched in the US during the first half of 2013 claimed to be ‘natural,’ down from 30.4 and 45.5 percent, respectively, in 2009, according to Datamonitor. Though many Americans still want natural products, Datamonitor says only 47 percent view the claims as trustworthy.”

An examination of the FDA’s rather thin guideline on “natural” might lead a person to think that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) would fall into the category of “artificial or synthetic” and “not normally expected to be in the food.” Again, a person would be disappointed. GMOs are alive and well in many things that we consume. For some this is not a problem. Others see it differently, including the state of  Vermont.

Earlier this year, the Vermont legislature passed, and the governor signed, a law requiring that genetically modified foods be so labeled. The state, which has a reputation for going its own way, knew that this act would be a test case, and made its effective date July 2016, leaving room for the intervening “food fight,” which it has come to be called.

Passage of the law has drawn legal challenges from just about everyone in the food business, including four of the top trade associations: the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), the Snack Food Association, the International Dairy Foods Association, and the National Association of Manufacturers.

The GMA had this to say: “Vermont’s mandatory GMO labeling law is a costly and misguided measure that will set the nation on a path toward a 50-state patchwork of GMO labeling policies that do nothing to advance the health and safety of consumers.”

When he signed the bill, Gov. Peter Shumlin reminded people that Vermont has been first in other significant legal steps throughout history, such as banning slavery and allowing same-sex marriage. “Today we are the first state in America that says simply, ‘Vermonters have spoken loud and clear. We want to know what’s in our food. We are pro-choice. We are pro-information.”

Maybe the next time an order for labels containing “natural” arrives at the plant, perhaps a mock-up of the file omitting the term should be prepared and floated past the client. Everyone likes a vendor who thinks ahead.



The author is president of Jack Kenny Media, a communications firm specializing in the packaging industry, and is the former editor of L&NW magazine. He can be reached at [email protected].