Recently, citizens have been petitioning the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to define the well-used term, “natural.” In fact, one petition even asked the FDA to prohibit companies from using the word “natural” on today’s food labels. While the FDA is not restricting the use of this term, except for in cases where synthetic flavors, substances, and colors are used, the FDA would like to eliminate some of the ambiguity that comes with the label “natural” in order to limit any misleading claims by companies.
Currently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is working with the FDA to look closer at the use of this term within egg, poultry, and meat products. The FDA is asking the public to get involved in this conversation, giving their comments on the use of this term as they work to decide on how this term can be used by companies today. Members of the public are invited to comment on these of the label “natural” on products until February 10, 2016.
At Stahmann’s, we make sure that our pecans are all natural, from the time they are harvested from the trees to the time they are packaged. We farm our pecans, we take care when harvesting them from trees, and we use a state-of-the-art pecan sheller before packaging them and selling pecans wholesale. Not only are our high-quality pecans all natural, they are vegan, gluten free, and kosher certified, and our company even takes the time to test them for food safety.