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Title: Mayo-Gate: Feds try to take down eggless mayonnaise company
Source:
The Guardian
URL Source: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ ... -board-hampton-creek-just-mayo
Published: Sep 2, 2015
Author: Sam Thielman & Dominic Rushe
Post Date: 2015-09-05 17:31:24 by Operation 40
Keywords: Mayonnaise, USDA, Eggs
Views: 3482
Comments: 28
Government-backed egg lobby tried to crack food startup, emails show The Guardian September 2, 2015 USDA official joined American Egg Board in planning to ruin Hampton Creek, Silicon Valley firm that created plant-based egg alternative and Just Mayo A US government-appointed agricultural body tried to crush a Silicon Valley food startup after concluding the company represented a “major threat” and “crisis” for the $5.5bn-a-year egg industry, according to documents obtained by the Guardian. In potential conflict with rules that govern how it can spend its funds, the American Egg Board (AEB) lobbied for a concerted attack on Hampton Creek, a food company that has created a low-cost plant-based egg replacement and the maker of Just Mayo, a mayonnaise alternative. In a series of emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (Foia), AEB staff, a US department of agriculture official and egg industry executives attempted to orchestrate the attack. The documents were obtained by Ryan Shapiro, a Foia expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Shapiro’s Washington DC-based Foia-specialist attorney, Jeffrey Light, and passed to Hampton Creek. Among the efforts coordinated between the AEB, the USDA and the egg industry: The Department of Agriculture’s national supervisor of shell eggs joined the AEB in its attack on Hampton Creek, suggesting Ivy contact the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) directly about Just Mayo with her concerns. The FDA later ruled Just Mayo must change its name. The AEB attempted to have Just Mayo blocked from Whole Foods, asking Anthony Zolezzi, a partner at private equity firm Pegasus Capital Advisors and self-described “eco-entrepreneur”, to use his influence with Whole Foods to drop the product. (Whole Foods still sells Just Mayo.) More than one member of the AEB made joking threats of violence against Hampton Creek’s founder, Josh Tetrick. “Can we pool our money and put a hit on him?” asked Mike Sencer, executive vice-president of AEB member organization Hidden Villa Ranch. Mitch Kanter, executive vice-president of the AEB, jokingly offered “to contact some of my old buddies in Brooklyn to pay Mr. Tetrick a visit”. The AEB’s research arm, the Egg Nutrition Center (ENC), tested the strength of Hampton Creek’s patent for its egg replacer, Beyond Eggs, using a consultant, Gilbert Leveille. Leveille concluded that the patent was “not very strong and could be easily challenged with an alternate product”, he said in an email to Kanter. “Were I in your position I would focus on nutritional quality and on the emerging science, much of which ENC has sponsored,” Leveille wrote. The emails, totalling 600 pages, show the AEB has become deeply concerned about Hampton Creek. The San Francisco-based tech company has attracted $120m in funding from some of tech’s biggest names, including the Founders Fund, started by Facebook backer Peter Thiel, and Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures. The AEB represents egg farmers across the US and its board is selected by the secretary of agriculture. This year the politically connected AEB provided 14,000 eggs for the White House’s annual Easter egg roll and Ivy was photographed with President Barack Obama... ..snip read more- http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/02/usda-american-egg-board-hampton-creek-just-mayo Just Mayo: Egg group scrambled over eggless mayo maker http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_28747183/just-mayo-egg-group-scrambled-over-eggless-mayo For those who would say "You can't call eggless mayo mayo" how about this? 
The American Egg Board provided 14,000 eggs for the annual White House Easter egg
roll this year. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP 
Outgoing AEB head Joanne Ivy advised Unilever on how to proceed against Hampton Creek after the food giant filed a false advertising lawsuit against its rival last year.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 11.
#3. To: Operation 40 (#0)
Mayo is a product associated with raw egg ingredients. This is why Miracle Whip is considered a salad dressing and not a mayonnaise even though Miracle Whip is often called a mayonnaise informally and substituted for real mayonnaise in many recipes. Miracle Whip may not contain eggs but it is less dangerous as far as food poisoning if you can't refrigerate sandwiches or potato salad on a hot day. So Miracle Whip is not mayo but it has its place and still fills a valuable niche for consumers. This is different than, for instance, France insisting that real champagne only can come from their Champagne region. Various champagnes made from grapes in other parts of the world are still fundamentally the same fizzy product made from the same ingredients and by the same fermentation process. But with this new fake mayo, it does not contain the vital ingredient of mayonnaise: raw egg yolks. The Oxford dictionary:
If you read the full Guardian article there is more than just a word on a label involved here. And if you look at the second picture in the OP you will find an example of a product that is labeled "BUTTER" but is "Not Butter". And by the way, labels don't seem to be terriby important to the Feds, at least in some cases. Millions and millions of people are eating GMO food every day and haven't a clue about it because Monsanto and others have lobbied against labels and the government is nowhere to be found. This makes former Monsanto executive and present Commissioner of the FDA Michael Taylor and friends very happy. Did you know that almost all candy made in the US has GMO ingredients?
And yet congress in cahoots with Monsanto has decided that it is not in our best interest to have GMO foods labeled as such.
Monsanto is plenty evil (probably the single most hated corporation in history) but GMOs are a distraction on a thread that is fundamentally about accuracy in food labeling. A related recent bit of food news is about a fairly new egg replacement product. DailyMail, 2013: And to bring it back to the GMO topic, if consumers have a right to know the GMO contents of their foods, then don't they have the right to know that something that calls itself "Just Mayo" is actually 100% mayonnaise instead of being 0% mayonnaise? Food names need to mean what they say because consumers are really lousy about reading labels.
It did occur to me later that I failed to cite another product, Dream Whip. It contains the word "whip" but does not contain "cream" even though "dream" cleverly does rhyme with "cream". Dream Whip, whipped cream, it's a commercial mnemonic, to help people remember the name brand. But Dream Whip never contains in its name a claim to be whipped cream, just a strong suggestion that it is similar to whipped cream. Cool Whip, another fake whipped cream and its cousin Miracle Whip, both iconic Kraft brands for decades, do not claim to be whipped cream or mayonnaise in their names or labels or in their decades of advertising. And yet we now have this product now called "Just Mayo" but which actually contains 0% mayonnaise? Also, in surveying the mayo market, there is Hellman's. More precisely, its flagship product is named Hellman's Real Mayonnaise. Hellman's absolutely emphasized that it is real mayonnaise. And now it is expected to compete with a "Just Mayo" that contains 0% mayonnaise? Doesn't the public have a right to know in a prominent way (like the product name) what is in the product? The name itself is actually a lie because the product calling itself "Just Mayo" contains 0% mayonnaise.
and even more deceptive ,it's logo is the shape of an egg.
#12. To: tomder55 (#11)
I find the words more deceptive than a picture. It's fine to have substitutes for butter or margarine or whipped cream. But we need to differentiate real products from their imitators. Generally we do a fairly good job at basic food labeling and naming. This "Just Mayo" advertising fraud is a rare and egregious exception.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest In potential conflict with rules that govern how it can spend its funds, the American Egg Board (AEB) lobbied for a concerted attack on Hampton Creek, a food company that has created a low-cost plant-based egg replacement and the maker of Just Mayo, a mayonnaise alternative.
Notice that egg yolks are listed as the primary and vital ingredient of real mayonnaise.
a thick, creamy dressing consisting of egg yolks beaten with oil and vinegar and seasoned.
ORIGIN French, probably from the feminine of mahonnais ‘of or from Port Mahon,’, the capital of Minorca.
#5. To: TooConservative (#3)
(Edited)
#7. To: Operation 40 (#5)
Did you know that almost all candy made in the US has GMO ingredients?
#9. To: Deckard, Operation 40, tomder55 (#7)
And yet congress in cahoots with Monsanto has decided that it is not in our best interest to have GMO foods labeled as such.
Notice the name "Beyond Eggs" suggests it contains no egg products. Similarly, "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" announces it is a non-butter product. By comparison, Egg Beaters is a processed egg product as is Egg Beaters 100% Yolks. And Miracle Whip has, since its appearance in 1933, always called itself a salad dressing, never mayonnaise. 'Artificial egg' made from PLANTS backed by Bill Gates set to revolutionize cooking goes on sale at Whole Foods
A radical ‘artificial egg’ backed by Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel and Bill Gates goes on sale in US supermarkets for the first time today. Made from plants, it can replace eggs in everything from cakes to mayonnaise - without a chicken ever coming close to the production process. The team today started selling their ‘plant egg’, called Beyond Eggs, in Whole Foods in California - and say it could soon be available in supermarkets worldwide.
#10. To: Deckard, Operation 40, tomder55, Chuck_Wagon (#9)
(Edited)
#11. To: TooConservative (#10)
Replies to Comment # 11.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 11.
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