Butter Mislabeling Spurs Request for FDA Intervention

A new product from Country Crock labeled dairy-free butter has sparked concern within the dairy industry. Mislabeling non-dairy products as butter is a violation of federal standards. According to Chris Galen, Executive Director of the American Butter Institute,

“Butter has rebounded, and things like margarines and plant spreads, plant-based spreads are in decline. So if you're a manufacturer of those imitation butters, fake butters, what do you do? You decide to label yourself as something called dairy-free butter, which is a total oxymoron, because you can't have butter unless it comes from a dairy ingredient, like cream. But this is a concern, because we see these products in the marketplace.”

The American Butter Institute has asked the USDA to intervene, saying Country Crocs'dairy-free butter not only violates federal standards, it misuses the term butter.

“The good news here, hopefully, is that, you know, there's a lot of interest in the part of the Trump administration to have people eat more real foods, more whole foods. This country crop product is a combination of canola and palm oil, but it's not legal to call it that, at least not in our view. And hopefully that'll be the view of the FDA. And we're hoping that in this whole era of the making America healthy again, and this commission report that came out, they will look at this complaint that we have more sympathetically.”

The American Butter Institute's Executive Director, Chris Galen.