Competing interests seek ruling on doling out of ‘natural’ label

WASHINGTON — It’s a fight that has the nation’s largest chicken producers squabbling, Big Sugar and Big Corn skirmishing and Sara Lee mixing it up with Farmer John.

Lawmakers, too, have joined the fray, which already is thick with dueling petitions and at least one lawsuit. Meanwhile, government food regulators are uncertain how to proceed.

The question is at face value a simple one: When can food products, from chicken breasts to soda pop, rightfully be labeled as “natural?”

Wrapped up in it, however, are some far trickier questions: Is it ethical to charge for saltwater that increasingly pumps up supermarket chickens? Is the sodium lactate used as a flavoring and preservative in sliced roast beef “natural?” How about the high-fructose corn syrup that sweetens sodas?

Equally simple answers appear elusive.

“It’s worth bringing in the rabbis to analyze these situations because it’s complicated, it’s subtle. You can argue from both sides. It has fine distinctions,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The watchdog group’s take on the matter is clear: It has threatened to sue soft-drink companies like 7-Up producer Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages for promoting as “100 percent natural” drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup.

It also has complained that chicken producers are pumping up (and weighing down) their “all-natural” birds with salt water and broth, a growing practice that 40 members of Congress recently called misleading and deceptive.

Poultry giant Tyson Foods Inc. says its marinated chickens are all natural because they contain no artificial ingredients. And its survey work suggests consumers prefer marinated chicken over “conventional chicken” anyway since it’s tender and juicier, company spokesman Gary Mickelson said.

Tyson competitors, like Sanderson Farms Inc., say not so fast.

“Under any definition of the term, natural chicken does not contain salt, phosphates, sea salt, preservatives, carrageenan, nor is it pumped with up to 15 percent solution and other ingredients,” Lampkin Butts, president and chief operating officer of Sanderson Farms, told a federal hearing last year.

Still, even Tyson supports revisiting the Agriculture Department’s definition of “natural.” In the mean time, it proposes a two-tier definition that would cover chicken, beef and pork that contains no added ingredients, plus those meats prepared with all-natural ingredients.

Other food companies have chosen their own sides in the debate. They have lodged petitions, comments and lawsuits with the government and are holding out that a definitive answer on what is (and isn’t) natural is forthcoming.

At stake is a shot at increasing their share of the estimated $13 billion-a-year market for “natural” foods and beverages — a market whose 4 percent to 5 percent annual growth outpaces that of the overall grocery category, according to Packaged Facts, a market research company.

Any sort of federal ruling would, alternately, either narrow or broaden current rules and regulations that govern use of the “natural” label.

A critic maintains that the push is a bald-faced bid to manipulate federal policy for financial gain, something the feuding parties are quick to accuse each other of doing, and not to add to the public good.

“What looks like a neutral issue or question, such as the meaning of ‘natural,’ is not neutral at all,” said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who tackles the issue in the recently published “Supercapitalism.”