Melville's Hain Celestial resolves FDA stevia complaint

BY DANIEL WAGNER | daniel.wagner@newsday.com

5:17 PM EDT, September 28, 2007

The Hain Celestial Group Inc. has resolved the Food and Drug Administration's complaint that it was using "an unsafe food additive" in some of its instant tea products.

In a letter last month, the FDA wrote that Hain's products should not contain the natural, calorie-free sweetener stevia because it is not approved for use as a food additive.

Despite being labeled as an "Herbal Supplement," the FDA wrote, the tea was subject to regulation as a food. Stevia is legal only as a dietary supplement.

In a letter to the FDA last week, Hain wrote that "after working closely with the FDA," it had agreed to change the products' labels to make the words "Herbal Supplement" more prominent and remove the words "iced tea mix," among other alterations.

A Hain spokeswoman said the changes had satisfied the FDA's concerns.

In its August letter, the agency had written that stevia was potentially harmful to consumers' reproductive, cardiovascular and renal systems.

Dietary supplements are not as heavily regulated as conventional foods.