It’s a brightly lit room of pipes, vats and rumbling machines; in other words, your basic factory. But plant manager Dan Baker likes to call it the place “where the magic happens.”
Baker is talking about the room where chocolate is born at Mars Inc.’s Chicago factory. Here, sugar and milk is mixed with the fruit of the cocoa bean, including, of course, cocoa butter. It’s such a uniquely important ingredient that federal rules say chocolate must contain no other vegetable fat than cocoa butter.
All that would change, though, under a petition before the Food and Drug Administration. It would do away with the 100 percent cocoa butter rule, allowing chocolate-makers to substitute cheaper vegetable fat and still call their wares chocolate.
The proposal has incensed chocolate lovers, who have flooded the FDA in the last year with more than 30,000 complaints. It has even sparked controversy within the confectionary industry, with candy giant Mars recently breaking ranks and declaring its allegiance to the current chocolate standard.
Seem like a lot of fuss over a snack?
“We are a nation of chocolate lovers,” said Marcia Mogelonsky, candy industry analyst for market researcher Mintel International. And those chocolate lovers have increasingly sophisticated palettes, like wine or coffee aficionados, she said. “You don’t mess with chocolate.”
The chocolate flap stems from the “Citizen Petition to Modernize Food Standards,” the handiwork of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a big trade group. The voluminous petition, co-sponsored by the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and 10 other trade groups, covers myriad and seemingly minute food standards, from the shape of macaroni to the marketing of stewed tomatoes.
Tucked into an exhibit is this blandly worded proposal: Foodmakers could “use a vegetable fat in place of another vegetable fat named in the standard (e.g. cacao fat).”
Cocoa butter is cacao fat, and under current FDA rules, if candy contains a vegetable fat other than cocoa butter, it must sport labels like “chocolate flavored” or “chocolaty.” It can’t be called chocolate.
Cocoa butter gives chocolate its unique melt-in-your-mouth character, and that melty goodness doesn’t come cheap.
“It is one of the most expensive products in chocolate,” said Todd Lachman, president of New Jersey-based Mars Snackfoods U.S. Many substitutes for cacao fat cost one-half to two-thirds less than cocoa butter, he said. Thus, the savings can be counted in many millions of dollars.
Mars is one of the country’s biggest chocolate-makers and, along with Pennsylvania-based Hershey Foods, is one of the two largest U.S. chocolate candy producers.
At Mars’ 78-year-old Chicago factory, the smell of fresh chocolate hangs in the air. The plant churns out about 40,000 tons of the sweet stuff each year.
The majority of that chocolate is used on the spot, transformed into billions of Dove candies and “fun-size” and mini Snickers, Milky Way and Three Musketeers bars. The rest of its chocolate is shipped to other Mars plants, including one in Burr Ridge that makes Dove ice cream bars.
Chocolate candymakers are under “enormous cost pressure,” Lachman said. They have long argued that federal law artificially props up the price of sugar, a key candy ingredient. Cocoa prices are inherently volatile, hitting a four-year high this summer. And milk prices have doubled over the past two years, showing no signs of a retreat.
Privately held Mars doesn’t disclose its financial results. But at publicly traded Hershey, rising raw material costs have contributed this year to the company’s weak financial performance and a falling stock price. Hershey CEO Richard Lenny unexpectedly announced late last month that he will step down at the end of the year.
Big candymakers Hershey, Mars and Nestle have the most to gain from a cocoa butter rule change, say analysts and industry executives.
Cocoa butter substitutes “would be used in [candy] bars, mass-produced stuff,” said Van Billington, head of Retail Confectioners International, a Glenview-based trade group for makers of boxed chocolates that opposes altering the cocoa butter standard.
Billington said specialists in premium confections, like the members of his association, would be less likely to use chocolate made with cocoa butter substitutes because it would be too noticeable. Customers “won’t like it as much.”
Apparently, many consumers feel the same way. When news of the potential rule change broke in the spring, they began bombarding the FDA with missives. The agency has received more than 30,000 public comments regarding the food standards petition, mostly related to the chocolate provision. That’s one of the biggest public responses the FDA has had in recent years.
Some of those complaints were fomented by Gary Guittard, head of California-based chocolate-maker Guittard Chocolate Co. He set up a Web site, DontMessWithOurChoco late.com, and has conducted a very public crusade against changing the cocoa butter standard.
What’s less well known is the industry opposition beyond Guittard. ADM Cocoa, a division of Decatur, Ill.-based agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, raised questions about changing the standard in a March letter to the FDA.
The company was concerned about the “exceptional flexibility” implied in the proposal. Chocolate-makers could swap out a “significant” amount of cocoa butter for other vegetable fats, ADM said in the letter. That’s different than in Europe, which allows vegetable fats in chocolate, but only up to 5 percent; 95 percent must be cocoa butter.
ADM Cocoa also said the proposed rule change could create a significant shift in global cocoa butter consumption, which in turn could cause “extraordinary hardship for cocoa farmers, their families and their farming communities.” The majority of the world’s cocoa is produced in Africa.
Chicago-based Blommer Chocolate Co., also filed comments with the FDA against the proposed rule change. “The change would be bad for the chocolate industry, but allow a few large companies to make more money,” Chief Executive Henry Blommer wrote in a letter to the FDA.
In an interview with the Tribune, Blommer said he is particularly wary of tampering with the cocoa butter standard at a time when chocolate’s reputation has blossomed. “Today it’s considered a gourmet product. It used to be something brown that you gave to the kids.”
Blommer Chocolate is a member of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, one of the food trade groups that signed onto the petition before the FDA. ADM Chocolate is also a member, as are Guittard and Mars. Thus, four of the association’s nine members have opposed or expressed concern about the cocoa butter proposal.
Along with Mars, candy heavyweights Hershey and Nestle are the most well-known members of the chocolate association. Hershey’s Lenny is also chairman of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which drafted the rule change.
Hershey declined to comment, referring questions on the matter to the Chocolate Manufacturers Association. Nestle did not return calls.
The head of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association declined a request for an interview. The association said in a statement that it “has not advocated on behalf of any specific change to the standards of the identity of chocolate.” It also noted that it “supports a process of dialogue with industry members, regulatory agencies and consumers to determine what — if any — changes make sense.”
With all the hubbub, Mars came out against changing the standard last month at the All Candy Expo, a big trade show in Chicago. Based on the complaints flooding the FDA, as well as letters and calls from worried customers, Mars decided “U.S. consumers do not want their chocolate changed,” Lachman said.
Mars’ declaration is as much a marketing and public relations tactic as it is a response to consumers, said chocolate industry observers.
“It was a genius move on their part,” said Beth Kimmerle, author of “Chocolate: The Sweet History” and co-owner of a small New York-based candy company.
The FDA could take years before deciding on new food regulations, particularly given the broad nature of the petition from the food industry trade groups, but it seems any final rule will mandate a liberal amount of cocoa butter.
“Chocolate lovers need not be alarmed about the future of their favorite product,” the agency said in a June publication. “Cacao fat … will remain a principle component of standardized chocolate.”
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The better butter standard
Under federal rules, chocolate isn’t chocolate without cocoa butter. It’s one of the most expensive products in making chocolate, with the majority of the world’s cocoa produced in Africa. If a candy contains a vegetable fat other than cocoa butter, it must be labeled “chocolate flavored” or “chocolaty.” It can’t be called chocolate.