Reviews
Part of State food specialties status ranges from symbolic to strictly regulated
Public failure lists from state inspectors make the best specialty food buying checklist
State inspectors publish what they actually find wrong with specialty products on retail shelves, and their list of failures is the best buying checklist available.
What to take away
- Some states publish their retail inspection results, which is a rare look at what actually fails.
- Vermont's maple inspectors record failures such as no batch code, mold, wrong density and off flavors.
- Inspection covers labels as well as contents, so a compliant product is one that matches its own claims.
Read the inspector's list, not the marketing
Vermont's Agency of Agriculture publishes what it calls a maple inspection report card, summarizing routine inspections of maple products at retail stores. Inspectors review labels and sample syrup against standards for quality, food safety and fair labeling. The list is public at agriculture.vermont.gov/maple-inspection-report-card, and it is the source for the failures described below.
The reasons recorded for products found out of compliance are the interesting part. They include color darker than the declared grade, flavor stronger than the grade allows, mold, density too high, density too low, buddy off flavor, metallic off flavor, missing batch code and labeling problems. In one case, lead contamination.
That record describes failures in plain terms, which is why it works as a buying checklist. Nothing on it is exotic. It is mostly syrup that does not match its own label, syrup boiled to the wrong density, and jars with no way to identify their batch.
The off flavors on that list have agreed names and known causes. That is why learning the defects first beats learning the virtues.
The shelf checklist
Check these before you buy.
- A batch code. Its absence appears repeatedly in the failures, and it is visible before you buy.
- A declared grade or class that matches what you can see through the glass.
- Clean liquid, with no cloud, sediment or floating material.
- A packer name and address, not only a brand.
- A jar that has not been sitting in a sunny window.
That last one continues at home, where the coolest, darkest cabinet does more for flavor than any container you could buy.
Who is actually checking
The same agency's maple program implements the state maple law and regulations covering quality standards, food safety and labeling for pure maple syrup and other maple products. It conducts periodic inspection of maple products sold at retail, responds to consumer complaints and gives technical assistance to producers and packers.
Two things follow. First, there is somewhere to complain, which most food categories cannot say. Second, technical assistance means many failures are corrected rather than punished, so a producer appearing in a report is not necessarily a bad producer.
Not every state does this
| If the state | Then buy on |
|---|---|
| Publishes inspection results | The published record, plus your own eyes |
| Regulates the name but publishes nothing | The statutory definition and the label |
| Has no rules for the category | The producer's own written claims |
Most categories are in the third row. That is not a reason to avoid them, only a reason to expect less from the package and to lean harder on the producer's own written answers.
States that post retail results, by category:
- MapleVermont, through the Agency of Agriculture's maple inspection report card.
- Retail food storesPennsylvania, through the Department of Agriculture's food facility inspection reports.
- Retail food storesFlorida, through the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services food establishment inspection records.
- Other categoriesno consistent public list, so the label and the producer's own answers carry the check.
Before assuming your state does nothing, look. Several states inspect dairy, honey, shell eggs or meat at retail and publish something about it, and the results are usually filed under the department of agriculture rather than anywhere a shopper would think to look.
To find your own state's publications, start at the department of agriculture site, search the product category plus inspection reports, and call the division that licenses the product if nothing turns up.
Where price fits
A regulated product carries compliance cost, which is one input into what you pay. The rest is covered in how price changes what you get, and the underlying question of what a state designation is worth is set out in what a state designation means.
That cost is mostly labor and lot size. Every lot needs a density check, a color grade and a batch code. A producer filling a few hundred jars a season pays more per jar than a plant filling a tanker a day. The farm jar can cost more without being better.
Price is not on the shelf checklist for a reason: the checks are about what is in the jar, not what it cost. Batch code, grade match, clean liquid and a packer name are the checks you can make without paying more.
