FDA Demanding Stevia be Pulled from Celestial Seasonings Products

This was touched on before by someone in an earlier post- but I got the news again in the Organic Association's newsletter and am outraged.

They are going to force Celestial Seasonings to take out Stevia from their powdered Zinger's teas-- those nice natural fruit flavored tea/fruit powders you can take to work with you . I love their blueberry zingers and the main reason I buy them from Celestial Seasoning is BECAUSE they use Stevia -- where as other mainstream companies like Snapple, will use Aspartame or Splenda.

Here is the link to the very informative article
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_7140.cfm
, and may I highlight one part that really says it all right here:


"....(The FDA action on stevia is) a restraint of trade to benefit the artificial sweetener industry." Jon Kyl (R), AZ in a 1993 letter to former FDA Commissioner David Kessler about the 1991 stevia "import alert."

"Stevia has a political problem." says Rob McCaleb, president Herb Research Foundation

"I had one guy from the FDA tell me 'if we wanted to make carrots (be) against the law, we could do it.'" Kerry Nielson, former director of operations at Sunrider International, discussing the 1985 FDA seizure of his company's stevia.