Two weeks ago we reported on Hampton Creek Foods Inc., a San Francisco based food start-up under fire from the US Food and Drug Administration over the eggless mayonnaise product they named 'Just Mayo.'
The FDA said that Hampton Creek's product did not meet the required ingredient composition necessary to earn the label of 'mayo' and called upon them to fix these violations.
They said Just Mayo did not contain any 'egg yolk containing' ingredients.
Yesterday, a new development in this issue surfaced. According to the Guardian, the pressure being exerted on Hampton Creek, comes from the American Egg Board (AEB), a lobbying group protecting the interests of the $5.5 Billion a year American egg industry.
The Guardian report details some of the efforts the group has undertaken to quash Hampton Creek's products. These include tactics like:
- Paying bloggers as much as $2,500 to write recipes that promote eggs and spread the group's key message
- Purchase Google ad space to target searches relating Hampton Creek
- Recruiting celebrity names to back the Egg Industry
This information comes from a set of newly released documents obtained via the freedom of information act that detail communications between AEB members and the third party public relations firm they used to coordinate the pro egg marketing campaign.
One email, sent by AEB President Joanne Ivy, labels Just Mayo as a 'crisis and major threat to the future of the egg business' and urged on the group to find an answer for the upstart product.
Other claims in the documents include the fact that the AEB tried to have Hampton Creek products pulled from retailers like Whole Foods. Another highlighted the AEB's efforts to aid Unilever, producer of the popular Hellmann's Mayonnaise brand in their ongoing legal battle with Hampton Creek.
