One side note to these stories is that some humor wound its way into several of these legal exchanges that are worth quoting. On November 3, 1994 a letter to our attorney stated this: “Your October 11 and 28 letters of putative refutation to Mr.______ are repetitious cant of previous self-serving, fallacious, solipsistic, specious, discursive, and at times even tawdry rant – your hallmarks. All the asinine rationalizations aside, your obdurate failure to.......do indeed bespeak quite adequately of your client’s lack of verisimilitude and your own pompously meritless postulations and utter lack of intellectual and ethical credibility.” Looking back at letters like this at least make the serious side of business a little lighter. The sad part of NOW’s ongoing war of words with competitors is that, just like negative political campaigning, the damage can be severe and nobody seems to win. It’s unfortunate, but dealing with competitors ongoing negativity has become part of our business. STEVIA REBAUDIANA In 1983, NOW introduced the green herb Stevia rebaudiana powder as a new sweetener for health food shoppers. The whole herb has a very sweet, licorice-like taste that can be used to sweeten teas, coffee, other drinks and even baked goods. Though the herb appeared to have been used by ancient South American Indians, stevia was “discovered” in 1887 by scientist Antonio Bertoni. In 1931, two French chemists named Bridel and Lavieille began to explore the secret to stevia’s natural sweetness. They extracted a white compound which they named “stevioside” which was up to 300 times sweeter than sugar. Since that time, countries such as Brazil, Paraguay, Japan and China have cultivated the stevia plant and incorporated stevia into their daily food supply. Japan is the largest stevia consuming nation, using it to sweeten pickles, dried foods, fish, soy sauces, drinks and low calorie foods. In 1954, Japan banned certain artificial sweeteners due to health concerns and started cultivating stevia in hothouses. The finished extracts have been widely used in Japan to reduce sugar consumption, obesity and diabetes. In 1990, NOW introduced stevia extract, a white powder that is suitable for baking and can be used to substitute for sugar without the licorice taste or green color. It was an instant hit as dieters, diabetics and anyone wanting to reduce sugar intake tried stevia extract and liked it. We supplied a unique niche of stevia powder, stevia extract, stevia cut and sifted (for tea) and two cookbooks using only stevia as a sweetener. Apparently our success caused a reaction from the sugar industry and/or the sugar substitute industry. Either way, the FDA became interested and came to visit NOW checking on our product labeling and literature. Shortly thereafter, in May 1991, the U.S. FDA issued an import alert banning stevia rebaudiana leaves and extracts from being imported into the U.S. Since all stevia was imported, this effectively stopped all sales of stevia, though no reason was ever given for the alert. The FDA called stevia “an unapproved food additive,” which was their way of saying the product could not be consumed safely in the U.S. no matter how much the rest of the world used it. Ironically, in 1952, the U.S. Public Health Service had researched stevia and found it to be the world’s sweetest natural product. The government’s own researchers reported that “Stevioside does not appear to have an immediate future as a sweetener because it is difficult to see how Stevioside could compete economically with such a cheap, safe, and well-established synthetic sweetener as saccharin.” And to think these are some of the same people within FDA who, comically, made policy against and even raided a company named 1989-1992 63
