Simple kitchen accident. “Kids, who wants to lick the beaver–I mean beater!”
The rest is history.
Uh…I think that means something else entirely.
The proposed slippery slope into information madness is absurd. One person says, “label the ingredients, please”, and in response people come up with this crazy list of things that completely changes the subject away from labeling the ingredients.
It is kind of like opponents of gay marriage accusing gay people of being pedophiles- it is just totally off-topic.
Ah, it does, at the bottom of the label, after “monosodium glutamate”.
What do you want, a great red label: “WARNING: LARK’S VOMIT!!”?
All food products with castoreum in American are labeled, since there are no food products in America with castoreum. Why are you missing that point? It’s like demanding that ground up Egyptian Mummy must be clearly identified on food labels.
And, also, “raw unboned real dead frog”. 
Deboned? Then how can it be crunchy?
I expected some sort of mock beaver.
How can you be so sure? The cite to this point included claims from just 5 manufacturers IIRC. There could be castoreum in every product with the words ‘natural flavors’ in the ingredients list.
If you can prove the claim, fine, thread over.
Look, only 300 pounds of that shit is made per year, taken from a threatened or endangered species that is trapped like it was 200 years ago. It is so valuable that it is only used in expensive perfumes. The Swedish scientists you put so much stock in did not say that it IS used in food, but merely that it CAN BE without running afoul of any laws. They’re scientists; they’re literal like that. But the mere economics of the matter makes your continued obstinance in the face of reality reflect badly on you.
And all sorts of stuff that has a gross name or icky provenance is used in food without any special labelling, as has been pointed out to you time and time again. All food can be gross, if you think about it long and hard. But demanding special labelling for this, your personal bugaboo? Give it up. It makes you sound stupid.
As has been pointed out, not if that product bears the mark of a reputable kosher certification agency.
Which it wouldn’t, as beavers aren’t kosher.
Right. That isn’t a bad suggestion. But I’m not Jewish, and I shouldn’t have to keep kosher just to know what is/isn’t in my food.
I assume you are talking about this kind of thing?
Those were some fun links- I learned something I didn’t already know. But I didn’t see any examples where the ingredients were not labeled, unless it was something obvious like digging up a grub and eating it raw- not much confusion about what is being eaten in a case like that. In the case of castoreum- assuming it is used- it isn’t labeled. Call me names, I still don’t think that’s right.
Why not? Do you want every damn thing that gets lumped under “natural flavors” labelled? Labels would turn into encyclopedias. That’s what we have the FDA for. All that stuff needs to be okayed by them before it can be used and, unlike some additives, nobody’s gonna die from the faintest whiff of beaver ass, and somebody else might have their own distaste for something else. But as DrDeth pointed out, “All food products with castoreum in American are labeled, since there are no food products in America with castoreum. Why are you missing that point? It’s like demanding that ground up Egyptian Mummy must be clearly identified on food labels.” Arguing about this is insensible because it is a non-issue.
FYI: vanilla and vagina essentially mean the same thing.
Yah, maybe that’s what we need.
I seriously doubt it.
Nothing against the FDA. In the case of castoreum, for example, LaCroix sparkling water says it uses ‘natural flavors’. That seems like a pretty benign thing- no calories, no sugar, no nothing really. But if it contains castoreum, it is at the least not vegetarian, which is going to piss off vegetarians, along with people like me.
And again, AFAIK it isn’t established that castoreum is not used in food products in America. A few manufacturers said they don’t use it, and people are interpreting that to mean that it isn’t used anywhere. Again, prove that it isn’t used at all and yes, the question becomes moot.
Unless a product contains a great many different natural flavours, there is no reason why this should be so.
The FDA’s job is to ensure that the stuff won’t injure me. Whether I want to eat it or not is my decision, not the FDA’s, and I can’t rely on FDA clearance to assure me that I want to eat it. As it happens, I would have no problem with castoreum, but that’s not quite the same as the FDA deciding that I should have no problem with castoreum and, therefore, do not need to be told about it.
Not really. If a food processor can put something unexpected into my food and not tell me about it, that’s a problem even if he isn’t putting this particular unexpected thing into my food.
I don’t see the huge diffiulty here. If the FDA has approved something, then it has a name and FDA-approved information about it (including what it is and where it comes from) can be contained in a publicly accessible database. For that matter, it can have a number or code as well, like the EU’s “E number” system. Given that nearly all food products already have ingredient labelling requirements, and that producers already know what they are putting into their food and know that it is FDA-approved, it’s not a huge burden to require producers to include on the label the names or codes of the food additives they use. Anyone who is concerned about this can then look up the ingredient and decide if it’s something he wants to eat, regardless of whether his reasons for not wanting to eat it are scientific, pseudoscientific, ethical, religious or aesthetic.
This isn’t very good reasoning. “Nobody is gonna die”? What kind of standard is that? “Somebody might have their own distaste for something else”? So what? What interest is served by deceiving people into eating things they don’t want to eat?
Fine. Call your Congressman and demand that all labels carry a note stating that the product contains no beaver butt, unless they do, in which case the label should clearly state in contrasting letters “WARNING: CONTAINS BEAVER BUTT!” which should amuse or confuse the junior high boys. 
In reality, I’m a bit on your side. A few years before the FDA required that sulphites be labelled on foods my wife and I, both asthmatics, went into anaphylactic shock after eating some pickled peppers (not a full peck, just some). It was good that, as asthmatics, we had plenty of the right drugs close at hand to treat it or we might’ve died. So I check the labels of all the usual suspects before buying or eating them, and I assume that things with hidden labels, like restaurant food, is booby trapped. Although with pickled stuff in a jar I can usually tell at a glance because sulfited products have a blanched, ghostly color and look like something found on a shelf in the Biology department.
But beaver musk? IMHO, your time would be better spent lobbying Congress for better labels in general, though beaver anal gland extract might be a good poster child for your campaign. What the hell; go for it.
“Threatened or endangered?” Beavers? Tell it to Argentina.