Lamenting labeling.

• Author: Gay, Joel
• Position: Small food-packaging companies complain about the labeling laws

Homer's Alaska Wild Berry Products and other food-packaging companies regard new labeling laws as causes of headaches and heartburn.

American consumers' continued interest in health has boosted the blood pressure of several Alaskan entrepreneurs and could put next year's profits for those companies on a crash diet.

Starting in May 1993, almost every business in America that packages and sells food products must perform a nutritional analysis for each product in its line and print that information on the product label. While the analysis and labeling may not pose a problem for a large corporation that makes millions of the same candy-bar every year, it spells headaches and heartburn for small businesses with multiple product offerings. One such enterprise is Alaska Wild Berry Products, a Homer-based company that produces several hundred varieties of chocolate candies, jams and canned fish.

Terre DeVaney, vice president of Alaska Wild Berry, says the costs will be outrageously high. "That's $1,750 for testing each product we make. We do 80 different flavors of candy in each of three kinds of chocolate. It'll cost us $150,000 to $200,000 to conform to this," she explains.

Alaska Wild Berry is not alone. Retail confectioners around the country face the same dilemma and have asked the U.S. Congress to exempt candy from the labeling law. In Alaska, purveyors of packaged sausage, fish and other foods see the new nutrition labeling as another cost they and eventually their consumers must eat.

"It's going to be very costly to do," says Kevin Maltz, co-owner of Fresh Sourdough Express Bakery, a Homer business that sells cake, brownie and muffin mixes from its successful bakery. He agrees that nutritional labeling is a good move. "People want it. But for a small business to comply is going to be really difficult," Maltz adds.

Congress passed the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 nearly unanimously, riding a wave of public sentiment that American diets are not as good as they should be. The act was intended to give consumers more information in hopes that they would develop better, healthier eating habits. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must put the act into effect.

While most packaged foods already carry nutritional labels, labels will be "reoriented," according to FDA. The reasoning behind the act is that consumers need less information on "micronutrients," such as vitamins and minerals, and more on "macronutrients" -- fats...