If you are a fan of elderberry juice concentrate, traditionally known as an immune system booster, don’t count on being able to buy it locally for a while.
News stories began popping up last week about Mulvane-based Wyldewood Cellars, a local maker of the super juice, whose supplies of the concentrate were recently hijacked by U.S. marshals acting on orders from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, those reports said.
“The civil forfeiture complaint, which only names the juice as the sole defendant, was filed last week and unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court (in Wichita.) The Food and Drug Administration is seeking condemnation of the product in possession of its maker, Wyldewood Cellars …” wrote Roxana Hegeman, a reporter for the Associated Press whose story was published Friday in the Kansas City Star.
“The government contends the juice concentrate is an unapproved and misbranded drug because the winery claims it is used to treat diseases such as the flu, cancer and AIDS,” said Hegeman.
Local supplies of the juice have quickly dried up as news of the seizure spread and demand escalated, said business owner Laura Buterbaugh Bradbury who owns Bradbury Kitchen and Home at 718 Main in Winfield.
“I wish I would have stocked up on more of the concentrate for the store,” Bradbury said today. “We had 18 bottles that sold out at the store in about one day after the raid.”
What’s the FDA’s beef with elderberry juice? A labeling discrepancy, Wyldewood co-founder John Brewer told the Star, according to another website, NaturalNews.com. Brewer said he was contacted in 2006 and told he would have to change the labeling on his bottles. Brewer said he complied and also hired an attorney to help deal with the situation. He heard nothing from the FDA until authorities showed up and confiscated bottles and drums of juice concentrate, reports said.
Wyldewood Cellars has been accused of non-compliance, but Natural News founder, Mike Adams, said Tuesday in an article published on his website that the move was business as usual for the FDA.
“This tactic, of course, has become all too common in recent years,” wrote Adams. “A company receives a warning letter from the FDA, makes the appropriate changes, never hears anything further from the FDA, and out of nowhere gets raided. Such actions on behalf of the FDA are ultimately unwarranted and illegal, and the offended parties have every right to sue the agency for damages.”
The FDA has gotten a reputation over the past few years for singling out makers of other renegade products such as pomegranate juice, vitamin c, walnuts, raw milk and nutritional supplements, claiming that despite scientific research touting the benefits of these products companies are illegally sharing that information with their customers, according to several Natural News stories. Anything proposed to be a health benefit to the body and sold as such is technically a drug, the FDA claims.
The news reports did not indicate when Wyldewood’s juice concentrate would be released from custody.
An attempt by NewsCow to contact Brewer for comment was unsuccessful, and a message left with Wyldewood Cellars was not returned as of publication.