Page 16 - IAV Digital Magazine #521

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Lawsuit Alleges Cheese Fraud In Bagel Bites Pizza Snacks
By Bruce Vielmetti
Wisconsin is not the place to imply your food con- tains real moz- zarella cheese when it actually may be some- thing less.
An Elroy woman has sued food giant Kraft Heinz, saying the pack- aging of its Bagel Bites Pizza Snacks amounts to fraud.
Kaitlyn
Huber's federal lawsuit, filed over the weekend in Madison, says a box featuring the
Real Dairy seal, and the large type announcing mozzarella cheese and toma- to sauce, are "false, deceptive and misleading."
The suit, which seeks class- action status on behalf of anyone who bought the bites in Wisconsin, asks the court to make Kraft Heinz cor- rect its packaging and for unspeci- fied damages.
"Wisconsin con- sumers want real mozzarella cheese in pizza because they
value (1) its soft, moist texture, (2) its milky, yet tangy taste and (3) its high pro- tein and relatively low calories and sodium compared to other cheeses," the suit states.
The suggestion that Bagel Bites Pizza Snacks are made with tomato sauce is also bogus, according to Huber's suit.
"Reasonable Wisconsin con- sumers expect a product claiming to contain 'Tomato Sauce' will contain only
tomato ingredi- ents and season- ings instead of thickeners like cornstarch and methylcellulose," it reads.
Huber's lawsuit claims Wisconsin and federal regu- lations require any purported mozzarella that contains added food starch — in place of milk — to be labeled as imi- tation mozzarella cheese.
Lynne Galia,
a spokesperson for Kraft Heinz said the company did not have any comment about
Huber's lawsuit Monday.
In a court filing in a very similar suit filed in New York earlier this year, lawyers for Heinz Kraft argued that because some mozzarella is used in the "cheese blend" cited as an ingre- dient in Bagel Bites, it is not "imitation" moz- zarella under fed- eral law.
Huber's attorney, Spencer Sheehan of New
York, withdrew the New York ver- sion and said he thinks the case is best set in Wisconsin becau se of the impor- tance of the dairy industry here. In fact, the com- plaint contains several para- graphs detailing the role of dairy farming in the state's economy and culture.
"Dairy is more integral to Wisconsin than potatoes are to
Idaho and oranges to Florida," it states. "Ninety-six per- cent of Wisconsin dairy farms are family-owned, which means there is a con- stant connection to dairy which would not exist if this industry were dominated by multinational agribusinesses."
About a third of all the cheese made in Wisconsin — over a billion pounds in 2017 — is mozzarella.
Last year, Sheehan sued an Illinois dairy on behalf of a Wisconsin woman who claims the pack- aging of the defendant's vanil- la ice cream is misleading because it sug- gests it is fla- vored with real vanilla
extract while it actually relies on additional artificial vanilla flavoring.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine