Standards of identity, and what a name commits you to

How they work

For certain foods the regulations fix what the product must be. If yours meets the standard you may use the name; if it does not, you may not, and that is the whole mechanism. There is no lower grade of maple syrup for a product that missed the density, only a product that has to be called something else.

The word that does the work is "solely"

Maple, cane and sorghum syrups each require their solids to come solely from that sap or juice. Extending any of them with another sweetener takes the product outside the standard completely, however small the addition. This is the provision that catches makers who think of a blend as a variation on the original.

Table syrup is the blended category

It exists so that blends can be sold honestly. It sets a lower floor, 65 percent soluble sweetener solids, and it carries naming rules: where one sweetener makes up at least 80 percent of the sweetener solids the name may reflect it, immediately and conspicuously followed by a statement naming the others. That is a structured way of saying what is in it.

If you make something unstandardized

A fruit syrup, a flavoring syrup or a bar syrup has no identity standard, so you name it descriptively and the general labeling rules apply. The freedom is real; the responsibility for deciding a density that keeps the product safe moves entirely onto you.

The standard travels with the word, not the intention

None of this depends on whether you meant to make a claim. A label that uses a standardized name has made the claim, and a product that does not meet the standard is misbranded regardless of how honest the description around it is. That is why the name is checked at the start rather than chosen at the end.

References