German stevia yogurt off market

Organic milk product specialist Molkerei Scheitz from Andechser dairy in Bavaria, Germany has taken its stevia fruit yogurt, sweetened by stevia juice, temporarily off the market. The state food safety authority informed the dairy that it was not sure whether the sweetener, a natural product prepared from the juice of the South American honey weed and 300 times sweeter than conventional cane sugar, is actually permitted in food according to German law. The Andechser Stevia yogurt was certified as approved without any problem back in February this year. And in March a European Court decision in connection with another case described stevia as “a completely normal food additive”.

According to marketing experts, the new stevia organic yogurts had been selling extremely well throughout Germany. When the Bavarian authority announced a rethink on stevia juice, it did not directly ban sales of the yogurt but merely said that it was not sure whether stevia came under the latest issue of the German Novel Food Act.

The French dairy Danone claimed to be the first in Europe to use stevia in dairy products when it launched a fruit yogurt with the sweetener in December 2009.

Despite its massive sweetness, the great attraction of stevia in human diets is that it is virtually calorie-free.

Meanwhile, Molkerei Scheitz (83 million kg biomilk/year) is preparing its case for the Bavarian court, pointing out that stevia has been used in foods other than dairy products in Europe for 13 years now, as well as being accepted as a safe and traditional sweetener in South American foods for many hundreds of years.