don't f**k with my chocolate or I'll hurt you

Here is the complete text of a San Francisco Chronicle article on a possible change in USDA rules that will allow companies to use vegetable oil and other questionable oil instead of cocoa butter in chocolate and still call it chocolate. NOT COOL.

Good chocolate's unctuous richness comes straight from the cocoa bean -- and that means cocoa and cocoa butter. Now the nation's food manufacturers are asking for federal permission to make chocolate with vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter -- and still call it chocolate.

Gary Guittard, president and CEO of the Burlingame chocolate company that bears his family name, objects.

"If they want to do this, or create another category of chocolate, they should do that -- just don't call it chocolate," he said.

Chocolate bars are made from ground cocoa beans, which yield chocolate liquor -- a mix of cocoa and cocoa butter. Usually, extra cocoa butter is added, both to temper the flavor and add richness. Sugar and vanilla are allowed; milk solids are added to milk chocolate. (White chocolate must contain cocoa butter but not cocoa.)

A typical chocolate bar, Guittard says, is about one-fourth extra cocoa butter. Under the Grocery Manufacturers of America petition to the FDA, vegetable fat could replace the cocoa butter for about one-third of the cost, he says.

GMA spokesman Brian Kennedy said the proposed new law wouldn't force any chocolate makers to change their recipes. "They can still manufacture chocolate the way they want," Kennedy said.

The chocolate provision is one detail in a much broader GMA petition to change food manufacturing standards. The FDA has promised to respond to the GMA by April 25.

Guittard wants to stir up opposition before then, and has added a link for consumer comments to the FDA on its Web site, dontmesswithourchocolate.guittard.com.

This article appeared on page F - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle