THIS MATERIAL IS APPROVED BY FDA FOR USE IN FOOD PLANTS ONLY AS AN ANTI-FOAMING AGENT FOR BOILER WATER.

In its patented manufacturing process, Leprino Foods liberally sprays Polydimethylsiloxane on cheese granules . Leprinos Pizza Cheese supplied to Pizza Huts contains about 900 parts per million of Polymethylsiloxane: 90 times higher residue concentration than FDA allows when Polymethylsiloxane is used as a boiler water anti- foaming agent.

“Last month, The Milkweed detailed how Pizza Hut restaurants illegally claim to use “Mozzarella” cheese on certain menu items, when in fact, Pizza Hut’s salt, starch and water-laden “Pizza Cheese” does not conform to FDA standards of identity for Mozzarella.

In this issue, writer John Bunting details how Pizza Hut’s cheese supplier—Leprino Foods—uses a silicone-based industrial chemical in the patented manufacturing of “Pizza Cheese.”

That chemical—Polymethylsiloxane—has no FDA approval for use as a food ingredient. Polymethylsiloxane is sold by Dow-Corning as “Antifoam FG 10”. THIS MATERIAL IS APPROVED BY FDA FOR USE IN FOOD PLANTS ONLY AS AN ANTI-FOAMING AGENT FOR BOILER WATER.

In its patented manufacturing process, Leprino Foods liberally sprays Polydimethylsiloxane on “cheese granules”.

Leprino’s “Pizza Cheese” supplied to Pizza Huts contains about 900 parts per million of Polymethylsiloxane: 90 times higher residue concentration than FDA allows when Polymethylsiloxane is used as a boiler water anti-foaming agent.

Repeat: Polydimethylsiloxane has no FDA approval as a safe food ingredient. It is a violation of FDA rules to use an unapproved ingredient in human foods.Silicone is amazing stuff. In its various forms,silicone may “enhance” the female anatomy (a la amply-endowed actress Pamela Anderson). Silicone products can caulk seams around the bathtub to sealout water. Silicone compounds are used for lubricants. However, using silicone products in human foods is a novel, if extra-legal, application. Leprino Foods, the world’s largest Italian cheese manufacturer, is the nearly exclusive supplier of “Pizza Cheese” to the 6000+ Pizza Hut restaurants in the U.S. Leprino is based in Denver, Colorado.

The inaccurate, indeed, libelous implication of your article is that Leprino is selling, and its customers are using, a cheese that is somehow adulterated and therefore illegal and unsafe. This is patently false. All cheese produced by Leprino fully complies with applicable FDA regulations. Your false statements appear to be based on your reading of an eighteen year old Leprino patent, and a factually baseless leap to the conclusion that Leprino must practice every facet of any patent ever granted it. [...] In point of fact, Leprino foods does not practice that portion of the patent on which you rely for your misleading, false and unfounded claims.