Natural Smoke Flavor vs Smoked: What a US Label Allows

US food law bars a “smoked” claim only for food flavoured with artificial smoke flavour (21 CFR 101.22(h)(6)). Liquid smoke is commonly declared as “natural smoke flavor”, and for salt and seasonings, which FDA regulates, no rule defines “smoked” or clearly forbids it. Meat and poultry, regulated by USDA’s FSIS, are stricter: an added smoke flavouring must be named next to the product name. For salt, the ingredient list remains the only reliable test.

Two agencies, two rulebooks

Salt, seasonings, cheese, snacks and seafood are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Meat and poultry products are regulated by the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the US Department of Agriculture. A jar of seasoning is an FDA product; the ham it is rubbed on is an FSIS product.

That split matters here because the two rulebooks treat smoke differently, and most of what people believe about “smoked” on a label comes from the stricter one. Our earlier piece on how to tell whether smoked salt was actually smoked set out the FDA gap and the sodium test that exposes carriers. This piece goes to the texts behind it.

What 21 CFR 101.22 actually says

Three paragraphs do the work. Paragraph (a)(1) defines an artificial flavour as one “not derived from” a list of sources that includes spice, fruit, vegetable, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material. Paragraph (a)(3) defines a natural flavour to include “any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis” whose flavouring constituents come from that same list. Then (h)(6):

“Any pyroligneous acid or other artificial smoke flavors used as an ingredient in a food may be declared as artificial flavor or artificial smoke flavor. No representation may be made, either directly or implied, that a food flavored with pyroligneous acid or other artificial smoke flavor has been smoked or has a true smoked flavor…”

The prohibition is real, and it is narrow. It attaches to artificial smoke flavour. It does not define “smoked”. And it does not say which side of the natural–artificial line liquid smoke falls on.

Is liquid smoke legally natural?

Our earlier piece said modern liquid smoke is declared as natural. We went back to check, and the answer is more interesting than yes.

As practice, it is true. Wright’s, whose maker says Kansas City pharmacist Ernest H. Wright created liquid smoke in 1895, makes it by running smoke from burning wood through a condenser, and lists its hickory version as Water, Natural Hickory Smoke Concentrate. McCormick’s Grill Mates Smoky Montreal Steak Seasoning lists Natural Hickory Smoke Flavor. USDA uses the same language: a 1983 FSIS policy memo on smoked products speaks throughout of “natural liquid smoke flavor.”

What we could not find is FDA saying so. The regulation’s own example of an artificial smoke flavour is pyroligneous acid, the crude liquid distilled from wood. And FDA’s only published guidance we found on the point, Compliance Policy Guide 525.650 of October 1980, says: “Wood distillates (pyroligneous acid) should be declared as ‘artificial flavor’ or ‘artificial smoke flavor’.”

That guide needs reading fairly. The product it described was a barbecue seasoning whose “smoke” flavour contained coriander oil, juniper oil, isoeugenol and “isolates from wood distillates” — a compounded flavour, not a purified smoke condensate. The natural reading of modern liquid smoke rests on paragraph (a)(3): condensed smoke is a product of heating plant material. Bark is named in the definition. Wood is not, and “similar plant material” carries the weight.

So the accurate statement is narrower than ours was. Liquid smoke is labelled natural by industry convention and in USDA usage, on a reasonable reading of FDA’s definition, and we found no FDA action contradicting the convention. We also found no FDA document endorsing it. Those are different things, and it would be convenient, and wrong, to blur them.

What does “smoked” on the front require under FDA rules?

Nothing specific. If the flavour is declared natural, (h)(6) does not apply, and no FDA regulation we found defines “smoked” for salt or seasonings. What remains is the general rule that a label may not be false or misleading. There is one more wrinkle: under (h)(1), a natural flavour may be declared simply as “natural flavor,” so on an FDA-regulated product a smoke flavouring need not even carry the word smoke in the ingredient list.

Where FDA does define smoke, it groups the two methods rather than separating them. Its seafood safety rule, 21 CFR 123.3, defines “smoked or smoke-flavored fishery products” as fish treated with salt and exposed to “the direct action of smoke from burning wood, sawdust, or similar material and/or” given smoke flavour by immersion “in a solution of wood smoke.” That is a hazard-control definition, not a labelling one, but it shows how little weight the agency puts on the distinction.

Courts have filled some of the space. In Kinman v. Kroger, in the Northern District of Illinois, a buyer alleged that a “Smoked Gouda” took its smoke flavour from liquid smoke. The claim survived an early motion to dismiss. In March 2024 the court granted Kroger summary judgment: the record showed the cheese was smoked in an industrial smoker using wood chips, with a liquid smoke mixture on the rind to enhance colour. In the court’s words, she wanted cheese smoked over hardwood, “and that is what she got.” The label was settled by what happened in the smokehouse, not by any definition.

FSIS is stricter, and more precise

For meat, 9 CFR 317.2(j)(3) says that when an artificial smoke flavouring or a smoke flavouring is added as an ingredient, the label must carry a statement such as “Artificial Smoke Flavoring Added” or “Smoke Flavoring Added” in prominent letters, contiguous to the product name, and the ingredient statement must identify it. Poultry has the same rule at 9 CFR 381.119. Note what is missing: the word natural buys no exemption.

FSIS Policy Memo 058A, dated 5 August 1983, then sets out when “smoked” may be used. The surprise for most readers is that liquid smoke can qualify:

The memo’s own rationale explains “Naturally Smoked”: once vaporised liquid smoke could be called smoked, traditional smokers asked for a phrase that set their process apart. It is the only US label phrase we found whose written meaning is “wood was burned near this food”, and it belongs to meat.

Reading a real jar

McCormick’s Smoky Montreal Steak Seasoning is a clean example of the FDA rules working as written. The name says smoky, a flavour word, not smoked. The ingredient list declares Natural Hickory Smoke Flavor. The product copy says the blend is “infused with natural hickory smoke”, and a grilling tip suggests smoking the meat over mesquite or hickory chips if you want more. Nothing on the page claims the seasoning itself was smoked.

Rub that seasoning onto a ham in a federally inspected plant, and the finished ham moves into FSIS territory, where the smoke flavouring would have to be named on the label as added. The jar owes nobody that sentence. The ham does.

What this means for a jar of smoked salt

Salt is an FDA product, so the looser rulebook applies. A jar called smoked salt whose ingredients read salt, natural smoke flavor is not, on the text of 101.22, prohibited. Whether it misleads is a question for a court, and the Kroger case suggests courts will ask what actually happened.

For a buyer, the practical reading is the one set out in the three things sold as smoked salt. “Salt, smoke” or “smoked sea salt” alone points to a smokehouse. “Natural smoke flavor” points to a flavouring. Plain “natural flavor” on a smoky salt could be either, and only the maker can tell you. The sodium arithmetic in our earlier piece is the cross-check. Europe has since gone the other way entirely, as our note on the EU smoke flavouring ban explains; the US position has not moved.

We are developing a smoked salt from our first shipment, and nothing is for sale. The question this regulation leaves us with is not what we are allowed to write. It is what we are able to prove, and that is set by the smokehouse, not by the rule.

Caveats on our sources. Policy Memo 058A comes from FSIS’s published compilation of label policy memoranda; we could not confirm that FSIS still applies the smoked-product guidance in the same words today. An askFSIS answer on whether natural smoke flavouring may be listed as “natural flavor” exists but could not be retrieved. The FDA guide we cite is from 1980 and concerned a compounded flavour. We are not lawyers; this is a reading of the published texts.