Leiper’s Fork Distillery is denying Food & Drug Administration allegations its Leiper’s Fork Distillery disinfectant five gallon and 16 ounce bottles contains methanol.
Methanol, also known as wood alcohol, can be toxic when absorbed through the skin and life threatening when ingested.
The FDA says the product is labeled as containing methanol.
“Back when we were getting this together, there wasn’t a lot of direction coming from our regulatory agencies, so literally what’s in that disinfectant is simply beverage-grade alcohol with natural lavender oil that was introduced into it to keep people from consuming it,” Lee Kennedy, Leiper’s Fork’s owner, says.
So why does FDA claim it is labeled as containing methanol? Because his team thought listing methanol on the label as a “potential ingredient” would keep people from consuming it.
“We actually had a gas chromatograph — a chemical composition analysis — of the product done by Ferm Solutions Inc., and the results of that test showed no detectable traces of methanol whatsoever,” Kennedy said. “So if anything, it should have been recalled as mislabeled, but the product is absolutely safe.”
That chemical analysis is posted on the distillery’s Facebook page. We asked FDA to comment, but it didn’t immediately respond.