But I do think that most people can come to a reasonable agreement, even if it's not easy to codify into law or FDA standards.
I can't speak as well to soap colorants and fragrances as I can to food colors and fragrances because I worked for Big Food in regulatory and food safety for many years. We did what felt like a million focus groups on what consumers mean when they say "natural". There was very little consensus worldwide and even within the same region. I imagine that this is applicable to products you put on your skin as well as those that you consume.
In working with the FDA, it's unlikely that they will put regulations around "natural" because it truly is a hard word to define - even consumers don't understand it the same. Several years ago, I attended the FDA meetings to change the food code, and was able to sit in on a company's petition to define "natural" (as well as "clean" and a few other broad words). Their petition was heard, but it was also tabled pretty quickly. The word has been used historically for so long, and has so many definitions. Each company (food or cosmetic) has their own definition of what they consider natural. At that point, FDA would have to look at input from as many companies as possible and bringing so many different ideas to the table...Their goal is to protect the consumer, and it seems like the effort put into the definition would not be worth the amount of protection the consumer would receive. The FDA has bigger fish to fry. In most countries, a definition put together by a consumer products group wouldn't be enforceable, so you end up with the same concern - misinformation given to the consumer about what's in the product.
For example, I don't think anybody is going to agree that a Red Velvet Cake scented soap is "natural". Yet I see that and scents just as clearly lab-made and not from EOs being called "natural". I think that is dishonest. NOBODY thinks a bottle of lab-made scent = natural.
Some people actually are ok with the idea that a "lab-made scent" is natural...or at least nature identical. A lot of food on the market that is labeled with "natural flavors" contains a nature identical flavor ingredient. A flavor/fragrance house can actually make a flavor that, to the consumer, smells like red velvet cake, and contains compounds occurring in nature and extracted from fruits, vegetables, etc. This was absolutely amazing to me when I started working in food - a vial of the right compounds (natural or synthetic) can trick your nose into a lot of things!
A lot of R&D budgets go into this because the nature identical is actually much cheaper (and safer with much more consistent quality) than what they could get with only a natural powdered herb, for example.
This is also a good example of the difficulty that language creates in the discussion as well. When I hear "lab-made", I think of a processing area that follows good manufacturing practices. When someone else hears "lab-made", they see beakers of synthetic chemicals made from things like petrochemicals. I like my ingredients to be "lab-made" because it implies a level of quality and safety. However, I don't like the idea of beakers of petrochemicals in my food/cosmetics.
Fragrances Oils are clearly man-made because I've never heard of a plant, bush or tree called "Red Velvet Cake", but they do fall into two categories...Synthetic Fragrance Oils/Nature Identical Fragrance Oils or Natural Fragrance Oils. Synthetic Fragrance Oils are made in a laboratory from synthetic compounds and composed almost entirely of petroleum by-products such as benzene derivatives, aldehydes, toluene, etc. Nature Identical Fragrance Oils are also synthetic, but it has a chemical structure that is exactly the same as its essential oil counterpart and is basically a man-made copy of a molecule found in nature.
Just a quick note on this - "nature identical" fragrances are not always made from a man-made copy of the molecule. They can also be extracted from plant material and then standardized with other "non-fragrance" molecules (also "nature derived") to provide a consistency in fragrance, color, and performance.
A lot of R&D budget also goes into paying the people in the regulatory department to define what their version of "nature identical" actually is. The flavor/fragrance houses have their definitions, and the food and cosmetic companies have their own definitions. Some companies require that anything "nature identical" actually is a plant based extract, and not a synthesized compound that matches the one from the plant material.
Well, I've taken a simple mica question and good discussion and turned it into a science experiment...again...hope this information is helpful to the discussion and you aren't rolling your eyes at me for over-discussing things you don't care about
