SKOWHEGAN – Four months ago, on her first visit to a Maine maple sugarhouse, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins was fed some complaints along with the pure syrup and maple candy.

Skowhegan maple producers Jeremy Steeves and Robert Smith told Collins that adulterated syrup was being allowed into the country from Canada and that the federal Food and Drug Administration wasn’t acting to halt the imports, despite being alerted more than a year earlier by Maine’s Maple Producers Association.

Collins announced Monday that after pressuring the FDA for some action, the “fake” syrup will be stopped at the border, which is good economic news for Maine’s nearly 200 producers.

Maine has been the country’s No. 2 syrup producer behind Vermont, with production 200 times greater today than 25 years ago. Maine produced less than 12,000 gallons a year through most of the 1980s and more than 250,000 gallons in 2003.

At the center of the controversy is maple syrup that was test-marketed at 50 Sam’s Clubs in the United States and processed by Shady Maple Farm of Mississauga, Ontario. In 2003, the syrup company applied for – and was denied – a permit from the FDA to market what it calls “a new product,” extra-heavy syrup.

The syrup is created by adding enzymes to conventional syrup to make it more dense and to prevent it from crystallizing, as dense syrups will do. The enzymes are then removed before bottling. The FDA told Shady Maple that it could market the product only if it was relabeled as “table syrup.” The federal agency determined that the inversion process “fundamentally changed the basic nature and essential characteristics of the maple syrup.”

Steeves had been complaining to the FDA for more than a year, he said, because the syrup still was being marketed in the U.S. as pure. He told Collins last March that it was a matter of integrity, not competition.

After she pressured the FDA, Collins was told last Friday that an import bulletin has been issued asking all FDA’s district offices to test maple syrup products manufactured by Shady Maple Farm.

“We intend to continue to block the importation of products from Shady Maple Farm that do not meet our standards of identity for maple syrup,” FDA spokesman Patrick Ronan wrote to Collins in July.

In addition, wrote Ronan, the FDA is developing an “import alert” for maple syrup that may be misbranded for failure to meet U.S. food standards. Ronan explained that such an alert would allow the FDA to seize such products without testing.

Robert W. Swain, president of Shady Maple Farm, could not be reached Monday for comment.

“Maine’s maple producers have a proud tradition of making pure maple syrup, and it is important that the FDA regulate the use of the maple syrup label,” Collins said Monday. “By issuing an import bulletin, the FDA has made a commitment to examine syrup from Canada and will refuse shipments of syrup that do not meet the FDA’s standards for maple syrup.”

Steeves said that although it took more than a year and a half, he was pleased that the adulterated products won’t be entering the U.S.

“It is good to see that we’ve made such progress,” he said.