PUTTING THE HEAT ON HOT SAUCE MAKER TRIES TO ROOT OUT FAKES.

Byline: Brent Hopkins Staff Writer

SOMIS - This fiery red sauce, brimming with the scent of jalapenos and garlic, is a little too hot.

With its proud red rooster-labeled bottle and sinus-searing kick, Huy Fong sriracha sauce has become a prized condiment for Asian food aficionados. Its potency has powered the sauce to annual sales of tens of millions in dollars each year, showing up in restaurants, ethnic grocery stores and mainstream supermarkets nationwide.

But at the same time that popularity attracts foodies, it has also lured pirates. Foreign counterfeiters have begun producing nearly perfect duplicates of the sauce's bottles, though not its distinctive taste, and are selling the fakes at cut-rate prices.

The bootleggers' international enterprise raises worries for everyone from the Rosemead bottler to the Somis farmer who grows its peppers to consumers who slather the sauce on their pad Thai noodles.

``I hope you can catch those dirty rotten counterfeiters,'' said Craig Underwood, a farmer with 360 acres of red jalapenos in Somis and Simi Valley. ``It could be 1,000 tons, could be 2,000 tons, and that's product that we're not going to be growing for them. If Huy Fong can't keep the volume up, that goes right to our bottom line.''

As the first link in the chain, he's fairly powerless to stop the spread of the counterfeit condiment, even though it's his major crop. Huy Fong Foods Inc., the Rosemead-based company that manufactures the sauce, has resorted to unusual lengths to find out who's behind the dastardly deed.

The saucieres have hired private investigators and filed lawsuits against former customers to find out how they laid hands on the hot hot sauce.

``At this stage, we don't know how many knockoffs there are,'' said William Tran, the company's director of operations. ``We have reports in California, Seattle and as far as Oklahoma. They're everywhere, so we don't even know how much it's hurting us.''

The damage from the bootlegged bottles extends beyond just lost sales, cutting into future revenue and damaging the brand's image. The fake sauce containers look virtually identical, aside from minor differences on the green cap and a missing ``Huy Fong USA'' embossed on the bottom. Most consumers think they're buying the genuine issue, so if the ringer's taste doesn't match up to the real sriracha spirit, Huy Fong gets blamed.

``We've had a lot of complaints,'' Tran said. ``Now some customers are hesitant to buy our sauces, because they think we don't have any commitment to quality.''

In an ironic way, having the sauce's brand name ripped off means that Huy Fong has arrived in the food world, according to Sarah Thorn of the Grocery Manufacturers of America. If a product gains enough stature, fakes invariably begin cropping up, accounting for $250 billion in lost sales domestically and $600 billion internationally, everything from shampoo to cereal to pharmaceuticals.

``It's getting easier with technology to make fake packaging,'' said Thorn, the senior director of international trade for the manufacturers' group. ``It's a major problem, for consumers, for manufacturers, for everyone. If you were buying a fake CD, you knew it because it only cost a buck. But here, people are getting hurt, and it's not a victimless crime.''

Though Tran and Underwood have only heard complaints about taste, counterfeiting raises a more sinister possibility, as well. Since bootleggers only consider looks, not food safety, the fakes could potentially sicken customers who think they're getting a fully-tested product.

``I didn't realize it was such a big problem until this year,'' Underwood said. ``If they're willing to make an exact duplicate of the bottle, that's so hard to catch. It's going to cause a lot of problems.''

Brent Hopkins, [phone]

brent.hopkins(at)dailynews.com

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Craig Underwood, a Somis farmer who grows the jalapenos that go into sriracha sauce made by Huy Fong, says the fake bottles of sauce that are being found on the market are hurting sales of his peppers.

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News

(2 -- 3 -- color) Bottles are filled with genuine Huy Fong sriracha sauce on the conveyor line at the company's Rosemead plant. Below, Hang Sy rolls the bottles of sriracha hot sauce from the line, to prepare them for packing and shipping.

Greg Andersen/Staff Photographer