In November of 2012, I blogged about the Citizen Petition filed with the FDA by the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild (now known as the Handcrafted Soap & Cosmetic Guild). The blog was about the current regulation of requiring a home address on the label of cosmetic products. The petition requested that  the FDA allow a PO Box address on the label, in place of a physical home address. Many small business owners run their business in their home and some are concerned that placing a home address on the label of a product introduces personal risk. Replacing the business address with a PO Box would eliminate this risk.

UPDATE 9/19/2017: The FTC has updated regulations concerning business name and address. The NEW regulation says the street address may be omitted if it is listed in a readily accessible, widely published, and publicly available resource. Read more here. 

Since November of 2012, the HSMG filed an Amendment of Citizen Petition with the FDA on November 6, 2014. You can find the amendment here. This document briefly recaps the past events, including the response on February 1st, in which the Acting Director of the Office of Cosmetics and Colors stated they were unable to reach a decision. The amendment also presents new information, including the decision to change the name of the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild, to the Handcrafted Soap & Cosmetic Guild.

Two years later, the Handcrafted Soap & Cosmetic Guild received a final response to the petition. The FDA denied the petition. You can read the final response from the FDA here. Bottom line, the FDA did not agree that a PO Box address would be a suitable alternative to a street address. The response reads:
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