Texas Legislator Invites Sriracha Maker to the Lone Star State

Income taxes and Hollywood liberals are one thing, but you mess with Republican Texas state Rep. Jason Villalba’s Sriracha and you’ve apparently got a whole separate set of issues on your hands.

After hearing that California-based Sriracha-maker Huy Fong Foods had to temporarily stop production due to government regulation, Villalba, a Sriracha fan, sent a letter to the company inviting it to move the entire operation to Texas. Pointing to the state’s supply of non-unionized labor and lack of personal or corporate income taxes, in Texas, he promised, Huy Fong Foods would find a much less exacting regulator environment.

“As a public official and a corporate attorney for small businesses, I am extremely troubled by excessive government interference in the operations of private, job-creating businesses like Huy Fong Foods,” the letter read, according to the Los Angeles Times. “You have worked too hard and have helped too many people to let government bureaucrats shut down your thriving business.”

A spokesman for Huy Fong Foods was unavailable when the Los Angeles Times contacted the company for comment, but, as the paper reports, moving to Texas could put a kink in Sriracha’s supply chain. The hot sauce uses fresh peppers shortly after being harvested from the same Southern California farm the company has patronized for decades.

[Los Angeles Times]