Ashby Jones, “Is Your Dinner ‘All Natural’?,” The Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2011
WSJ Reporter Ashby Jones provides an overview of the recent spate of lawsuits challenging food makers’ claims that their products are “All Natural” or “100% Natural.” Without an official Food and Drug Administration (FDA) definition of the term, determining whether such product claims constitute fraud can be difficult, according to lawyers such as Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Stephen Gardner, who was quoted as saying, “We badly want them to provide some clarity on the issue, but they’ve repeatedly failed to do anything.”
The article notes how FDA muddied the waters for products containing high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) by announcing in 2008 that it is not “natural” and then later pronouncing that it actually depends on how synthetic ingredients are used to make the HFCS. Details about the FDA’s HFCS actions appear in Issues 255 and 266 of this Update. An FDA spokesperson acknowledged that the agency has declined to address the issue head on, but noted, “With the few precious dollars the FDA has, we largely choose to focus on topics that affect public safety. The ‘natural’ issue doesn’t. That’s not to say it’s not important, but we frankly have more pressing things to deal with.”
Jones concludes by observing that plaintiffs’ lawyers have not yet made much money litigating consumer fraud claims involving the “All Natural” product representations, “at least when compared with large-scale securities or personal-injury suits.” Still, Gardner indicated that companies generally settle such claims quickly to avoid the publicity of a jury trial.
