A Florida federal court has denied the state’s motion to dismiss a First Amendment lawsuit challenging regulations that require products labeled as “skim milk” to contain the same amount of vitamin A as whole milk. Ocheesee Creamery, LLC v. Putnam, No. 14-621 (N.D. Fla., order entered February 7, 2015). Because the process of skimming cream from milk removes much of the vitamin A content, the regulation requires skim milk to contain added vitamin A to bear the “skim milk” label; otherwise, it must be labeled as “imitation milk product.” Ocheesee Creamery’s November 2014 complaint claimed that by refusing to allow the company to sell its pasteurized skim milk with a “skim milk” label unless it added vitamin A—which the creamery views as tainting its “all-natural” products—Florida is censoring its use of the phrase “skim milk.” In its motion to dismiss, the state argued that the creamery had no standing and failed…
Category Archives Issue 555
A California federal court has allowed most of the claims to proceed in a lawsuit alleging that Marie Callender’s baking mixes are labeled “all natural” despite containing the synthetic ingredient sodium acid pyrophosphate. Musgrave v. ICC/Marie Callender’s Gourmet Prods. Div., No. 14-2006 (U.S. Dist. Ct., N.D. Cal., order entered February 5, 2015). The court dismissed the plaintiff’s request for an injunction and unjust enrichment claim but denied the food company’s motion to dismiss all other claims. The court assessed each argument in the motion to dismiss in turn, finding first that the plaintiff’s claims were not preempted by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act or subject to the primary jurisdiction of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It then discussed whether a reasonable consumer would be deceived by the term “natural” on the baking mixes. The court dismissed the food company’s argument that the plaintiff offered inconsistent meanings of “natural”…
Finding a lack of standing, a D.C. federal court has dismissed Food & Water Watch’s lawsuit alleging that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) New Poultry Inspection System (NPIS) is inconsistent with the Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA), which requires USDA to ensure that poultry products are wholesome, unadulterated and properly marked, labeled and packaged. Food & Water Watch v. Vilsack, No. 14-1547 (D.D.C., order entered February 9, 2015). The NPIS reduces the number of USDA inspectors at the slaughter line of poultry production facilities, “freeing up [USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service] resources to conduct offline inspection activities that are more important for food safety, such as verifying compliance with sanitation and [other] requirements, or conducting Food Safety Assessments.” Food & Water Watch challenged the NPIS as consumers of poultry, arguing that the USDA inspection label indicated to them that a federal employee had inspected the poultry and that…
Challengers to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s country-of-origin labeling (COOL) rules requiring meat products to indicate where the animals were born, raised and slaughtered reportedly will not continue to pursue their claims, according to a stipulation of dismissal. Am. Meat Inst. v. USDA, No. 13-1033 (D.C., stipulation filed February 9, 2015). The meat and poultry groups lost their First Amendment challenge to the mandatory labeling rules in the D.C. Circuit Court and were later denied a rehearing. The stipulation comes after a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling against the United States in favor of Canada and Mexico, which argue that the rules discriminated against their livestock producers. “While we remain disappointed with the court’s ruling on country of origin labeling (COOL), we agree with the World Trade Organization’s assessment that the U.S. rule is out of compliance with its trade obligations to Canada and Mexico,” North American Meat Institute CEO…
At the request of the Hellenic Food Authority, the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA’s) Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain (CONTAM Panel) has issued a scientific opinion on the public health risks associated with the presence of nickel (Ni) in food—especially vegetables—and drinking water. Citing the established tolerable daily intake (TDI) of 2.8 µg Ni/kg body weight (bw) per day, the CONTAM Panel concluded that chronic dietary exposure to nickel represents a concern for the general population and that consumers already sensitized to nickel through dermal contact may develop eczematous flare-up skin reactions at the current levels of acute dietary exposure levels. The CONTAM Panel relied on a total of 18,885 food samples and 25,700 drinking water samples to estimate dietary exposure to nickel, finding that the following food groups were the main contributors across age categories: (i) grain and grain-based products; (ii) non-alcohol beverages (except milk-based beverages); (iii)…
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has announced a March 5, 2015, stakeholder meeting to discuss its draft opinion on the safety of caffeine. Authored by the agency’s Nutrition Unit, the draft opinion finds, among other things, that “single doses of caffeine up to 200 mg and daily intakes of up to 400 mg do not raise safety concerns for adults.” It also considers the following: (i) “caffeine consumption during pregnancy, and adverse health effects on the fetus”; (ii) “acute and long-term effects of caffeine consumption on the central nervous system (e.g. sleep, anxiety, behavioral changes) in adults, adolescents, and children”; (iii) “long-term adverse effects of caffeine consumption on the cardiovascular system in adults”; (iv) “acute effects of caffeine consumption in ‘energy drinks’ and risk of adverse health effects in adolescents and adults involving the cardiovascular and central nervous systems, particularly when consumed within short periods of time, at high…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued the results of a study finding that dark chocolate products may contain milk that is not declared on other labels. According to a February 11, 2015, consumer update, the agency tested dark chocolate bars for the presence of milk after dividing them into categories based on their labeling: (i) those that included precautionary statements such as “may contain milk” or “may contain traces of milk”; (ii) those labeled “dairy-free” or “allergen-free”; (iii) those that made no mention of milk on the label; and (iv) those with inconsistent labels—for example, a “vegan” product with a label indicating the possible presence of milk traces. The results evidently identified milk in (i) two of the 17 dark chocolates labeled “dairy-free” or “allergen-free”; (ii) 55 of the 93 products that gave no clear indication of the presence of milk in the products; and (iii) all…
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