University of Wyoming College of Law Professor Mary Dee Pridgen has updated a treatise titled Consumer Protection and the Law to reflect recent developments in Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforcement of its 1995 policy statement on food advertising. As she notes, although FTC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have overlapping authority to police food advertising claims, they have generally divided their duties with FDA concentrating on food labels and FTC addressing advertising claims. FTC indicates in the policy statement that it will give advertisers “a bit more leeway in advertising than the FDA allows on labels,” but if an advertising claim complies with FDA labeling regulations, it will “generally be safe from FTC scrutiny.” Pridgen discusses FTC enforcement actions since the mid-1990s, involving Stouffer Foods, Häagen-Dazs, the Isaly Klondike Co., Mrs. Fields Cookies, Dannon, Gerber, and Kellogg, as well as companies that sell dietary supplements. She concludes, “In…
Category Archives Legislation, Regulations and Standards
Safe Work Australia, a government agency lacking regulatory authority, has recommended that multi-walled and single-walled carbon nanotubes be classified as hazardous unless they can be shown, on a case-by-case basis with toxicological or other data, to merit a different classification. The agency recently released a report titled “Human Health Hazard Assessment and Classification of Carbon Nanotubes,” which concludes that the recommended classification is supported by the available evidence. Specifically, Safe Work Australia, seeks the classification “Harmful: Danger of serious damage to health by prolonged exposure through inhalation.”
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recently held a one-day meeting with scientific experts, member states and other Advisory Forum participants “to exchange each other’s previous or ongoing work related to the safety assessment of bisphenol A (BPA).” Part of the agency’s continuing BPA evaluation, the meeting covered previous risk appraisals and outlined EFSA’s “developing approach” to the next opinion scheduled for completion in May 2013. It also featured members of other EFSA committees who discussed BPA safety assessments undertaken for medical devices and industrial chemicals, as well as experts from individual countries who described their work in the following areas: (i) “human exposure to BPA”; (ii) “current levels of BPA in food and other sources”; (iii) “analytical methods”; (iv) “non dietary sources of exposure to BPA”; and (v) “recent studies on the toxicity of BPA, including those related to reported low dose effects of BPA.” According to EFSA, the…
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report recommending that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revise its approach when comparing foreign food safety systems with the U.S. system to better ensure the safety of imported food. Under the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, FDA’s enhanced oversight of food imports includes express authority to implement a system for accrediting third parties like foreign governments and private auditing firms to certify foreign food facilities’ compliance with U.S. food safety requirements. The agency has apparently faced some challenges doing so. According to GAO, FDA has already started assessing selected foreign food safety systems to determine if they provide the same level of public health protection as domestic resources. But FDA has also stated “that it needs new approaches to improve its oversight of imported food that take into account the entire food supply chain and that it needs to push prevention…
U.S. Senators Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have for the third time this year challenged the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “to take immediate action” to address public concerns about energy drinks. In their October 26, 2012, letter to FDA, the senators write that they are “extremely concerned by reports of five deaths following the consumption of Monster energy drinks and a recent study showing that many energy drinks labels do not provide caffeine information to consumers.” Durbin and Blumenthal’s letter refers to a new study issued by Consumer Reports allegedly revealing that five of the 27 top-selling energy drinks contain caffeine at levels at least 20 percent above the listed amounts, with 11 beverages failing to specify caffeine content altogether. “We do not know enough about the effect of caffeine on children and young adults, yet energy drinks are marketed directly to kids without the oversight that…
According to University of Oklahoma College of Law Professor Drew Kershen, writing for the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics publication Agricultural and Resource Economics, if California voters approve Proposition 37 (Prop. 37) in November 2012, it could be vulnerable to challenge under World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements. As Kershen notes, the ballot proposition would “impose mandatory labeling on a broad range of raw and processed foods.” Those produced “entirely or partially” through genetic engineering would be required to state that fact on product labels, and no processed food could be marketed as “natural,” “naturally made,” “naturally grown,” or “all natural.” Kershen focuses on the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). While the United States, but not California, is a member state under the agreements, Kershen argues that they nevertheless apply to California’s Prop. 37. He contends that…
The U.K. Department of Health (DOH) has announced a voluntary front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition labeling scheme designed to “clearly” display the amount of fat, saturated fat, salt, sugar, and calories contained in food products. According to an October 24, 2012, press release, the proposed system will use color coding, guideline daily amounts and “high/medium/low” text to help consumers “make quick, informed decisions about the food they eat.” The announcement apparently followed a three-month consultation with retailers, manufacturers and other stakeholders about the future of FOP labeling. Although DOH will continue to meet with industry about the system’s final design, it evidently plans to launch the initiative as early as summer 2013. “The U.K. already has the largest number of products with front-of-pack labels in Europe but research has shown that consumers get confused by the wide variety of labels used,” said Public Health Minister Anna Soubry. “By having a consistent system…
The European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA’s) Dietary and Chemical Monitoring Unit has issued an updated report finding little change in the amount of acrylamide produced during food processing since the last data set was released in 2008. Covering 2007-2010, the report used approximately 13,000 data points to monitor the substance, which “typically forms in starchy food products such as potato crisps, French fries, bread, biscuits and coffee, during high-temperature processing, including frying, baking and roasting.” Although EFSA apparently received less input from member states in 2010 than in previous years, it did not find “any considerable change” in acrylamide levels between 2007 and 2010 “for the majority of the food categories assessed.” “In terms of the results, there were downward trends in acrylamide levels in the category ‘processed cereal-based foods for infants and young children’ and the sub-categories ‘non-potato based savory snacks’ and ‘biscuits and rusks for infants and young…
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) has posted to its website documents relating to the use of antimicrobial drugs in livestock feed received from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under a Freedom of Information Act request. According to PEER, internal memos show that FDA is not, as the agency has claimed, working successfully with industry to phase out this use of antimicrobials, estimated at 30 million pounds in feed troughs annually. PEER claims that “70,000 Americans die each year from drug-resistant infections” and that the “rise of drug-resistant ‘super diseases’ is driven by overuse and misuse of antimicrobial drugs in livestock feed primarily to promote livestock growth.” In litigation, FDA defended its failure to timely follow through on proceedings to withdraw from use two antimicrobials by claiming that it had abandoned formal rulemaking in favor of more effective voluntary measures. Details about a court order requiring that FDA initiate…
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a staff report outlining best practices for the use of facial-recognition technology in online social networks, mobile apps, digital signs, and other products and services. According to an October 22, 2012, FTC press release, facial recognition technology has “a number of potential uses, such as determining an individual’s age range and gender in order to deliver targeted advertising; assessing viewers’ emotions to see if they are engaged in a video game or a movie; or matching faces and identifying anonymous individuals in images.” But the agency has also expressed concern that these advances could contravene consumers’ expectations of privacy because they hold “the prospect of identifying anonymous individuals in public, and because the data collected may be susceptible to security breaches and hacking.” FTC is urging companies that use facial-recognition technology to (i) “design their services with consumer privacy in mind”; (ii) “develop reasonable…
