The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued draft guidance allowing food manufacturers to exclude allulose when calculating the amount of added sugars a product contains. Allulose is "approximately 70 percent as sweet as sucrose," according to a comment FDA received, and "does not have the metabolic properties of fructose or other sugars and does not contribute calories or raise blood sugar levels like other sugars." FDA has proposed to "exercise enforcement discretion for the exclusion of allulose from the amount of 'Total Sugars' and 'Added Sugars' declared on the label and the use of a general factor of 0.4 calories per gram for allulose when determining 'Calories' on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts labels pending review of the issues in a rulemaking." Comments on the draft guidance will be accepted until June 17, 2019.
Category Archives Legislation, Regulations and Standards
Consumer Reports has published an article detailing its purported findings from a series of tests on several brands of bottled water, reportedly finding some bottles with levels of arsenic that could be "potentially dangerous to drink over extended periods of time." Most samples apparently tested below the federal limit of 10 parts per billion (ppb); Peñafiel, a product imported from Mexico, tested higher than 10 ppb but has reportedly been pulled from the market to resolve the issue. Consumer Reports also identified brands that sell water containing levels of arsenic that are legal but above the organization's recommended limit of 3 ppb.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued draft guidance on initiating voluntary recalls of food and other agency-regulated products. The guidance discusses (i) "what preparations firms in a distribution chain, including manufacturers and distributors, should consider making to establish recall initiation procedures"; (ii) "preparations firm in the distribution channel should consider making to ensure timely responses to a recall communication"; and (iii) "how FDA assists firms with carrying out their recall responsibilities to protect the public health from distributed products in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) and other laws administered by the FDA." Comments on the draft guidance will be accepted until June 24, 2019.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued a press release responding to The Washington Post's reporting on an impending change to pork plant inspections. "FSIS is appalled at The Washington Post’s poor attempt at explaining a proposal to modernize inspection," the press release states. "The Post’s decision to continue to parrot arguments that are devoid of factual and scientific evidence only serves to further the personal agenda of special interest groups that have nothing to do with ensuring food safety. Despite FSIS spending countless hours responding to The Post and providing clarification about the proposed rule, The Post chose to ignore the information and went with an already formed opinion and headline." FSIS argues that the article was "deliberately misleading" on several points and lists 11 rebuttals for statements made in the Post article, including the assertion that the pork industry "soon will…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced that inspections for compliance with a rule aiming to mitigate the risk of intentional adulteration (IA) will begin in March 2020. The rule, which "is designed to address hazards that may be intentionally introduced to foods, including by acts of terrorism, with the intent to cause wide-spread harm to public health," requires "the food industry to implement risk-reducing strategies for processes in food facilities that are significantly vulnerable to intentional adulteration." "To allow industry time with the forthcoming materials, tools, and trainings, and because the IA rule represents new regulatory territory for all of us, we will be starting routine IA rule inspections in March 2020," the agency announced.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will accept comments on proposed changes to the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) Program Standards until May 13, 2019. Changes include an amended testing protocol for Mycoplasma, amended Salmonella isolation procedures and updated cleaning and disinfecting procedures.
The EU agriculture committee has reportedly approved a prohibition on the use of the term “meat” to describe vegetable-based products, including bean burgers, vegan sausages and tofu steaks. The provision would limit the use of “steak,” “sausage,” “burger,” “hamburger” and “escalope” to only describe “edible parts of the animals.” One French politician reportedly described the bill as beneficial for consumers. “We felt that steak should be kept for real steak with meat and come up with a new moniker for all these new products. There is a lot to be done in this front, a lot of creativity will be needed,” The Guardian quotes Member of the European Parliament Éric Andrieu as saying. “People need to know what they are eating. So people who want to eat less meat know what they are eating – people know what is on their plate.” Before the provision can take effect, the full…
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is accepting comments on draft dietary reference values for sodium and chloride. The draft values deem 2 grams of sodium and 3.1 grams of chloride per day to be “safe and adequate, considering evidence on the risk of cardiovascular disease on the one hand and nutrition adequacy on the other.” EFSA will accept comments until May 7, 2019.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association have issued a policy statement calling for taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and a decrease in SSB marketing to children. The report states that U.S. children consume 17 percent of their calories "from added sugars, nearly half of which are from sugary drinks," which are apparently "the leading source of added sugars in the US diet, provide little to no nutritional value, are high in energy density, and do little to increase feelings of satiety." The statement calls for six actions: (i) "policies that raise the price of sugary drinks, such as an excise tax"; (ii) "efforts to decrease sugary drink marketing to children and adolescents"; (iii) access to healthful foods through nutrition assistance programs; (iv) the provision of "ready access to credible nutrition information" to children and their families; (v) "[p]olicies that make healthful beverages the default choice"; and…
The Beer Institute has alleged that aluminum companies have been charging tariff prices to beverage companies that can their products despite the tariff only applying to a portion of the aluminum in their cans. The tariff is imposed on imported aluminum scrap, which accounts for about 30 percent of the aluminum used to create beverage cans—the other 70 percent is composed of aluminum scrap collected domestically—but aluminum companies have been charging as if all of their aluminum is subject to the tariffs, Beer Institute argues. The organization worked with Harbor Aluminum, "an independent authority on the aluminum industry and its markets," which purportedly found that "while the U.S. beverage industry paid an equivalent to $250 million in Section 232 tariffs for aluminum cansheet during March to December 2018, the U.S. government collected only around $50 million of that amount," according to a Beer Institute press release. "Harbor Aluminum estimates U.S.…
