The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have announced "a formal agreement to jointly oversee the production of human food products derived from the cells of livestock and poultry." The agreement "describes the oversight roles and responsibilities for both agencies and how the agencies will collaborate to regulate the development and entry of these products into commerce," according to a press release. "This shared regulatory approach will ensure that cell-cultured products derived from the cell lines of livestock and poultry are produced safely and are accurately labeled."
Category Archives Legislation, Regulations and Standards
A Missouri state senator has introduced legislation that would clarify when slack fill is allowable in food containers. The bill would prohibit slack fill from being deemed as misleading for eight reasons, including (i) protection of the contents, (ii) reasonable industry standards, (iii) a specific function provided by the package, (iv) value added by the packaging, such as a reusable container, and (v) required label messaging.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking to identify the poultry-production plants associated with an outbreak of Salmonella. CSPI requested that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) deliver information on the "name, address, establishment number, and date of positive sample(s)" for poultry products that "tested positive for the outbreak strain of Salmonella Infantis" in raw chicken and "Salmonella Reading" in raw turkey. "In addition to granting the current FOIA request, which may be done by delivering the data to CSPI directly or posting it on the USDA website, CSPI also requests that the USDA develop a practice for reporting this information publicly in all similar multi-source outbreaks moving forward," the request states.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb reportedly said in a February 27, 2019, hearing before the House Appropriations Committee that the agency will hold public hearings on cannabidiol (CBD) in April 2019. Gottlieb reportedly told the committee that FDA is assembling a working group of senior officials to create rules that would govern CBD in food and other uses. According to CNBC, "Gottlieb floated what a possible framework might look like. He suggested high concentrations might be regulated as a drug that has more stringent oversight while lower concentrations could be categorized as food products that come with an easier review process." Meanwhile, a New York City crackdown on CBD in food products has reportedly been postponed. Beginning in October 2019, CBS reports, violators selling CBD food may be subject to fines of $200 and risk lower public health letter grades.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released "Strategy for the Safety of Imported Food," which outlines methods the agency is using to ensure that it meets its four goals: (i) ensuring that imported food meets U.S. food safety requirements; (ii) preventing the entry of unsafe foods; (iii) rapidly responding to unsafe imported foods; and (iv) maintaining an "effective and efficient food import program."
The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) has submitted a citizen petition urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to "[e]nforce existing 'imitation' labeling requirements against nutritionally inferior non-dairy substitutes for standardized dairy foods that are named and positioned as forms of 'milk,' 'yogurt,' 'cheese,' 'ice cream,' or 'butter,' yet fail to provide the 'imitation' disclosure statement that is required." The petition's introductory letter argues that its recommended actions "are necessary to ensure that consumers are adequately informed concerning the material differences between standardized dairy foods (e.g., milk, yogurt, cheese, ice cream, butter) and the wide variety of non-dairy substitutes that are available in the marketplace which are identified through the misappropriation of terms that have been defined by standards of identity to identify standardized foods that meet specified compositional, nutritional, or functional requirements." The debate over dairy and non-dairy substitute labeling extends to Canada, where a creamery has reportedly…
Europol announced that it has "dismantled a sophisticated criminal network involved in counterfeiting trademarks and distinctive labels of a famous winery in Florence, Italy, as well as counterfeiting at least 11 000 bottles of red wine." The agency arrested three people, including two members of the same family, who allegedly "sold sports products online as a way to mislead consumers of their activities." According to a press release, the "modus operandi was to prepare bottles of low-quality wine and once ready, would sell them to the Italian and international markets, primarily in Belgium and Germany."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced public meetings to discuss proposed positions for the United States to take at various Codex Alimentarius Commissions. A meeting on general principles and procedures is scheduled for February 25, 2019, for the March Codex meeting in Bordeaux, France. The U.S. Codex Office will also host a public meeting on April 1, 2019, to discuss positions on contaminants in foods and a public meeting on May 6, 2019, to discuss methods of analysis.
New York City's health department has reportedly ordered restaurants to stop serving products that contain cannabidiol (CBD) on the grounds that the compound has not been approved as safe for use in food by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. City inspectors have apparently marked CBD products as embargoed during routine inspections but have not confiscated the products from the restaurants. Maine's state health authorities reportedly began a similar crackdown on edible products containing CBD in late January, informing retailers that the compound is an unapproved food additive. The health departments' actions do not affect CBD sold in non-food products such as in oil or lotion, according to Eater. Industrial hemp, CBD's source, has faced similar regulatory confusion following the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, which permitted the cultivation of industrial hemp as an agricultural product. An Idaho federal court has determined that when hemp can be transported between…
A group of members of Congress, led by Reps. John Joyce (R-Pa.) and Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.), have urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to enforce "regulations defining what may be labeled a dairy product, to combat the proliferation of imitation and substitute dairy products in the marketplace that undermine FDA regulations by using standardized dairy terms on non-dairy products." "Dairy product terms convey specific information for consumers on nutritional content and ingredient performance. Put simply, imitations and substitutes do not meet these standards, nor do they have any standardized requirements for nutritional content, composition, and processing, unlike the dairy products they seek to imitate. Most importantly, they are not sourced from cows or other lactating mammals as required by the standards we referred to up above," the letter asserts. "Giving this ongoing problem, we are pleased that FDA now plans to act. We urge you to make crystal…
