U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Jim Risch (R-ID) are calling out the FDA. Leading a bipartisan group, the duo is pushing the FDA to ban lab-grown dairy alternatives from utilizing dairy terms to label non-dairy products.
“For decades FDA has allowed non-dairy products to illegally use dairy terms to label their imitation products, most of which are nutritionally inferior to the real dairy foods they purport to emulate,” wrote the Senators in a letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf. “Public health is now facing a new, additional perpetrator – Cell-based dairy imitation products. These are synthetically created options posing as natural foods, many of which are nutritionally inferior to the dairy products they imitate.
Currently, FDA regulations define dairy products as being from dairy animals. However, the senators note that the FDA has failed to enforce these regulations, allowing non-dairy products to use dairy names, leading to the rapid growth of mislabeled alternative products that contain a range of ingredients and nutrients that are often not equivalent to the nutritional content of dairy products – including cell-based, synthetic dairy imitation products.
By utilizing dairy terms such as milk, these lab-grown products are posing as natural foods, violating the FDA’s standards of identity, which requires the food product be made from milk from an animal.
“It is critical that FDA intervene to prevent this new violation committed by cell-based foods from compounding the harm Americans are already experiencing from FDA’s decades of inaction on plant-based mislabeling,” the Senators wrote. “New developments in food science should advance new and innovative products, not cause deeper injury to public health. It is FDA’s job to ensure a stable and transparent marketplace to support safe innovation while protecting Americans.”
Industry organizations are praising the bipartisan group for their efforts.
“The National Milk Producers Federation thanks Senators Baldwin and Risch for their leadership in imploring FDA to enforce its own existing standards of identity. After decades of FDA failing to enforce, the misinformation and confusion around the nutrient content of dairy imitators is harming public health, as health and medical organizations have told FDA,” says Jim Mulhern, President and CEO of National Milk Producers Federation. “Americans need FDA to do its job to ensure consumers have food labeling that helps them make informed choices about what they feed themselves and their families. Americans need marketplace transparency, integrity, and protection now more than ever, as new products and processes are transforming what consumers find on the grocery shelves at an increasingly rapid rate.”
The full letter is available here.
