Food Labeling

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Last week, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), the lead agency that implements California’s Proposition 65, proposed an amendment to the existing regulation requiring: (1) the average concentration of a listed chemical as causing reproductive toxicity (e.g., lead) be based on products from the same manufacturing facility; and (2) the dietary exposure to a listed chemical as causing reproductive toxicity be calculated using the arithmetic mean. If adopted, the proposed changes would overrule the court decision in Environmental Law Foundation v Beechnut Nutrition Corp on how to determine the daily intake of listed chemicals as causing reproductive toxicity. The change could impose additional testing requirements on the industry and could create a more rigid standard for falling within a safe harbor. We encourage food companies to evaluate whether the proposed changes would adversely impact their current Proposition 65 compliance positions.

Comments to the proposed regulation are due by November 19, 2018. In addition, a public hearing on the proposed amendment would be scheduled on request. To request a hearing, OEHHA needs to be notified no later than November 5, 2018.

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The Food and Drug Administration recently issued a request for information on the use of the names of dairy foods in the labeling of plant-based products. This action arose from the agency’s Nutrition Innovation Strategy, one tenet of which is a focus on modernizing food standards. During Commissioner Gottlieb’s remarks at the Nutrition Innovation Strategy public meeting, he stated that requests for the agency to take a closer look at the dairy standards of identity is one of many reasons why FDA is interested in modernizing the food standards, and that this would be the first area in which FDA is going to have an active public process for reviewing the standards and how consumers understand the use of terms like “milk” on both animal-derived and plant-based products.

This RFI aims to gather information on how consumers use plant-based products and how consumers understand the use of dairy terms, such as “milk,” or “yogurt” when they appear on the labels of plant-based products, as well as the nutritional attributes of these products and how these products can help consumers meet the recommendations in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

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In the final batch of technical notices, the UK Government has provided guidance on what impact traders can expect on food labelling and packaging in the event that the UK exits the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement on 29 March 2019.

Currently, EU rules, such as EU Regulation 1169/2011 or “FIC”, govern food labelling and minimum compositional standards (with some exceptions) for foods in the UK. As explained in a previous blog, from 29 March 2019, these EU-based rules will be absorbed into English law as part of the Withdrawal Act and adapted where necessary by way of statutory instruments to ensure they apply as intended. There will however be a number of additional changes required to food labels to reflect the fact that the UK will no longer be a member of the EU.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued two guidance documents to assist establishments in determining whether they have an obligation to register as a food facility. The first document is the finalized seventh edition of FDA’s Questions and Answers Regarding Food Facility Registration (Final Guidance). The second document is a supplemental draft guidance to the seventh edition (Supplemental Draft Guidance), which addresses which parties must register in situations where multiple entities share a physical space (e.g., a food manufacturer leases a building). The Supplemental Draft Guidance is open for comments through October 19, 2018. This memorandum summarizes the changes made in the Final Guidance since it was originally proposed in draft form in December 2016 and the new content in the Supplemental Draft Guidance.

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Key considerations for food companies considering a package refresh or new product launch – an integrated legal team approach

Launching a new food product? Revising your label? On September 13, the Hogan Lovells Food and Beverage team will offer a free webinar on key considerations for food and beverage packaging and labeling.  Food regulatory partners Maile Hermida and Elizabeth Fawell will be joined by trademark partner Julia Matheson to discuss what you need to know if you are refreshing your product’s packaging and labels – either on your own initiative or to comply with new labeling requirements – or launching a new product.

Maile and Elizabeth will discuss key labeling considerations facing food companies, including new nutrition labeling requirements, GMO disclosures, and class action litigation.  Julia will provide an overview on trademark, trade dress, and unfair competition claims.

Topics for this one hour webinar include:
•           Labeling hot issues
•           False advertising claims
•           Trademark
•           Trade dress
•           Unfair competition

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On July 26, 2018, the FDA held a public meeting to discuss issues related to the agency’s comprehensive multi-year Nutrition Innovation Strategy. This public meeting and comment period follows FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb’s unveiling of the Nutrition Innovation Strategy in a policy address on March 29, 2018 as a way to help Americans improve their nutrition as a step towards reducing chronic disease. This post provides a high-level summary of the issues that were raised at the public meeting.

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The U.S. Appeals Court for the 9th Circuit issued a favorable decision earlier this year interpreting the California “made in the USA” statute. In a March 2018 unpublished opinion, the court affirmed the dismissal of lawsuits filed over the labeling of dog food and treats as “made in the USA” when they contained tapioca starch, an ingredient derived from a plant not commercially grown in the U.S. The appeals court decision confirms that a plaintiff cannot bring a lawsuit to challenge a “made in the USA” claim under the old, stricter version of the California “made in the USA” statute.  Instead, such claims would be governed by the more permissive version of the statute that permits a made in the USA claim when a product contains certain small amounts of foreign-sourced ingredients consistent with one of two exemptions. The case did not address how the claim should be viewed under the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) standard for U.S. origin claims.

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is proposing to revise the type size requirements for front-of-pack (FOP) calorie declarations that are used to comply with the vending machine calorie labeling requirements. The proposed rule would require such calorie declarations to be at least 150% the size of the net quantity of contents statement (i.e., 1.5 x the size of the net weight). This proposed change was prompted by industry concerns that the current type size requirement for FOP calorie declarations – of at least 50% of the size of the largest printed matter on the label – is impractical, needlessly burdensome, and would disrupt existing voluntary industry front-of-pack nutrition labeling programs. The existing programs require FOP calorie declarations to appear in a type size ranging from 100 to 150% of the size of the net quantity of contents statement.

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a guidance document that identifies eight ingredients that the agency has determined meet the regulatory definition of “dietary fiber.” Specifically, FDA has recognized the following ingredients as meeting the dietary fiber definition: (1) mixed plant cell wall fibers; (2) arabinoxylan; (3) alginate; (4) inulin and inulin-type fructans; (5) high amylose starch (resistant starch 2); (6) galactooligosaccharide; (7) polydextrose; and (8) resistant maltodextrin/dextrin. In this guidance document, FDA also announced that it intends to extend enforcement discretion regarding the declaration of these eight isolated or synthetic nondigestible carbohydrates (NDCs) as a dietary fiber on Nutrition Facts and Supplement Facts labels pending completion of a formal rulemaking to revise the dietary fiber regulation to reflect these ingredients. In addition to the guidance document, FDA has also published a review of the scientific evidence on the physiological effects of these NDCs, and has issued responses to several citizen petitions requesting that certain NDCs be added to the “dietary fiber” definition.

This post provides a brief overview of FDA’s dietary fiber definition, and summarizes the key aspects of the guidance related to FDA’s determination that these eight ingredients meet the dietary fiber definition.

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The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently released the Spring 2018 Unified Agenda of Regulatory Actions for federal agencies, which outlines the rulemaking actions currently under development in each federal agency. This post summarizes the major actions that may be of particular interest to the food industry that are being planned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), and Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS). After highlighting the most significant priorities, we provide charts for each agency that provide additional details on their plans.

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