Posted June 2, 2014
Senator Claire McCaskill, along with a bipartisan group of Senators, requests flexibility on new food labeling rules, according to an article on ABC KSPR 33 available here.
The group urges the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to review nutrition regulations ensuring that any adopted measures will allow flexibility for restaurants and avoid unnecessarily burdening food retail establishments that already provide nutrition information.
The Affordable Care Act requires restaurants and “similar retail food establishments” that are part of a chain with 20 or more locations to provide calorie and other nutritional information for menu items. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for defining what regulations would be required of entities under the “similar retail food establishments” clause.
Sen. McCaskill wrote a letter to OMB Administrator Howard Shelanski, which called for immediate review of the proposed rules by the FDA.
“Since FDA published its proposed rule to implement nutrition labeling of standard menu items at chain restaurants, many concerns have been raised about the regulations expanding to non-restaurants, such as grocery and convenience stores, where the vast majority of food products are already labeled with nutritional information.”
Sen. McCaskill also identified a set of alternatives that would allow the food service industry to maintain their commitment to customers while increasing their ability to comply with federal law.
“Alternatives include: limiting the scope of the menu labeling regulations to establishments where food service is the primary source of revenue; allowing delivery operations to provide nutritional information online; allowing multiple approaches for made-to-order or variably sized items; allowing restaurants with drive-throughs to display required nutritional information on a poster or pamphlet; and not penalizing reasonable margins of inadvertent human error.”
In 2011, McCaskill and other group members urged the FDA to limit menu labeling requirements to establishments that have 50 percent or more of their floor spaced devoted to “restaurant or restaurant-type food,” which exempts most grocery and convenience stores.
For more information on food labeling, please visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
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