"The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is taking actions to facilitate food innovations that can give consumers more choices, enable better nutrition and improve labeling to reflect the healthy attributes of food,” Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., said today at the agency’s Multi-Year Nutrition Innovation Strategy Public Meeting in Washington, D.C.

As the FDA reviews the more than 97 federal food standards of identity for dairy and other products, Cary Frye, IDFA senior vice president of regulatory affairs, testified that an updat is not only necessary but long overdue.

“These standards are significantly outdated and stand in the way of using new technologies, new ingredients, novel processes and innovation for dairy foods,” said Frye at the meeting. “The dairy industry has filed citizen petitions requesting modernization of the yogurt standards that have been pending for 16 years and has also petitioned to amend the cheese standards to allow for the use of milk filtration almost 20 years ago.”

The commissioner indicated that the meeting is the start of the process for modernizing labeling standards by gathering industry and public feedback. He said that the FDA will review the testimony from today’s hearing in addition to written comments submitted over the coming several months and will likely be issuing guidance and a new compliance policy over the next year.

Frye indicated that today’s actions were a good step forward but also pushed for a broader review of existing rules.

“IDFA fully supports the longer-term effort of undertaking a holistic approach to modernizing food standards of identity in a manner that maintains the basic nature of the food but allows the industry flexibility for innovation without having to petition for standard changes,” she added.

Milk Standards of Identity and Dairy Labeling Terms
During the meeting, Gottlieb also gave the dairy industry more details on plans to issue guidance related to use of the term “milk” for the marketing and labeling of non-dairy products.

“We are going to have an active public process for reviewing our standard and how consumers understand the use of terms like milk on both animal-derived and plant-based products. We must better understand if consumers are being misled as a result of the way the term milk is being applied and making less informed choices as a result,” he said. “We intend to look at these differences in relation to potential public health consequences.”

The FDA is examining the issues because of cases wher children who were fed non-dairy products developed severe forms of protein malnutrition and vitamin D deficiencies.

“We recognize that, as a regulatory agency, it’s not appropriate to unilaterally change our regulatory approach if we have a history of non-enforcement. We also need to closely consider the potential First Amendment issues related to the different uses of these terms,” Gottlieb added.

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