In its petition (submitted 29 April), NMPF contends that not only have the terms ‘soy milk’ and ‘soymilk’ continued to proliferate, but also other dairy-specific terms such as ‘yogurt’, ‘cheese’ and ‘ice cream’ are now being used by products made out of a wide variety of non-dairy ingredients.
“The FDA has allowed the meaning of ‘milk’ to be watered down to the point where many products that use the term have never seen the inside of a barn,” said NMPF president and CEO, Jerry Kozak. “You don’t ‘got milk’ if it comes from a hemp plant, you can’t say cheese if it’s made from rice, and faux yogurt can’t be made from soy and still be called yogurt.”
This matter was originally brought to the attention of the FDA in February 2000, when NMPF sent a letter asking that the agency make clear to manufacturers of imitation dairy products that product names permitted by federal standards of identity, including dairy terms such as ‘milk’, are to be used only on foods actually made from milk from animals such as cows, goats and sheep.
The FDA has failed to act on that petition, so NMPF “is again asking our regulators to defend the letter and the spirit of regulations intended to prevent false and misleading labelling on consumer products,” Kozak said.
“The use of these terms shouldn’t just be determined by the common and convenient vernacular that marketers prefer,” he added. “They should be used according to what the law allows.”
As NMPF had predicted 10 years ago when it first brought this issue to the attention of the FDA, soy ‘milks’ continue to be marketed and sold along with dairy milks, and now a bevy of new, artificial dairy products has reached store shelves in the past decade. In many cases, these products don’t contain the equivalent levels of nutrients that real milk does.
NMPF’s petition cites examples including imitation milks made from hemp, rice, almonds and other plants, legumes and vegetables; yogurts made from soybeans and rice; and cheeses made from soy, rice, and nuts. In some cases, marketers use superficial word changes, such as ‘cheeze’ in an apparent attempt to skirt the standards of identity regulations.
Non-dairy products “can vary wildly in their composition and are inferior to the nutrient profile of those from dairy milk, although they’re marketed as replacements for foods that consumers are familiar with and which have a healthful image,” Kozak said. “Although some phoney dairy foods may have a passing resemblance to their authentic counterparts, they’re very different in nutritional value, composition and performance from standardised dairy products.”
Examples of products that exploit the lax enforcement of dairy product labelling can be found here..
Source: National Milk Producers Federation
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