Lawmakers Urge FDA to Reject Draft Requiring Plant-Based Milks to Not Use ‘Milk’ in Label

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) received proposed draft guidance on “Labeling of Plant-based Milk Alternatives and Voluntary Nutrient Statements,” which asks for non-dairy products and milk alternatives to not be able to use qualifying terms and ‘milk’ in the names.

Source: Mic the Vegan/Youtube

In 2018, the FDA issued a request for consumers to solicit feedback on the labeling of plant-based products that use dairy terms, such as ‘milk’. There has been a lot of debate over terminology like this in recent years, but many are confused about how people could not know the difference between ‘milk’ and ‘soymilk’, for example.

People who want the plant-based industry to not use terms like ‘burger’ for a veggie burger, ‘milk’ for oat milk, or even ‘rice’ for cauliflower rice, say that these terms confuse consumers into buying the plant-based products.

A group of four bi-partisan lawmakers sent a letter to OMB to urge the agency to reject the draft guidance because it “asks plant-based milk to identity differences without doing the same for animal milk.”

They write that this would be “discriminatory towards the plant-based industry as well as the hard-working farmers who grow crops like oats and almonds. FDA should not be using its labeling authority to harm a growing industry and the millions of American consumers for whom plant-based foods are an important part of their diet.”

Recently, a judge overturned the Louisiana Truth in Labeling of Food Products Act which prohibited companies from using words that were meat-related to their products that were not, even when the label included the words “vegan” or “plant-based.” Supporters of the law argued that these labels misled customers into buying things they wouldn’t have. They said using names like veggie burgers, veggie sausages, and cauliflower rice were misleading.

The law was extremely controversial from the start. Meat companies feared that people would confuse vegan food for real meat, which would affect their sales. Plant-based meat is getting more and more realistic, and meat companies are feeling the effects. Meat is not sustainable, and these plant-based companies are taking on the agriculture industry and winning the battle.

The plant-based labeling debate has been going on for years now. There have been plant-based food labeling lawsuits in Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Wisconsin, and Arkansas, as well as in Australia and the EU. Meat companies fear that people would confuse vegan food for real meat, which would affect their sales.

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• Changes the FDA is Making to Food Labels for Calories and Added Sugars
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• The Surprising Facts on What Other Countries Get Right About Food Labels
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