NMPF Executive Vice President for Communications & Industry Relations Alan Bjerga discusses the decline of plant-based beverage consumption in 2023 in an interview with RFD-TV. Fluid milk seized back market share last year as plant-based beverage volume sales fell to their lowest since 2019, led by a 10 percent drop in almond drinks.
Tag: dairy labeling
Overcoming challenges is what we do
By Randy Mooney, Chairman, NMPF Board of Directors
We’ve had a lot of achievements this year, but it’s also been a challenging time.
A year ago, costs on the farm were extremely high, but we had prices that would cover that. This year, costs are still high, but prices are down. That’s a lot of stress on the farm. And we’re also dealing with problems that we’ve dealt with for years.
There are labor problems; you just can’t find anybody to work. Supply chain disruptions are closer to the farm this year. It’s milk trucks getting milk off the farm; it’s feed trucks bringing feed into the farm. It’s getting simple parts that we took for granted we could get anytime we wanted to. There are geopolitical issues and extreme weather events.
We have challenges all the time, but it just seems like we continue to have more. It seems like we’re in the eye of a storm. But as farmers, we always anticipate a moment before the dawn, before things turn, before things get good again.
One of the things I’ve learned is that a lot of the world is envious of what we have.
They’re envious because we have the Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) Program, a self-governing program. We have a government that recognizes what we’re doing with sustainability — it’s not being mandated down from the top.
We’re taking care of our own. Today, we produce more milk using fewer and fewer natural resources. We’re revitalizing rural communities. For every dollar generated in dairy farming, it turns over three to seven times in local communities, generating $750 billion in the United States. That‘s pretty impressive.
We’re nourishing families around the world through milk’s unbeatable nutritional value. I’ve dairy farmed for a long time, through good times and bad times, but there’s never been a time that I haven’t laid my head down on my pillow at night and been proud of what I accomplished on my farm. We’re putting the most nourishing, most nutritious product known to man in that milk tank. And when that truck leaves, I know I’ve done something good.
Our ability to evolve how we work and adapt our resiliency is becoming more and more important. This year, we came together as an industry to unite around issues that helped build that resiliency. NMPF worked with member co-ops, farm bureaus, and state dairy organizations to come to consensus on the most substantial issues. Even going back to 2021, when you talk about Federal Milk Marketing Order modernization, we’ve worked hard to get these things done. Nobody knows what the outcome’s going to be, but you telling your story has made a difference.
Beyond that, we’re going to get a farm bill passed — we’re going have an extension. We’ve been working to implement the next version of FARM, FARM 5.0, that goes into effect in July. We also will work on promoting dairy’s sustainable nutrition. Dairy offers the most complete nutritional package available, and what’s amazing is that as we produce more milk, we’ll continue to use fewer natural resources. That’s the definition of sustainable nutrition.
For years, we’ve talked about sustainability in terms of environmental stewardship and how that translates into financial value for farms. Now, the financial values are there. You take solar panels, wind, methane digesters, and a lot of things happen on a farm that’s generating electricity to run your farms and to run your neighbor’s households. We’re there now. What we need is conservation funding in the farm bill through USDA grants through state and federal programs. There’s real money available to help us continue to do that, and we will.
No imitation food from a nut, a bean, or grain can hold a candle to dairy’s nutritional package. We all know that. That’s why it’s important to keep fighting the fight on plant-based alternative labeling. In the guidance that was issued earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recognized and admitted that plant-based alternatives are nutritionally inferior to real dairy.
Dairy protein plays a critical role in feeding people around the world, and it can’t be replaced by alternatives, including plant-based. Consumers have the right to understand how they’re nourishing their families, and we’re going to continue to advocate for the Dairy PRIDE Act to try to get that passed in Congress.
We’re going to continue to fight for more flavored milk in schools and higher fat levels, especially for those children whose main source of nutrition is through the school milk program. Milk is essential to their diets, and we’re not going to give up that fight. We’re all part of an industry that’s doing remarkable things. We are winning.
This has been adapted from Chairman of the NMPF Board of Directors Randy Mooney’s speech at the National Milk Producers Federation annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., on Nov. 14, 2023. This column originally appeared in Hoard’s Dairyman Intel on Nov. 22, 2023.
The State of the Labels, FDA Comment Deadline Edition
Regulatory Staff Protect and Advance Dairy
- Pushed for labeling integrity and FDA to enforce its own standards of identity, filing extensive comments in response to its draft guidance on plant-based beverage labeling
- Personally urged FDA Commissioner Robert Califf to develop labeling standards for cell-based and synthetic “dairy” products
- Successfully advocated for dairy cooperatives and their producer members at the National Conference of Interstate Milk Shipments to ensure they have a voice in any updates made to the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance
- Filed comments on FDA’s proposed “healthy” definition pushing for milk, cheese and yogurt to qualify, thus better educating consumers on dairy’s nutritional benefits
- Outlined animal health priorities with USDA APHIS
Regulatory work is often just as much about fighting against harmful rules, as it is pushing for positive change. Efforts this year have ranged from pressuring FDA to enforce its own standards of identity for milk and develop labeling standards for cell-based products to representing member views on issues including the biannual update of the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance and EPA PFAS regulations.
FDA’s draft guidance on labeling for plant-based beverages released in February encourages plant-based beverage manufacturers who choose to use dairy terms to voluntarily disclose their nutritional differences with real milk. NMPF regulatory staff submitted comments July 31 emphasizing the importance of transparent product labeling to ensure consumer understanding FDA’s need to enforce its own standards of identity for milk.
NMPF staff also elevated the need for FDA to develop labeling standards for cell-based products to end dairy product mislabeling and prevent a repeat of the plant-based labeling fiasco through a conversation and letter addressed to Commissioner Califf sent on June 26.
The biannual National Conference of Interstate Milk Shipments convened in April to revise the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance, with NMPF regulatory staff playing a vital role in the conference deliberations. NMPF submitted three proposals at the conference, dealing with on-farm biosecurity and defining equivalency – all of which had positive outcomes.
Following a proposed rule from FDA to update the labeling definition of “healthy” to align more closely with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), NMPF urged FDA to include a broader range of dairy products, thus educating consumers about dairy’s nutritional value and improve consumption closer to DGA recommendations.
NMPF in August met with USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) leadership to discuss dairy’s domestic and international animal health priorities. Staff emphasized the importance of collaboration between industry and government on preparedness for foreign animal diseases such as Foot and Mouth Disease.
To further NMPF’s antibiotic stewardship work, Chief Science Officer Jamie Jonker, Ph.D., was appointed to the Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance to provide an animal health perspective to the group’s goal of strengthening global political momentum on the issue.
Regulatory Register – Summer 2023
NMPF’s Bjerga on Why Milk’s Widening Its Lead Over Plant-Based Beverages
NMPF Senior Vice President of Communications discusses the shifting consumer preference toward milk over plant-based beverages, plus NMPF’s latest efforts toward labeling integrity, on RFD-TV. Consumer data shows consumption of plant-based drinks falling this year, while milk sales are remaining more stable. Meanwhile, NMPF has submitted comments to FDA urging it to enforce its Standard of Identity that clearly state that milk is an animal product.
NMPF’s Galen on FDA’s Draft Plant-Based Labeling Guidance
Chris Galen, NMPF’s senior vice president of membership services and strategic initiatives, discusses NMPF’s latest effort to prevent misleading labeling on Dairy Radio Now. While FDA’s draft guidance on plant-based beverages acknowledges the public health concern regarding nutritional confusion, it falls short of ending the decades-old problem of misleading plant-based labeling using dairy terminology, he says. Galen discusses the comments NMPF submitted to FDA this week that emphasize the importance of transparent product labeling to ensure consumer understanding and informed purchasing decisions.
Draft Guidance Not Enough to Prevent Misleading Labeling, NMPF Tells FDA
While the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) draft guidance on plant-based beverages acknowledges the public health concern regarding nutritional confusion, it falls woefully short of ending the decades-old problem of misleading plant-based labeling using dairy terminology, NMPF said in comments submitted to the agency July 30.
As the leading voice of American dairy producers, NMPF emphasized the importance of transparent product labeling to ensure consumer understanding and informed purchasing decisions, and urged FDA to take prompt enforcement action against misbranded non-dairy beverages that resemble milk.
“For far too long, plant-based beverage manufacturers have blurred well-defined standards of identity to inappropriately and unfairly capitalize on dairy’s nutritional benefits while FDA has ignored its enforcement obligations,” said Jim Mulhern, NMPF president and CEO. “FDA’s draft guidance is an encouraging first step toward promoting labeling transparency in the marketplace, but it’s not enough. Our comments outline a solution to the misleading labeling practices existing in the marketplace today, and provide clear, truthful labeling options for marketers of plant-based beverages.”
In its comments, NMPF commended FDA for its acknowledgement of consumer confusion over the nutritional content of dairy imitators. “For decades, NMPF has been frustrated with FDA’s unwillingness to enforce its own standards of identity for milk and milk products which continues today. We are encouraged by the agency’s acceptance of the reality of consumer confusion regarding nutritional content,” NMPF wrote. Still, NMPF cautioned FDA to adhere to the law by going through the proper legal process, as outlined in NMPF’s Citizen Petition and comments.
Because of the voluntary nature of the proposed guidance and FDA’s undependable labeling enforcement history, NMPF continues its work in Congress to pass the bipartisan, bicameral DAIRY PRIDE Act, which would direct FDA to enforce its own rules and clarify that dairy terms are for true dairy products.
Lab-based ‘milk’ Labeling Fight Is Here
By Clay Detlefsen, Chief Counsel, NMPF
One would think that four decades’ worth of lessons would lead to some truths being learned. But as laboratory-based dairy imitators enter the marketplace, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seems poised to repeat the same mistakes it has made with plant-based beverages, in which their labels mislead consumers into confusing one thing with something very different.
At issue is a product called “Bored Cow,” which markets itself as “milk.” While the product does include a whey protein that’s the product of fermentation in a laboratory setting, other elements on its long list of exotic ingredients show what should be obvious to every consumer: This isn’t milk as nature has ever known it.
NMPF has been fighting with FDA over its lack of enforcement of dairy standards of identity for decades. What Bored Cow is doing is taking one whey protein that’s synthetically made by precision fermentation, blending that with a myriad of other food ingredients that are quite disgusting-sounding in many cases, and calling the product “dairy milk.”
That’s the wrong description for what they’re selling.
Milk has 13 essential nutrients. It contains 400 different fatty acids. It has got two categories of proteins, casein and whey, numerous micronutrients, and it’s an incredibly complex matrix that delivers an enormous nutritional package for consumers. You cannot replicate that in a laboratory. Milk is natural and it’s good for you. And you can’t duplicate what comes from a cow in a stainless steel vat.
But so far, FDA is allowing this violation of its standards of identity to persist, though finally after decades of inaction, FDA has gotten the message that consumers are confused and misled about the nutritional inferiority of most if not all plant-based milk alternatives. We are still hopeful FDA will step up and enforce its rules. Earlier this year, FDA proposed a voluntary labeling guidance in which they ask marketers of plant-based milk alternatives to voluntarily disclose their products’ nutritional offerings and, in most cases, those products’ nutritional inferiorities.
While NMPF appreciates the more explicit side-by-side comparison, the overall FDA guidance is flawed and we want it withdrawn. When it comes to Bored Cow and its one synthesized dairy protein, we are concerned that this, too, is a nutritionally inferior imitator that will mislead consumers and deliver a mediocre product that could harm human health.
One caveat that lab-based companies are using to distinguish themselves from plant-based imitators is that their products include one component of dairy milk. While that’s the case, it doesn’t change how very different in overall composition these products actually are — the same fundamental challenge that is also at the root of concerns over plant-based labeling. In both cases, processors are largely ignoring existing rules and regulations and doing whatever they want — not in the consumer’s interest but in their own. It’s sloppy, lazy marketing and it needs to stop.
As with plant-based foods, FDA needs to enforce its rules and regulations and send a clear message to the plant-based folks, and now the synthetic “milk” processors, that the dairy rules are on the books, and they, like everyone else, have to follow them. Otherwise, the integrity of the marketplace — and the FDA’s role as the protector of consumer interests — will continue to erode. That’s not what consumers deserve. And it’s completely preventable — if only, after four decades, FDA finally learns.
This column originally appeared in Hoard’s Dairyman Intel on July 31, 2023.
Need for Lab-Based Beverage Action as Clear as a Milk Label
It’s the difference between
“Water, animal-free whey protein (from fermentation), sunflower oil, sugar, less than 1% of: vitamin A, vitamin B12 (cyanocobalamin), vitamin D2, riboflavin, citrus fiber, salt, dipotassium phosphate, acacia, gellan gum, mixed tocopherols (antioxidant), calcium potassium phosphate citrate, natural flavor,” …
and this:
We’ve warned FDA of the problems resulting from this fabrication, and we hope our warning doesn’t fall on deaf ears. After more than four decades of plant-based imposters using dairy terms that violate the agency’s Standard of Identity for milk, lab-based fermenters of single dairy proteins are trying to mislead consumers in the exact same way – by creating a false impression that their slurries of highly processed ingredients are equivalent to dairy.
They’re not. And consumers shouldn’t be led to believe otherwise.
In a letter to FDA asking the agency to take action against the brand Bored Cow, which is marketing its beverage as “animal-free dairy milk” because it uses a single fermented whey protein (real milk has dozens of protein variants and literally hundreds of different fatty acids), the National Milk Producers Federation notes that “it is baseless, preposterous and absurd” to call such a product milk.
“In the interest of public health, the misleading labeling charade must end before it gets out of hand,” NMPF writes. “FDA must act, and must do so now.”
Will it? While FDA’s proposed guidance on the naming of plant-based beverages finally admits a problem, the lab-based conundrum shows how its purported solution – allowing imitators to use the term “milk” if they disclose nutritional differences – falls short. It’s not just about the limited nutrition knowledge we have. It’s about the substance itself, and the complex interaction among naturally-occurring ingredients that any honest marketer, scientist or regulator knows we don’t fully understand. That humility, and the need to protect against consumer confusion that’s been acknowledged by the last three FDA commissioners, is more than enough reason to take action now.
Because without it, the imposters will proliferate, the headaches will grow, and the marketplace will only become less transparent, in yet another abandonment of FDA’s mission to protect consumers. FDA must enforce its Standard of Identity rules on lab-based dairy labeling now. The need is as basic as the ingredient listing on a bottle of milk. FDA can’t let that clear principle be dragged through the mud – or whatever substances these fake “milks” are made of.
NMPF Warns FDA: Don’t Repeat Plant-Based Mistakes with Lab-Produced Fake ‘Milk’
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must end dairy product mislabeling by manufacturers of synthetic, cell-based “dairy” ingredients that are in violation of federal dairy Standards of Identity to prevent a repeat of the plant-based labeling fiasco that’s created confusion among consumers and regulatory headaches at the agency, the National Milk Producers Federation said in a letter to the agency.
“Bored Cow’s product takes water and adds what we believe to be one unidentified, lab-engineered ‘whey protein’ along with a highly processed concoction of food additives, preservatives, oil, sugar and several added vitamins, and claims to have created ‘animal-free dairy milk.’ It is baseless, preposterous and absurd to call the resulting product ‘milk,’” NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern said in the letter sent to FDA on June 26. “In the interest of public health, the misleading labeling charade must end before it gets out of hand. FDA must act, and must do so now.”
NMPF, which has repeatedly called on FDA to enforce its identity standards for milk as plant-based fakes have proliferated, has been warning the agency that lab-based milk imposters would be next on the horizon without agency action. Even as the agency is wrestling with draft guidance that finally acknowledges consumers’ core concern over plant-based beverages – their false positioning as dairy equivalents in the face of glaring nutritional inferiority – lab-based imitators are following the plant-based playbook and plastering “milk” and other standardized dairy terms on products that in composition bear little resemblance to true dairy.
“As we have seen in the decades-long folly of plant-based beverage labeling, an ounce of prevention is worth oceans of cure,” Mulhern wrote. “We ask the agency to exercise its well-established authority to prevent this company and others that seek to follow from leading consumers down what will become a superhighway of misinformation, absent your willingness to enforce the law.”
Consumers concerned with labeling integrity may visit NMPF’s Call to Action on plant-based labeling here. For an in-depth discussion on lab-based “dairy” and its pitfalls, listen to this podcast here. A copy of NMPF’s full letter regarding Bored Cow, a brand offered by New York City-based Tomorrow Farms, is here.
NMPF’s Galen Discusses Lab-Produced Fake “Milk”
Chris Galen, NMPF’s senior vice president of membership services and strategic initiatives, discusses NMPF’s recent effort to end dairy product mislabeling by manufacturers of synthetic, cell-based “dairy” ingredients that are in violation of federal dairy Standards of Identity to prevent a repeat of the plant-based labeling fiasco that’s created confusion among consumers and regulatory headaches at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
NMPF, which has repeatedly called on FDA to enforce its identity standards for milk as plant-based fakes have proliferated, has been warning the agency that lab-based milk imposters would be next on the horizon without agency action. Even as the agency is wrestling with draft guidance that finally acknowledges consumers’ core concern over plant-based beverages – their false positioning as dairy equivalents in the face of glaring nutritional inferiority – lab-based imitators are following the plant-based playbook and plastering “milk” and other standardized dairy terms on products that in composition bear little resemblance to true dairy.
Consumers concerned with labeling integrity may visit NMPF’s Call to Action on plant-based labeling here.
