NMPF’s Executive Vice President Paul Bleiberg explains for Dairy Radio Now listeners why the House of Representatives held a hearing this week to examine how the Food and Drug Administration is focusing its resources. Bleiberg said Deputy FDA Commissioner Jim Jones faced scrutiny from lawmakers about the agency’s failure to enforce standards of identity for the labeling of plant-based dairy imitators, a point NMPF has been raising for years.
Tag: nutrition
Congress can stand up for dairy’s nutrition
By Paul Bleiberg, Executive Vice President, Government Relations, National Milk Producers Federation
Milk and dairy products supply 13 essential nutrients, including three that continue to be identified as nutrients of public health concern: calcium, potassium, and vitamin D.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services have historically recognized dairy’s important value in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are updated once every five years and are due next year. The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines should continue to maintain dairy as a distinct food group, one that does not include plant-based imitation products that are not nutritionally equivalent to real milk and do not deliver dairy’s unique nutrient package.
But before the new guidelines are completed, Congress has the opportunity this year to highlight dairy as a nutrition powerhouse that cannot be easily replicated. Below the radar of a tumultuous presidential election year, the bipartisan DAIRY PRIDE Act, introduced in both houses of Congress, has steadily picked up additional support, with nearly 50 members now cosponsoring the House measure.
The DAIRY PRIDE Act directs the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to enforce dairy standards of identity, which are rooted in dairy’s critical nutrient profile and the fact that milk is the product of an animal that can’t be replicated by substitute ingredients or concocted in a lab. Standards of identity were developed to promote honesty and fair dealing in the interest of consumers. These terms, including “milk” and “cheese,” have come to carry distinct meaning in the minds of consumers, with built-in expectations for nutritional values.
FDA’s continued failure to require the proper labeling of plant-based alternative products is a public health problem, plain and simple. When consumers make misguided, but well-intentioned, decisions to purchase imitation products in place of real dairy, the result will be more and more Americans not meeting the recommended intake of dairy outlined in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Multiple public health organizations have given voice to this concern, urging that young children not be fed most plant-based alternatives in place of real dairy as their nutrition profiles are largely not equivalent.
After years of anticipation, FDA issued proposed guidance last year intended to address this topic. But while the agency acknowledged the nutritional inferiority of most plant-based imitation products relative to real dairy, FDA still made no attempt to dissuade the makers of these products from labeling them using dairy terms – the true cause of consumer confusion.
The DAIRY PRIDE Act would fix this by deeming mislabeled dairy imitators as misbranded. It then would require FDA to promptly require the proper labeling of alternative products – without the unfettered use of dairy terms. This pro-public health, truth-in-labeling bill would spotlight dairy as a unique source of essential, underconsumed nutrients and can swiftly pass Congress before year’s end.
This column originally appeared in Hoard’s Dairyman Intel on Aug. 15, 2024.
NMPF Defending Need for Dairy Foods in Dietary Guidelines Refresh
NMPF’s Director of Regulatory Affairs, Miquela Hanselman, explains to Dairy Radio Now listeners what to expect in the coming year from the federal government’s twice-a-decade-effort to generate food consumption recommendations through the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. NMPF has been providing input the past two years to the scientific experts considering how dairy foods fit into an overall healthy diet, as the refreshed guidelines are due in 2025.
NMPF’S Hanselman Explains New USDA School Meal Dairy Regulations
NMPF’s Director of Regulatory Affairs, Miquela Hanselman, explains to Dairy Radio Now listeners the changes to the federal school lunch program meal requirements just announced by USDA. The new rules will maintain a place at the table for flavored milk, while also making modest adjustments to sodium levels that won’t negatively impact cheese offerings in school meals.
NMPF’s Paul Bleiberg Outlines USDA Decision On WIC Dairy Purchases
NMPF’s Executive Vice President Paul Bleiberg gives Dairy Radio Now the background on this week’s decision by USDA to adjust spending for WIC program recipients, and how that will impact dairy purchases, including milk, as the changes are implemented.
NMPF’s Bjerga on Global Food Security and Dairy’s Role
Author of the book “Endless Appetites” and NMPF Executive Vice President for Communications and Industry Relations Alan Bjerga speaks on trends in global food security from the World Food Prize in Des Moines, IA, with RFD-TV. Bjerga also discusses how dairy and animal agriculture are an important part of food security solutions both through nutrition and job creating, pointing out how livestock farming can be done sustainably and noting dairy’s role in furthering that goal.
NMPF’s Larson on Whole Milk in Schools
NMPF Senior Director of Government Relations Claudia Larson discusses the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, which has bipartisan support in the House and Senate. The legislation would return whole milk to schools, encouraging better nutrition and reducing food waste. Larson speaks on the Rural Radio Network.
NMPF’s Bjerga on the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act
NMPF Senior Vice President of Communications Alan Bjerga discusses the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act and the importance of bringing back whole milk as an option in school meal programs. The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act was introduced in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, and is another step acknowledging the increased understanding of the benefits of whole milk in diet. Bjerga speaks on RFD-TV.
NMPF Statement on Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act
From NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern:
“NMPF commends House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson, R-PA, and Rep. Kim Schrier, D-WA, for their bipartisan Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act to help increase kids’ access to milk’s vital nutrients.
“Good nutrition is a cornerstone of kids’ health and development, and milk plays an unparalleled role in providing the nutrients kids need to grow and thrive. However, most kids and adolescents do not meet the daily dairy intake recommendations made in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Kids take more milk, and drink more milk, in school when they have options they like. A growing body of evidence shows that dairy foods at all fat levels have a neutral or positive effect on health outcomes, ranging from lower prevalence of obesity and diabetes to reduced heart disease risk and healthy cholesterol levels.
“The House Education and the Workforce Committee’s approval of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is a significant step toward expanding the popular, healthy milk options schools can serve to improve their students’ nutrient intake. ”
NMPF’s Bjerga on Fair Nutrition Access in Federal Programs
NMPF Senior Vice President of Communications Alan Bjerga talks about the importance of equal nutrition for all — and how milk in both regular and lactose-free options can assist in that goal — is a bedrock principle in federal nutrition programs. Bjerga also updates on the latest in NMPF’s comment campaign regarding the FDA’s draft guidance for proper terminology in plant-based beverages, discussing the topics in an interview with RFD-TV.
NMPF’s Bjerga On Equity in Federal Nutrition Programs
NMPF Senior Vice President for Communications Alan Bjerga discusses dairy’s need to promote its nutritional value for all consumers as concern for equity among all populations, including those that are lactose-intolerant, becomes a focus of federal nutrition policy. Bjerga also reveals his pick for the Super Bowl in an interview with WEKZ radio, Janesville, WI.
Taking a stand for true dairy products
By Clay Detlefsen, Senior Vice President for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs, NMPF.
It’s a tale that’s lasted decades too long. Plant-based companies continue to use dairy terms on their products, violating labeling laws as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to look the other way. But now a new kid has entered the conversation: synthetic “dairy” products that claim to be “animal-free,” yet worthy of a dairy name.
Synthetic dairy proteins are made in the lab by taking a section of a DNA sequence, programming or genetically modifying yeast and microflora with a specific DNA sequence and then using a precision fermentation to replicate it. The end product is a single whey protein, that’s then used to make products that companies are touting as dairy. That’s similar to the playbook the plant-based industry has run for years – and as research shows, it creates a false equivalence among consumers.
However, these companies aren’t making actual dairy, like milk, cheese and ice cream. Dairy foods are extremely complex. They offer essential nutrients, numerous high-quality proteins, micronutrients, and hundreds of fatty acids, all of which interact with each other to deliver one of the most nutritious foods in the marketplace. Creating a single synthetic dairy protein and mixing it with other ingredients to make a synthetic food product – the method currently being developed for commercial products – doesn’t creating anything approaching the complexity of actual dairy.
The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) has been calling on FDA to enforce its own standards of identity for dairy for decades. This has included numerous meetings, comments, filing a Citizen Petition, and sending letters to the FDA Ombudsman. Last March, FDA sent Draft Guidance for Industry on the Labeling of Plant-based Milk Alternatives and Voluntary Nutrient Statements to the Office of Management and Budget. That document has yet to be released. In the meantime, we continue the fight for labeling integrity, for dairy farmers and for consumers.
NMPF’s largest concern with the misuse of dairy terms are the nutritional issues that have arisen in recent years from the use of plant-based beverages as alternative nutrition sources, especially in children. Because of plant-based products not following the labeling laws and using dairy terms on their products, consumers are assuming that they offer the same nutrient package as dairy products, which is inaccurate. In the most critical of cases, it has led to nutritional deficiency diseases like Kwashiorkor and rickets.
NMPF for decades has been baffled by why FDA has not enforced its rules, especially given that it results in human health harm. Recently, FDA issued a new standard of identity for yogurt: In that rulemaking, FDA specifically calls out the importance of standards. But it seems FDA only cares about such standards when it comes to a real dairy product; with plant-based (and soon, we worry, lab-based) imitators, a Wild West mentality has prevailed. The inconsistency is frustrating. What they have been doing by allowing plant-based food companies to break all the labeling rules is simply wrong, and we cannot allow it to spread to the new up and coming lab-created, synthetic foods.
To better understand FDA’s haphazard approach to standards when applied to dairy, NMPF has sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all information related to plant-based labeling, the use of the term animal-free, the negative human health consequences due to mislabeling of plant-based products and much more. It’s critical that we do this, as with a new generation of imitators on the horizon, we need to stand up for dairy now before consumer confusion proliferates further.
This column originally appeared in Hoard’s Dairyman Intel on Feb. 6, 2023.
