The Food and Drug Administration performs the critical task of providing consumers with clear nutritional information by enforcing labeling standards. Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin says she’s worked for years with farmers and dairy processors to eliminate the misuse of dairy terms in labeling imitation dairy products. She says the FDA isn’t clearing up the problem…tape

“In 2023, the FDA published draft guidance that enables misleading product labels to remain on store shelves. The update merely provides voluntary guidance on nutritional labeling to plant-based processors, violating both FDA rules for standards of identity and the Administrative Procedures Act. It’s hard to believe that plant-based alternatives would willingly highlight the nutritional disadvantages of their products compared to real milk.”

She said during a hearing that studies show conclusively that consumers mistakenly believe that plant-based alternatives are nutritionally equivalent or superior to dairy products. The imitation products have also been linked to health problems in infants and children.

James Jones, Deputy Commissioner of Human Foods at the FDA, testified during the hearing about why the FDA only instituted voluntary labeling guidance

“If a plant-based milk alternative is labeled as milk instead of, for example, soy milk, that would be a violation that is not allowable. The law doesn’t prohibit the term milk on the labels of such products as long as the name itself is not misleading, and we have a compelling amount of research that consumers are not misled by using terms such as soy milk or oat milk. They understand that it is not milk. So, on the issue of using the term milk, you have to characterize what it is derived from. So, it has to say soy milk or oat milk. You can’t just say milk on such a label.”

The FDA does ask manufacturers to label their products as not nutritionally equivalent to dairy products. Jones says that voluntary guidance is proving insufficient.

“As you pointed out, we said we encourage manufacturers of these products to identify that they are not nutritionally equivalent to a dairy product. We have gotten a fair amount of comment that it’s not adequate. We are taking that comments under consideration. Ultimately, I can’t say, where we will land that issue but the nutritional equivalence issue is very much on our radar, and as I said, we found a fair amount of comment along the lines that you’ve described around nutritional equivalence.”