With sales of cow milk flat or falling and those of plant-based “milk” soaring, a bipartisan group of 34 House member sent a letter to the FDA, urging it to “more aggressively police the improper use of dairy terms, which are used on the labels of many products that have no real dairy ingredients,” reports Feedstuffs.
The letter, written by Reps. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican, and Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, called on the agency to “exercise its legal authority to investigate and take appropriate action against the manufacturers of these misbranded products.”
The lawmakers pointed to a recent Nielsen survey which showed that sales of some plant-based “milk,” particularly almond milk, had grown 250 percent, to more than $894.6 million, over the last five years. By contrast, Feedstuffs said, sales of milk fell 7 percent in 2015.
“You haven’t ‘got milk’ if it comes from a seed, nut or bean,” Jim Mulhern, president and CEO of the National Milk Producers Federation, told Feedstuffs. “In the many years since we first raised concerns about the misbranding of these products, we’ve seen an explosion of imitators attaching the word ‘milk’ to everything from hemp to peas to algae. We don’t need new regulations on this issue, we just need FDA to enforce those that have been on the books for years.”