The Democratic leader on the Senate Health Committee wrote FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb to complain of an unreasonable delay in updating the Nutrition Facts label that appears on every package of food. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said the compliance date of 2020 for large food companies and 2021 for small companies would deprive consumers of critical information.
Initially, the updated label was to be mandatory starting on July 28, 2018. The FDA delayed the date to Jan. 1, 2020 “in response to the continued concern that companies and trade associations have shared with us regarding the time needed for implementation of final rules.” The new label, the first update in two decades, requires food companies to say how much sugar is added during processing, update serving sizes, and list calories, serving size, and servings per container in larger print.
“This latest announcement follows a concerning trend of FDA delaying and deprioritizing implementation of critical public health rules,” wrote Murray, citing the FDA decision in May to delay its menu-labeling rule for a year. “The FDA is charged with protecting the public health, and repeated delays such as these have the opposite effect.”