Food & Beverage Litigation & Regulatory Update

Category: Issue 773

  • Consumer Challenges Cocoa Content in 70% Cacao Bars

    A consumer has filed a projected class action alleging Mondelez International Inc.’s Green & Black’s chocolate packaging misleads as to the product’s cacao content. Lee v. Mondelez Int’l Inc., No. 22-1127 (S.D.N.Y., filed February 9, 2022). The labels indicate that the products are 60%, 70% or 85% cacao, but “the back labels uniformly reveal that…

  • Consumer Alleges “Milk-Based” Infant Formula Misleads

    A plaintiff has filed a putative class action alleging that Mead Johnson & Co. markets its Enfamil infant formula products as “milk-based” despite containing corn-syrup solids as the primary ingredient. Martinez v. Mead Johnson & Co. LLC, No. 22-0213 (C.D. Cal., E. Div., filed February 2, 2022). The front-label packaging indicates that the product is a…

  • Advocacy Groups File Petition on Nanomaterials in Infant Formula

    The Center for Food Safety and International Center for Technology Assessment have filed a rulemaking petition urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate the use of nanotechnology in infant formula. “These new materials can have fundamentally different properties from their bulk material counterparts—properties that also create unique human health and environmental risks—which create…

  • Guidance Issued on Food Commodities with Chlorpyrifos Residues

    Following the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2021 final rule revoking tolerances for residues of the pesticide chlorpyrifos in food, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition has issued guidance for industry on how the agency will enforce the rule, which sets the expiration date for the tolerances as February…

  • ASA Rules on Oatly Environmental Ads

    The U.K. Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld several complaints against Oatly UK Ltd. arguing that the company’s advertisements misled consumers into believing the product is more environmentally friendly than the production processes actually are. The ads cited several statistics on the greenhouse gases generated by the dairy and livestock industries and asserted Oatly’s production…

  • FDA Releases Food Guidance Priorities List

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released a list of the draft and final guidance topics that the agency is prioritizing for 2022. The list includes guidance on allergens, cell-cultured foods, heavy metals in juice and labeling of plant-based alternatives to milk and animal-derived foods. According to a caveat in the constituent update,…

  • AMS Proposes Amendments to Organic National List

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has proposed its regular update to the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances, which lists the synthetic substances allowed in the cultivation of organic products. The proposed additions are (i) low-acyl gellan gum, which is used as a thickener, and (ii) paper-based crop planting aids,…