Brooks Law Digest: Labeling Restrictions

The Good Food Institute and the Animal Legal Defense Fund have filed suit under the First Amendment challenging a Louisiana law that imposes fines for alternative protein products labels with terms usually associated with meat, such as “burger” or “sausage.”

The Food and Drug Administration is seeking input on the labeling of food containing cultured seafood cells. The agency is accepting comments until March 8, 2021.

A new report from the World Resources Institute analyzes the kind of language to use and to avoid in order to make plant-based foods appealing to more consumers.

Upton’s Naturals and the Plant Based Foods Association have filed suit against the state of Oklahoma, bringing a First Amendment challenge to the state’s law that requires disclaimers on plant-based products that use a term normally associated with conventional meat.

A federal judge in New Mexico has dismissed two lawsuits brought against Tyson and other food companies, challenging the companies’ practice of labeling beef products produced from cows raised in foreign countries as a “product of the USA.” The court found that such challenges were preempted by the Federal Meat Inspection Act.

A federal court in California has granted Miyoko’s request for a preliminary injunction barring the state from barring the company using terms like “dairy” and “butter” on its products. In the lawsuit, Miyoko’s contends that such a step would violate the company’s First Amendment rights.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has signed into law a bill that makes it unlawful to label any cultured meat product “as meat or any product from an animal” without distinct identification as “lab-grown,” “lab-created,” or “grown in a lab.” The law also requires similar labeling for plant-based products.

A federal judge in Florida has dismissed a lawsuit brought by consumers challenging Tyson’s use of the term “prime” to describe its pork products. The buyers argued that the labeling was false and misleading because the United States Department of Agriculture does not grade pork products as “prime,” the judge concluded that a reasonable consumer would not be misled by the use of the word.

Texas Senate Bill 2035 proposes to restrict the use of the terms meat, beef, chicken, and pork on advertising and labeling of food products to food products made out of a “formerly live” animal. The bill would also ban advertisements and labeling of “imitation” meat products that include comparisons of the product’s nutritional value to slaughtered animal products.

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam vetoed a bill passed by both the House and Senate that would have prohibited foods to be labeled as “milk” unless that product was “obtained by the complete milking of a healthy hooved mammal.”