Page 67 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

Since then, both agencies have adopted and enforced a wide range of food labeling policies.
USDA oversees labels for meat, poultry and eggs, organic crops and milk and dairy products.
FDA regulates label claims for most packaged foods and fresh fruits and vegetables. The reach
of food labeling has expanded at both agencies.

Meat, poultry and egg product labeling regulation is among USDA’s oldest responsibilities. It
was authorized by the Meat Inspection Act of 1906, triggered by “The Jungle,” Upton Sinclair’s
expose of unsanitary conditions in meat packing plants. Over the years, the “USDA Inspected”
seal has become one of the most-recognized of all food labels.

The task has been lodged in several agencies, including the Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
and Consumer and Marketing Service through the 1960s, in the Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service (APHIS) and briefly the Food Safety and Quality Service in the 1970s. It has
been in the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) since the early 1980s.

In recent years, FSIS labeling authority has expanded to cover label claims the way food-
producing animals are raised, including pasture-raised livestock, free-range poultry and eggs, or
raised without hormones or antibiotics.

The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has assumed a greater share of USDA’s food
labeling responsibility in recent years, first by implementing the Organic Foods Production Act
of 1990 and lately the national standard for bioengineered food labeling. While the new
bioengineered standard requires compliance for most companies by January 2020, the regulation
is caught up in controversy and opponents have threatened to block it in court.

“Unfortunately, instead of putting this issue behind us, these regulations will almost certainly
lead to litigation, more state legislation and efforts to amend the federal law,” says George
Kimbrell, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, which regularly sues USDA over
biotechnology. “We will explore all legal avenues to ensure meaningful labeling.”

Despite more than two decades of experience, USDA enforcement of the organic label also
creates ongoing disagreement. Critics say USDA has been lax, especially in the dairy sector,
about enforcing its rigorous standards for pasture for milking herds.

In recent years, the two agencies have worked out arrangements that mostly avoid overlap. Their
“Coordinated Framework,” adopted in 1986, divided responsibilities between them and the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for regulation of agricultural biotechnology. Inasmuch
as FDA treats products of biotech crops like those produced through other means, no labeling is
required just because they are derived from bioengineering.

Earlier this year, USDA and FDA announced a framework agreement for regulation and labeling
of cell-based meats and potentially other food products. FDA will regulate the cell collection and
growth while USDA will regulate harvesting and labeling of the final product.

The announcement closes one chapter of the debate over how to treat cultured, or cell-
based, products — meat grown from harvested animal cells rather than through the traditional
harvesting process — but begins another as USDA and FDA must iron out details of the

language.

FDA’s food labeling responsibilities have grown in parallel with USDA’s in the last century. The
original Food and Drug Act of 1906 prohibited misleading labels on food sold in interstate

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