Baking&Snack - March 2017 - 12

Time to let go

Who needs the federal Standards of Identity anymore?
These regulatory "recipes" are more than outdated. They
actually get in the way of innovation.
Now would be a good time to throw them out.
Ingredient lists are printed on every food package sold
in the US. Declaration of nutrient content is mandatory.
And the Internet provides ready references revealing
what is in foods. What need does the American consumer
have for a set of "recipes" dating back almost 80 years?
Times have changed. Consumers today are so much more
knowledgeable about what goes into their foods. They are
more in the know about food safety and often have a different idea of what "safe" means.
There's good incentive for the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) to act. During his first days in
office, President Donald Trump made a promise to
cut regulatory burdens. He said he will require
elimination of two such rules for every new one
added. Previous administrations have pushed
deregulation, but none so forcefully. If FDA is
to carry out its mandate to safeguard our food
supply, and that is clearly what Congress and
the US public want it to do, then it will be writing new regulations for a long time to come.
The federal Standards of Identity were first
promulgated as part of the Federal Food, Drug and
Cosmetic Act of 1938. This was an era when food companies had great freedom on selection of ingredients.
Generic names - milk, bread, ketchup - applied to

products of widely different compositions, and the consumer had no way of knowing what was in one company's
product vs. another's.
According to a history recently published by FDA,
Congress wanted to change this, to establish Standards
of Identity that would resemble a home recipe and define ingredients in terms that consumers could readily
identify and find in any well-stocked pantry. (Does this
sound familiar in today's clean-label movement?) FDA
supported the standards because they simplified enforcement. It was an attempt at a level playing field. And it
worked well during the 1940s and 1950s. Then came 1990
and the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act, which
made nutrition labeling mandatory. Consumers could
easily learn what was in a food. No longer did they need
to seek out and read a Standard of Identity written in government legalese and tucked away in the Code of Federal
Regulations.
Alas, the level field had some unseen potholes.
Standards limit the application of creativity to stock products. Remember the fight over white chocolate? Or cherry
pie? Why can't we add folic acid to whole wheat bread?
Why is fortifying a hamburger bun considered misbranding? All involve an intrusion of the standards into the innovation process.
Advise FDA to remove these standards as soon as possible. It's time to let go.
- Laurie Gorton, Executive Editor
lgorton@sosland.com

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Baking&Snack - March 2017

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