Friday, July 11, 2003

By Vicki Kemper, Los Angeles Times
 

WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration announced a plan yesterday to give consumers more information about the nutritional content of the food they eat while allowing the industry to make health claims for which there may be not be scientific proof.

"People will choose to live better lives when they have accurate and helpful information about their choices," FDA Commissioner Mark B. McClellan told reporters.

The event marked the agency's second significant food-labeling policy announcement this week. On Wednesday, McClellan and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced that food marketers would have to list the amount of unhealthful trans fatty acids in their products.

McClellan said the FDA's latest action was part of a "coordinated government effort" to encourage Americans to make more informed choices to improve their health.

The FDA previously required "significant scientific agreement" before food marketers were allowed to make health claims about their products. The new FDA standard requires only that health claims be supported by "the weight of scientific evidence."

The relaxed standard "means claims can be made on the basis of hope, not fact," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. "That makes a mockery of food labels and will lead to the return of what former [HHS] Secretary Louis Sullivan rightly called 'a tower of Babel' in the supermarket."

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit health-advocacy group, called the FDA action "the biggest rollback in food-labeling standards in 20 years."