Home » Green » Misleading labeling practices, snake oil salesmen, and the FDA

Misleading labeling practices, snake oil salesmen, and the FDA

  • Spence Cooper
  • March 24, 2010
Smart Choices
Seriously?

In 1985, Kellogg filed a “citizens’ petition”with the FDA arguing on behalf of a legal basis for their arrangement with the National Cancer Institute to endorse a health claim for All-Bran cereal — a cardboard box full of chemicals and processed bran. Kellogg argued that First Amendment guarantees of commercial free speech establish companies’ rights to make health claims — health claims that quite simply amounted to fraud and deception.

Last September, The New York Times wrote an article about how the “Smart Choices Program” — a bogus consumer protection group comprised of food manufactures and retailers — labeled Fruit Loops and other processed food abominations as healthy choices. The program is now suspended and the San Francisco city attorney forced Kellogg to remove a claim that sweetened breakfast cereals “help support your child’s immunity”.

The now suspended Smart Choices Program had cleverly devised a symbol with a green check mark on food packaging “to provide at-a-glance information on the front of the package” for products they claimed met a comprehensive set of nutrition criteria based on their so-called Dietary Guidelines for Americans — remember, Fruit Loops met their comprehensive set of nutrition criteria.

Since its official 1906 inception, powerful business interests have outgunned and rendered useless the regulatory role the FDA was designed to play in protecting the public. FDA precursors began with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Division of Chemistry, which led to the Food and Drug Act, and the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

In the 1930’s, after over two decades of a self-imposed trance by federal officials asleep at the wheel, a public outcry fueled an eight-year campaign for stronger regulatory action; consumer activists even publicized a list of products ruled permissible under the 1906 law that included radioactive beverages, and baseless claims of “cures” for diseases.

Finally, in 1938, one full year after 100 people died from using a toxic “Elixir”, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was forced to signed the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act into law on June 24, 1938. The FD&C Act set new regulatory standards for foods, authorized factory inspections, and expanded enforcement powers. The FDA emerged from the fountainhead of those turbulent waters, and is just as useless and ineffectual today as it was over a century ago.

Bogus fronts like the Smart Choices Program are no different than the snake oil peddler of yesteryear; both planted decoys in the crowd to certify phony claims and enhance product sales.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments