censorship & food labeling
Topics: FreeSpeech, Safety
05 Jun 1991
From: ervan
What should be done with food labelling? As I have said before,
I don't think free speech gives someone a right to make false contracts.
Labels on food items that make specific claims, e.g. 'has 250
calories' represent implicit contracts. Canners should not be allowed to
make up fanciful claims. What about the gray area of pseudo-claims?
I think that the FDA has gone too far. It recently prohibited
bottles of vegetable oil from saying 'cholesterol free', even though it is
true. It is in the process of defining exactly what 'lite' means.
The most ridiculous example is that for ketchup to be called 'fancy' it
can't spread to more than the size of a quarter after being poured from
6" for 5 seconds (or something like that). I believe this sort of micro-
tinkering with the language to be censorship.
More ominously, different groups (e.g. the heart association and
some particular environmental groups) have offered to provide seals of
approval on products that meet their standards for whatever their particular
cause is. The FDA has made it illegal in most cases for them to do this.
Why? The stated reason is that they don't want consumers to become confused.
This is clearly censorship.
As for the integrity of the FDA itself, I recently read an article
in Newsweek where it said that the original four food groups came not from
any well founded nutrional study but from the four largest food lobby
groups. For example, cheese, a nutrituously dubious item, is on the list
because the dairy lobby is powerful.
So, we are left with a situation where the body controlling our
food labelling is motivated by political interests and it prohibits others
from voicing a different opinion.
On a different tack, what about nutrition labelling? How much
should there be? Can the FDA force the whole can to be covered
with a table of numbers? Can it force any of it be? I find the
current situation a bit silly. Important information such as fiber
content, place of origin, and pesticides used are not required. A long
list of micro-nutrients, which almost everyone gets enough of and no
one reads on the label anyway, are required. I've noticed that
products which contain no fiber never list it on the nutrition label.
Products which contain some list the amount. That's a simple rule to
shop by. Personally, I never buy a product which doesn't list the
calorie content (unless it's a basic food, e.g. ground beef). I think
that nutrition labelling would take care of itself in the absence of a
law requiring it. If enough people cared, companies would label. If
almost no one cared, they would use the space for something else. So,
I'm opposed to the law requiring labelling.
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