USDA Introduces New Nutrition Labeling Rules For Meat, Poultry

Nutrition labels that include the number of calories and the grams of fat a product contains will be required on 40 popular cuts of meat and poultry beginning Jan. 1, 2012, according to rules just published by USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Nutrition labels that include the number of calories and the grams of fat a product contains will be required on 40 popular cuts of meat and poultry beginning Jan. 1, 2012, according to rules just published by USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. Under the new rules, retailers will have to provide information on the amount of saturated fat, total calories and total grams of fat in items such as whole or boneless chicken breasts, beef briskets, tenderloin steak, hamburger and ground turkey.

According to the new rule, when a ground or chopped product "does not meet the regulatory criteria to be labeled 'low fat,'" a lean statement may be included on the label, as long as the fat percentage is also included.

The new labeling rule does not apply to ground and chopped meat processed by businesses with a single facility producing less than 100,000 of pounds annually, or to products intended for further processing or intended for export, as long as the product's label does not bear additional nutritional claims beyond fat and lean percentages.

"FSIS believes an exemption for ground or chopped products produced by small businesses is necessary because the burden of mandatory nutrition labeling may force some small firms to stop producing the product because of the cost of nutrition labeling and eventually force some small firms out of business," according to the Federal Register notice. "FSIS believes it would not be feasible for some small businesses to incur the additional costs of nutrition labeling because of their low volume of sales or low volume of ground product."

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says the labeling will help consumers make better food choices. "We need to do all we can to provide nutrition labels that will help consumers make informed decisions," Vilsack said. The additional information should help consumers meet the Dietary Guidelines for Americans produced every five years by USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services, Vilsack added.

FSIS estimates that the average annual cost of complying with its new final rule on including nutritional labels on meat and poultry products would be between $10.5 million and $10.9 million per year for the next 20 years.

On the other side of the ledger, FSIS estimates the average value of the benefits of the new law at between about $800 million and $1.4 billion. Annually, FSIS estimated that the rule would produce average benefits of between $75.5 million and $91.3 million. The monetized value of the benefits includes the value of lives saved by the new nutritional labeling laws.

National Cattlemen's Beef Association Legislative Affairs Director Kristina Butts said the organization supports nutrition labeling on beef products, but wishes USDA would have granted NCBA's request for an 18-to-24-month implementation period.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), outgoing chairman of the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, called the new rule "an important step forward in helping consumers make informed choices about what they feed their families. Our country is facing an obesity epidemic, and if we are to make any progress against this problem, it is critical that consumers have access to nutrition information about the foods they buy at restaurants and at grocery stores."

The Center for Science in the Public Interest said the new rules "provide no new consumer benefit." For example, it says that under the rules, packages of ground beef must bear Nutrition Facts labels by Jan. 2012, but that most ground beef already has such labeling.

The group is particularly critical of two aspects of the new rules: the "percent lean" statements on labels of ground meat; and the option for supermarkets to post nutrition information regarding steaks, chops, roasts, and other cuts of meat either on labels on the meat or on signs in the store.

CSPI says that its research shows that the term "lean" misleads consumers into thinking that, say, "80 percent lean" ground beef is lower in fat than it really is. As for posting the nutrition information, CSPI says that to date, supermarkets have always chosen to post signs rather than use labels and that "the signs are hard to find, difficult to decipher, and show nutrition information for relatively puny 4-ounce servings, thereby understating the calorie and fat content of typical servings of steaks." 

Page 1 of 51
Next Page