FDA Extends Deadline for Listing Calories on Menus

The Food and Drug Administration is giving restaurants and other food purveyors an additional year to comply with new rules that require calorie counts on menus, a response to concerns by some food establishments that the requirements are confusing and broad.

The FDA said it would extend the deadline to December 2016 because it has been peppered with questions from restaurants and grocery stores about how the calorie-posting rules would apply to their specific situations. Some outlets also have expressed concerns about the need to develop software and other technology to provide caloric details, the agency said.

“The FDA agrees additional time is necessary for the agency to provide further clarifying guidance,” Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods, said Thursday.

The agency said it would post a draft guidance document in August to answer some of the frequently asked questions from the industry, and Mr. Taylor said the agency now and after the Dec. 1, 2016, compliance date “will work flexibly and collaboratively with individual companies making a good-faith effort to comply with the law.”

The government announced the label rules last year, implementing a provision of President Barack Obama’s sweeping health-care law passed in 2010.

The rules, which had been delayed for several years in part because of heavy lobbying by some food purveyors, require restaurants and other food establishments to list calorie counts on menus or menu boards, and to advertise the availability of other nutrition information.

The rules apply to all food outlets with at least 20 locations—which encompasses such products as movie-theater popcorn, gas-station burritos, and grocery-store baked goods.

Some food-industry groups have raised concerns about how the rules would apply at nontraditional eateries—such as convenience stores that sell prepared meals but lack the standardized menus of fast-food chains. Groups also have said it is unclear whether the rules would be required for each type of salad dressing or sauce they use across their operations.

“We never expected such an enormous exposure to the labeling requirement,” said Jennifer Hatcher, head of government relations for the Food Marketing Institute, a trade association for grocery stores. “Every item on the salad bar, every slice of cake—all of our grocery stores have at least 100 items that would have to be labeled,” she said.

The supermarket and convenience-store industries have been trying to get exemptions, saying each of their locations have unique ways of making chicken salads, muffins, egg sandwiches and other foods. Pizza chains, such as Domino’s Pizza Inc., have argued there are too many combinations of pizzas, sauces and toppings to fit on the menu boards and that the vast majority of customers order online or by phone.

“After years of uncertainty, FDA still has not addressed basic questions regarding implementation,” the American Pizza Community, a trade group, said Thursday.

The pizza industry and other groups have supported proposed legislation in Congress that would provide some outlets with exemptions to the rules or make it easier to comply with them.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer-advocacy group, said consumers need that information from supermarkets and the other nontraditional food establishments as much as they do from restaurants.

“We heard similar complaints from the restaurant industry before they were required to do this” in cities like New York, she said. “And they managed to work it out just fine.”

Chain restaurants have been subject to calorie counts on menu labels in several major cities for years, so many of them are prepared for the federal rules. Still, the National Restaurant Association said it welcomed the extra time for its members to comply.

Ms. Wootan, an advocate for menu labeling for over a decade, said, “we wish there wasn’t the need for the delay, but given the level of guidance required, there’s no way around it.”

Others weren’t as sympathetic.

“It takes time to change signage, packaging and data systems. I understand that,” said U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.) in a statement. But, she added, “It is already five years and counting since menu labeling became law.”

 

Updated July 9, 2015 6:30 p.m. ET

 

Write to Annie Gasparro at [email protected]

Source: Wall Street Journal Health