APRE's Role in Preparing Potato Industry for FDA Regulations

I'm KayDee Gilkey with the U.S. Potato Update bringing you a special APRE feature story.

After preparing its stakeholders for the recent FDA announcement about regulation to revoke the "Generally Recognized As Safe" status of partially hydrogenated oils — which is a source of artificial trans fatty acids —- the Alliance for Potato Research and Education has assisted the potato industry in already completely phasing out of using patricianly hydrogenated oils — years ahead of the requirement.

APRE's President and CEO Dr. Maureen Storey explains

Storey: "The potato industry saw this coming a long, long time ago and started reformulating potato products — french fries especially — to virtually eliminate the use of partially hydrogenated oils in their products. Therefore since 2007, potato products have been actually trans fat free because the use of partially hydrogenated vegetable oils has been eliminated. That's how the potato industry lead the way in eliminating the use of partially hydrogenated oils."