Proper Dairy Product Labeling

The Food and Drug Administration has come out with a new proposed draft guidance that pertains to the naming of dairy products and National Milk Producers Federation Senior Vice President of Membership Services and Strategic Initiatives, Chris Galen says there's both good and bad aspects to it.

“They would basically allow plant-based products to use dairy terms like milk, so your oat milk or soy milk or almond milk, they would still be able to use the word

milk.

As for the positive side, he said the guidance would require companies to put nutritional information on the label.

“In almost every case, we feel that that's going to be helpful to the cause of legitimate real dairy the OG charity because, you know, in terms of protein, vitamin A and D, seven or eight or nine other essential nutrients, dairy is almost always going to be consistently a better choice, which is key. Galen says when it comes to parent consumers choosing animal-based dairy products and by having that information spelled out on the front of the fake dairy product label that goes a long way towards addressing concerns that pediatricians and others in the health community are also seeing, which is that there are a certain number of kids more than in the past, who are malnourished because they're being fed these fake milk plant-based products.”

Galen also points out that the Dairy Pride Act of 2023 has been introduced into the Senate which would require nondairy products no longer be mislabeled with dairy terms.