FMI hits back on menu labeling

The following appeared in Politico on May 1, 2015:

The Food Marketing Institute is not pleased with the National Restaurant Association’s recent suggestion that leaving grocery and convenience stores out of the national menu labeling mandate would “deprive” consumers.

NRA said Tuesday that the recently re-introduced “Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act” would not only “create an unfair advantage between competitors” but it would “deprive thousands of consumers nutritional transparency when purchasing restaurant-type food in these establishments.”

But Leslie Sarasin, president and CEO of FMI, responded forcefully today to both charges. The idea that grocers would deprive consumers is “baseless and simply a diversion tactic in that organization’s attempts to argue for inclusion of supermarkets in a chain restaurant menu labeling regulation,” she said in a letter to POLITICO Pro.

“Shoppers continue to cite supermarkets as their best allies when it comes to their health,” she continued. “FMI’s grocery members have provided nutrition information in response to the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act to shoppers for more than 25 years under a system designed for — and effective within — a grocery system.”

She added: “[O]ur concerns about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements are not rooted in an objection to providing nutrition information. We already do that. Rather, our objection lies in the assumption that grocery stores operate just like chain restaurants. They do not.”

Sarasin called the charge that the bill would give an unfair advantage to the grocery industry “misguided.”

— Helena Bottemiller Evich 

To view online: https://www.politicopro.com/go/?wbid=52879