Nutrition Labeling of Single-Ingredient Products and Ground or Chopped Meat and Poultry Products; Docket No. FSIS-2005-0018

The Food Marketing Institute (FMI) welcomes the opportunity to respond to the request from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) for comments concerning mandatory nutrition labeling for meat and poultry products. We appreciate the agency’s efforts to respond to comments on the original proposed rule and to allow the public this additional opportunity to comment. As explained below, although FMI continues to believe that the voluntary program provides a sound means of offering information to consumers, we suggest that any mandatory program should be more flexible than that proposed in the supplemental proposed rule.