Product labelling

All we wanted was truth in labelling, backed by tough enforceable regulatory standards, right? Sounds good?

Here's where that path goes:

The fight over the US government’s definitions for certain foods has flared up again. It’s no longer just a fight for milk farmers, who’ve grown increasingly angry about plant-based food companies (think soy, almond, and cashews) calling their liquid products “milk.”

For the first time, vegetables are being roped into the debate—all because of the arrival and popularization of “cauliflower rice.”

“Only rice is rice, and calling ‘riced vegetables’ ‘rice,’ is misleading and confusing to consumers,” Betsy Ward, president of industry lobby USA Rice, said in a statement earlier this month. “We may be asking the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies to look at this.” Ward added that Scott Gottlieb, the new Trump-appointed FDA commissioner, could use his power to enforce the agency’s existing definitions for food, the so-called “standards of identity.”

The better system: a consumer guarantees act that guards against fraud, and a court system prepared to tell a plaintiff that he's an idiot for suing a riced vegetable producer for having a product that doesn't contain right (and award costs against him).