Reynolds: Hi, I’m Matt Reynolds, editor of Packaging World Magazine, and about two weeks ago, Eric Greenberg, who’s with me today, uh, submitted, uh, his usual legal side column, which was great, uh, looked good. We had it lined up for print ready to go, um, in a, what could be called a near, um, hold the presses moment. Uh, uh, one piece of FDA, uh, information came in, uh, sort at the last minute where we had to, uh, make sure that we were able to shoehorn that in and make sure that, that we were able to cover that in that column. And I’m really glad that we did because it turns out it is, uh, uh, an important piece of potential, uh, regulation. So, uh, Eric, why don’t you, uh, explain, uh, you know, who you are and what you do, and then why you’re, you have opinions on this matter? Sure. 

Greenberg:  I’m Eric Greenberg. I’m an attorney based in Chicago, serving clients worldwide. We do FDA regulatory compliance for food and food related companies. We do a lot of work on food labels, so this development on, uh, front of pack nutrition labeling, uh, was very significant and noticeable to us. Uh, FDA came out with a lot of announcements in the last couple of months of, uh, 2024, uh, but this might be the single most significant one for food companies anyway. 

Reynolds Okay. No, you’ve been, uh, following this for a while. It’s got an awful acronym of F-O-P-N-L Fal, if you wanted to say it that way. I’m, so we can come up with something better. But you’ve been following it for a while. Why do you think it happened when it did? 

Greenberg:  Well, I think they were rushing to get things they were thinking of doing out before the new administration came in, in case the new administration wanted to take a different approach. Uh, there’s actually sort of a complicated, uh, answer to, to whether that was true or not, which we can get to in a minute. But, but they made a variety of announcements. Uh, this is an actual proposed regulation. This is a regulation that’s open for public comment. Eventually a final version of it’ll be published and it’ll become effective afterwards. A lot of the other actions they take, they were taking toward the end of the year were, uh, announcements about new guidance documents and interpretive things in this, but this would be an actual required regulation. 

Reynolds: Alright. Why don’t you explain a little bit about the proposal itself? Sure. Uh, what nutrition, what nutrition information is impacted, what’s mandatory? Is there a voluntary element? What, what does it look like? 

Greenberg: It looks like an abbreviated version of the Nutrition Facts panel that you would ordinarily find on the back or the side of a retail packaged food product. And it’s designed to be an, uh, just that, a kind of an at, at a glance version of the more complex information that will still appear elsewhere on the label. And, but this is required to be on the front of pack on the principle display panel on the panel that’s viewed by consumers when the product is displayed for retail sale. Uh, and very simply, what it says is nutritional information or nutrition information in big letters. And then it has the, the quantity of saturated fat, the quantity of sodium, the quantity of added sugars, saturated fat, sodium, and sugars, all three things that there’s pretty widespread agreement people don’t want too much of. And then each one of those, uh, substances is not just listed by its quantity, but it’s just characterized as either low, medium, or high. And that’ll be part of that little panel that’s on the front of the, of the, uh, food label. 

Reynolds: Good. So what about timelines for this? I mean, if, if I’m a packaging designer, I’m hearing, wow, I better get to get to work. What, what, what are we talking about Time horizons? Well, 

Greenberg:  As with any regulatory rule-making process, this is in the mode right now of us receiving comments from the public that’ll go on until at least may. A major rule like this, it’s very common. They’ll extend that comment deadline. Uh, so it’ll be even after that, before comments are due, FDA will then gather all the comments, figure out their reactions to them. If any of them are substantive and require in their mind, uh, changes to their proposal, they’ll do that. And then they’ll publish a final version of the regulation, and then it becomes effective thereafter. They’ve already said that the requirement to use this new front of pack label, uh, is not gonna be effective, uh, until at least three years after they fu publish that final regulation. So it is, seems like it’s far away in the distance for smaller companies. It’ll be even farther. It’ll be four years from when they publish that final regulation. Uh, but because it makes, it requires so many significant changes for food labels, I think people ought to be looking and thinking and planning about it right now. 

Reynolds:  Yeah. Getting out in front of, uh, any potential, uh, eventuality. Um, so what, what’s, what’s kind of the, what’s behind it? What, what headwinds is it facing? Yeah. In the new administration, what tailwinds is it facing potentially within the same administration? Who’s backing it? Who’s opposing it? Where, where, where do the politics lie?

Greenberg: Well, you may have, you may be familiar with these front of pack, uh, uh, abbreviated, uh, you know, uh, versions of nutrition information that have been voluntarily put, particularly on, uh, uh, sugary beverages, you know, soft drinks and so forth. Uh, so the industry’s unhappy. They think what they’ve been doing is essentially the equivalent of this, uh, for most intents and purposes. And they don’t like that it’s been, uh, overridden by this. So you have that voice, and then you have the consumer advocates who probably wanted it to be even more severe. Little abbreviated, uh, summaries of nutrition information like this have been used or already in place in a lot of other countries. So in many ways, the US is behind the time. So there’s advocacy to, to, there’s been advocacy to do something like this, quite frankly, for a long time. Uh, and just as for just as long a time, there’s been industry resistance to it on the theory that it would unfairly characterize, uh, a food as either good or bad. 

Usually bad is the fear. Uh, it’s a little bit like judging an individual, uh, by their behavior on the worst day of their life, you know, and forever declaring that’s what the person’s like, uh, that would be unfair to most of us. Um, uh, so, uh, there’s going to be a lot of fighting and it’ll be reflected in all of those public comments. I also am prepared to say, in my own mind, I think because of the new administration, there’s at least a 50 50 chance this new proposed regulation will be withdrawn altogether before the year is out. Uh, either because, um, of the new administration’s pretty, uh, uh, uh, consistent anti every kind of regulation, philosophy, and ideology, or because they don’t think it goes far enough in characterizing food, uh, uh, because the, uh, there’s been a lot of, uh, uh, talk about the new, uh, head of the department that would include FDA Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wanting to really take aggressive steps to help, uh, people, uh, uh, eat a more nutritious diet. It doesn’t, uh, there’s no indication what that’s gonna translate into in terms of requirements or, um, regulatory changes, but I, I don’t think it’s out of the question that he would look at this and say it’s a step in the right direction, but I’d go even further. So we may see a completely revised proposal before it’s all done. 

Reynolds:  Okay. Well, we’ll definitely be keeping, uh, up with this over the months and potential years if it survives years. And we’ll be asking you to comment as this goes along. Thanks Eric.

Greenberg: Thanks for having me.