Nutrition Facts To Appear on Labels of Popular Meat and Poultry Products

There will soon be a new rule regarding an integral part of USDA’s efforts to educate consumers about nutrition. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced recently that it will be making important nutritional information readily available to consumers on 40 of the most popular cuts of meat and poultry products. Under a new rule, packages of ground or chopped meat and poultry will feature nutrition facts panels on their labels. Additionally, whole, raw cuts of meat and poultry will also have nutrition facts panels either on their package labels or available for consumers at the point-of-purchase. The nutrition facts panels will include the number of calories and the grams of total fat and saturated fat a product contains. FSIS does not believe that it has underestimated the costs of the final rule. Since the Supplemental Proposed Rule Regulatory Impact Analysis was done, the total costs of labeling may have even decreased because of more cost-effective technology, such as less expensive computerized flexography and scale-label printers. The additional costs of labeling would be relatively low for the affected businesses.  One trade association and the food marketing organization asserted that allowing the use of point-of-purchase materials will reduce the financial burden on retailers and benefit consumers. However, others state that FSIS underestimated the cost of providing nutrition labels on ground and chopped products and believe FSIS did not account for the number of retailers that would have to buy new printer or scale systems at the store level.  Read the entire summary here.