McCaskill Calls for Flexibility in New Menu Labeling Standards

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill is joining a bipartisan group of colleagues to urge the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to review nutrition labeling regulations to ensure that any measures adopted will allow flexibility for restaurants and avoid unnecessarily burdening food retail establishments where nutrition information is already prevalent.

The Affordable Care Act requires restaurants and “similar retail food establishments” that are part of a chain with 20 or more locations to provide calorie and other nutrition information for standard menu items. While the law provides general requirements for restaurant menu nutrition labeling, it required the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to create regulations defining what entities would be covered by the “similar retail food establishment” clause. The Senators’ letter to OMB Administrator Howard Shelanski called for immediate review of the FDA’s proposed rules.

“Since FDA published its proposed rule to implement nutrition labeling of standard menu items at chain restaurants, many concerns have been raised about the regulations expanding to non-restaurants, such as grocery and convenience stores, where the vast majority of food products are already labeled with nutritional information. The proposed rule also could affect restaurants with highly variable items or different foodservice formats, such as pizza delivery operations. As a result, the proposed rule will harm both those non-restaurants that were not intended to be captured by the menu labeling law, as well as those restaurants that have variability in the foods they offer.”

The letter goes on to include a set of alternatives that would allow the food service industry to maintain their commitment to customers while at the same time increase their ability to comply with federal law.

“Alternatives include: limiting the scope of the menu labeling regulations to establishments where foodservice is the primary source of revenue; allowing delivery operations to provide nutritional information online; allowing multiple approaches for made-to-order or variably sized items; allowing restaurants with drive-throughs to display required nutritional information on a poster or pamphlet; and not penalizing reasonable margins of inadvertent human error.”

In 2011, McCaskill joined a bipartisan group of colleagues in urging the FDA to limit menu labeling requirements to establishments that have 50 percent or more of their floor spaced devoted to “restaurant or restaurant-type food,” which would largely exempt grocery and convenience stores.