{"id":99050,"date":"2019-01-31T14:30:37","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T19:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=99050"},"modified":"2019-01-31T11:02:27","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T16:02:27","slug":"brindisi-fights-for-dairy-farmers-leads-bipartisan-effort-to-stop-labeling-non-dairy-products-as-milk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=99050","title":{"rendered":"Brindisi fights for dairy farmers, leads bipartisan effort to stop labeling non-dairy products as milk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Congressman Anthony Brindisi<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Brindisi leads\nbipartisan group of freshman members asking FDA to crack down on milk imitators<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of his work to help Upstate New York dairy farmers,\nReps. Anthony Brindisi (NY-22) and John Joyce (PA-13) led a group of bipartisan\nfreshman members of Congress to urge the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to\ntake strong action against manufacturers who falsely label non-dairy products\nas milk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a bipartisan letter to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb,\nBrindisi and Joyce, along with Reps. Anthony Delgado (NY-19), Daniel Meuser\n(PA-09), Angie Craig (MN-02), Dusty Johnson (SD-AL), Ben Cline (VA-06), Jim\nHagedorn (MN-02), Russ Fulcher (ID-01), and Anthony Gonzalez (OH-16), objected\nto the growing trend of imitation or substitute dairy products labeled with\nstandardized dairy terms, saying it \u201chas undermined consumer confidence, the\nvery purposes of standards of identity for foods.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe urge you to make crystal clear that dairy imitators will\nnot be considered in compliance with standards of identity if they merely add\nthe name of a plant material in front of a standardized dairy term, or\notherwise reference dairy terms,\u201d wrote Brindisi and his colleagues.\n\u201cModifying the word \u201cmilk\u201d with a plant product descriptor does not make the\nlabel accurate or appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FDA\u2019s federal standard defines \u201cmilk\u201d as coming from the\n\u201cmilking of one or more healthy cows.\u201d Brindisi said the FDA says food labels\nare meant to \u201cinform consumers about what they\u2019re buying, and standards of\nidentity are used to ensure that foods have the characteristics expected by\nconsumers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s simple: if comes from a cow, it\u2019s milk; if it doesn\u2019t,\nit\u2019s not,\u201d said Brindisi. \u201cWhy would we call a product something it\u2019s\nnot? Dairy farmers in Upstate New York set high standards for the milk they\nproduce. Copycat products shouldn\u2019t be able to profit off of their hard work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a dairy farmer, I take pride in the fresh, nutritious,\nand real milk I produce each and every day,\u201c said Neal Rea, Upstate New\nYork dairy farmer and chairman of Agri-Mark, Inc., a dairy cooperative with\nmany farmer-owners in NY-22.\u201cCopycat products should not be able to misuse\nnames like milk, cheese and yogurt in the marketplace. I appreciate Rep.\nBrindisi\u2019s leadership on this important cause, which has strong bipartisan\nsupport, and I am hopeful that going forward, FDA will finally enforce existing\ndairy-label standards.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In NY-22, the dairy industry supports nearly 4,000 direct\njobs, more than $235 million in wages and generates an economic impact of $1.83\nbillion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The full text of the letter to Commissioner Gottlieb is available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brindisi leads bipartisan group of freshman members asking FDA to crack down on milk imitators As part of his work to help Upstate New York dairy farmers, Reps. Anthony Brindisi (NY-22) and John Joyce (PA-13) led a group of bipartisan freshman members of Congress to urge the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to take strong […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23679,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agfarming","category-top-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Brindisi-head-shot-color-10.14.jpg?fit=490%2C700&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-pLA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/80461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}