Government Attempts to Regulate Pizza Toppings


Pizzas are not usually considered diet foods. In other words, if you are counting calories in an attempt to lose weight, double-cheese, thick-crust, supreme ingredient pizzas are probably off your list. Nevertheless, the government is striving to make certain you know exactly how many calories are in that slice of pizza regardless how you ordered it.

The people at Domino’s Pizza must be about to have a nervous breakdown.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s “Nutrition Labeling of Standard Menu Items in Restaurants and Similar Retail Food Establishments” (79 FR 71155) rule was originally scheduled to take effect on May 5. The FDA has now delayed the rule for a year.

The only good news is the one-year delay. What could a proposed 105-page rule with such a lengthy title be about?

The rule would require, among other mandates, that all restaurants and other retail food outlets, such as movie theaters, operating as one brand with at least 20 stores display a calorie count in addition to other nutritional information for all standard menu items on the establishment’s “menus and menu boards.”

You would think that in 105 pages the FDA would have figured out how to define what a “menu” is. You would be mistaken.

To demonstrate the potential scope of that provision, Domino’s Pizza executive vice president, Lynn Liddle, said, “‘Menu’ can refer to any writing that [is] ‘used by a customer to make an order selection at the time the customer is viewing the writing’”–possibly including flyers and other advertisements.

“We no longer know what a menu is,” Liddle said, to point out how confusing the rule is.

This isn’t funny. People could go to jail for getting this wrong. Think we’re exaggerating?

During the rule’s notice-and-comment period, some food purveyors raised concerns “that restaurants that ‘unwittingly misbrand their menu offerings’ will be held liable for their food that is misbranded under this rule and related provisions of the FD&C Act.”

The FD&C Act makes misbranding a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment up to one year and a fine of up to $1,000, with more severe sanctions for repeat offenses (21 U.S.C. § 333).

Industry representatives also pointed out that restaurant owners and supervisors can be held criminally liable for FD&C Act violations under the so-called “responsible corporate officer doctrine.”

Jail time over the number of slices of pepperonis on a pizza, while drug-dealing illegals find sanctuary. Work that one out.

This is a rule that simply cannot be implemented. That’s so obvious one must wonder who the government hires to write this sort of stuff?

If the rule eventually goes into effect, it would require pizza providers to display calorie counts on a per serving (slice) basis, which poses a particular problem for proprietors who offer customers significant choice on their regular menu.

Domino’s, for instance, offers customers a selection of 27 regular toppings and nine sauces on five types of crust. All told, there are 34 million potential pizza combinations one could order from Domino’s.

Not to worry, though, a bill has been introduced into Congress to fix this regulation should it go into force as currently written. While such Congressional action is laudable, and no doubt would be a relief to restaurants, the fact that such legislation is necessary illustrates the problem of an out-of-control federal agency.

If the FDA does not curtail the scope of the rule during this one-year delay period, Congress will need to act before it threatens pizza shop owners and similarly-situated restaurant chains with criminal penalties for the failure to count calories according to the agency’s preferred standards.

Clearly, if writing garbage like this regulation is how the FDA is spending its time, we have an agency that has way too many employees.

Source: The Daily Signal



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