It’s no secret that lab-grown animal products are a contentious subject that’s piqued the interest of those in the livestock industry. On the heels of the commercial availability of a lab-produced milk alternative named Bored Cow, the National Milk Producers Federation is proactively saying “no” to labeling lab-produced alternatives as milk.
In a letter sent to the Food and Drug Administration, the National Milk Producers Federation urges the federal agency to end mislabeling of synthetic, cell-based “dairy” ingredients that they say violate the federal dairy Standard of Identity.
NMPF likens the labeling of lab-produced alternatives as “milk” to the confusion centered around plant-based labeling.
“Bored Cow’s product takes water and adds what we believe to be one unidentified, lab-engineered ‘whey protein’ along with a highly processed concoction of food additives, preservatives, oil, sugar, and several added vitamins, and claims to have created ‘animal-free dairy milk.’ It is baseless, preposterous, and absurd to call the resulting product ‘milk,’” NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern said in the letter. “In the interest of public health, the misleading labeling charade must end before it gets out of hand. FDA must act and must do so now.”
This isn’t the first time NMPF has hit milk alternatives hard. The organization has repeatedly called on the FDA to enforce identity standards for milk “imposters” and “fakes”.
The circumstances of dairy vs. the plant-based debate are undoubtedly complicated. NMPF is hoping to align itself on the forefront of the lab-grown issue.
“As we have seen in the decades-long folly of plant-based beverage labeling, an ounce of prevention is worth oceans of cure,” Mulhern wrote. “We ask the agency to exercise its well-established authority to prevent this company and others that seek to follow from leading consumers down what will become a superhighway of misinformation, absent your willingness to enforce the law.”
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