Guideline on Substantiating Animal-Raising or Environment-Related Labeling Claims

This letter to the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) provides comment on updated guidelines pertaining to animal-raising or environment-related claims on meat product labels. We recommended that FSIS strengthen the guidelines to require producers to verify their labeling claims. The updated guidelines strongly recommend substantiation of claims like “raised without antibiotics,” but do not require it.  FSIS, which is obligated to ensure labels are not false or misleading, should require verification of these label claims in order to protect the interests of consumers and of the producers who are using the labels fairly and accurately.