FDA’s Proposed Nutrition Facts Labels to Contain Inaccurate Information

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FDA’s Proposed Nutrition Facts Labels to Contain Inaccurate Information

Pot Taxes, GMO Labels, And Other Ballot Questions Voters Are Deciding Today

Last year, people in 38 states weighed in on 174 ballot measures questions. Today, just six states are putting such questions in front of voters, and the 31 items up for decision are a motley bunch, ranging from the bizarre (storage and taxation of airplane parts, anyone?) to more hot-button topics. Here are some of these state-level issues that may end up having larger national implications.

Put a GMO label on it (Washington)
Both sides have already poured nearly $ 30 million into Washington’s fight over whether to label foods containing genetically modified organisms. While twenty-five other states have considered similar legislation, the vote could make Washington the first to pass a such a requirement. Poll watchers aren’t certain which way this one will go: a KING 5 News survey released two weeks ago showed 45 percent of respondents in favor of GMO labeling and 38 percent opposed, with a full 16 percent pleading uncertainty.
 

Tax tokers (Colorado)
After Colorado’s approval one year ago of a measure to legalize recreational marijuana use, the state now wants pot users to cover the costs of overseeing the new industry. Proposition AA would add a 15 percent excise tax and a 10 percent sales tax to marijuana sales, meant to pay for retail regulation of the drug as well as some school construction. The measure seems likely to pass, having drawn 77 percent support in an April poll. That hasn’t stopped proponents of low-tax weed from throwing free joint parties in protest.
 

Supercharge schooling (Colorado)
This ballot measure would raise taxes by nearly a billion dollars to overhaul education, by increasing teacher pay, charter school funding, and money for early childhood development and English-language programs. The measure has the support of Gov. John Hickenlooper and many prominent state Democrats; opponents include the current Republican state treasurer and the subtly named Coloradans Against Unions Using Kids As Pawns. The initiative’s passage hinges on whether voters can stomach the tax increase in a still-rough economy: 44 percent of voters opposed the measure in a September poll; even more people (52 percent) said they would oppose after hearing how much individual tax rates would increase.
 

Raise the minimum wage (New Jersey)
After a veto from Gov. Chris Christie, New Jerseyans will decide whether or not to raise the minimum wage from $ 7.25 to $ 8.25, and set up a system of annual automatic cost-of-living increases. Despite Christie’s popularity, 76 percent of state residents—including many registered Republicans—favor the increase, according to a Rutgers University poll from September. California and Minnesota recently passed minimum wage increases of their own, while South Dakota voters will decide one next year.
 

Screw Atlantic City (New York)
Gambling conglomerates and New York state Democratic leaders, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, are hoping voters will amend the constitution to allow seven Vegas-style casinos, with four upstate and three in the Big Apple. The initiative comes a year after Maryland’s passage of a measure to expand gambling, which drew a record $ 90 million in campaign spending. New York’s fight won’t be nearly as expensive—the main committee in favor has raised just north of $ 2 million, while those opposed have raised almost nothing. (What opponents lack in funds they make up for in sledgehammer stunts.) Still, it’s a rare issue that has managed to unite the editorial boards of both the New York Times and the New York Post—both are opposed.

Politics | Mother Jones

Pot Taxes, GMO Labels, And Other Ballot Questions Voters Are Deciding Today

NYPD labels mosques terrorism enterprises

Muslim worshippers attend Jumu’ah prayers in the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, New York, August 16, 2013

The New York Police Department is conducting massive spying operations on all mosques and secretly earmarking them as terrorism organizations, a new report says.

The NYPD has opened at least a dozen “terrorism enterprise investigations” into mosques since the 9/11 attacks, according to interviews and confidential police documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Designating an entire mosque as a terrorism enterprise allows police to spy on the imams even without specified evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

The terrorism designation also means that anyone who attends Muslim prayer services is a potential subject of an investigation and surveillance, according to the report.

The NYPD used a tactic called TEI, which allowed officers to monitor political or religious speeches whenever the “facts or circumstances reasonably indicate” that the people were involved in plotting terrorism.

The report is also based on a new book entitled “Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD’s Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden’s Final Plot Against America” by AP reporters. The book is based on hundreds of previously unpublished police files and interviews with current and former NYPD, CIA and FBI officials.

The NYPD has declined to comment on the report, according to AP.

Many of the investigations stretch for years allowing surveillance to continue even though the NYPD has never criminally charged a mosque or Islamic organization as a terrorism enterprise.

The AP first revealed in 2011 that the NYPD was spying on Muslims in the city. The new documents show that the NYPD investigated countless innocent New York Muslims and put information about them in secret police files.

Civil rights lawyers in the US have sued NYPD, saying the Muslim spying programs are unconstitutional and make Muslims afraid to practice their faith.

“I have never felt free in the United States. The documents tell me I am right,” Zein Rimawi, one of the Bay Ridge mosque’s leaders, said after reviewing an NYPD document describing his mosque as a terrorist enterprise.

AHT/ARA

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NYPD labels mosques terrorism enterprises

Coming soon? Nutritional labels on alcohol drinks

WASHINGTON (AP) — Alcohol beverages soon could have nutritional labels like those on food packaging, but only if the producers want to put them there.

The Treasury Department, which regulates alcohol, said this past week that beer, wine and spirits companies can use labels that include serving size, servings per container, calories, carbohydrates, protein and fat per serving. Such package labels have never before been approved.

The labels are voluntary, so it will be up to beverage companies to decide whether to use them on their products.

The decision is a temporary, first step while the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade and Tax Bureau, or TTB, continues to consider final rules on alcohol labels. Rules proposed in 2007 would have made labels mandatory, but the agency never made the rules final.

The labeling regulation, issued May 28, comes after a decade of lobbying by hard liquor companies and consumer groups, with clearly different goals.

The liquor companies want to advertise low calories and low carbohydrates in their products. Consumer groups want alcoholic drinks to have the same transparency as packaged foods, which are required to be labeled.

“This is actually bringing alcoholic beverages into the modern era,” says Guy Smith, an executive vice president at Diageo, the world’s largest distiller and maker of such well-known brands as Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Jose Cuervo and Tanqueray.

Diageo asked the bureau in 2003 to allow the company to add that information to its products as low-carbohydrate diets were gaining in popularity.

Almost 10 years later, Smith said he expects Diageo gradually to put the new labels on all of its products, which include a small number of beer and wine companies.

“It’s something consumers have come to expect,” Smith said. “In time, it’s going to be, why isn’t it there?”

Not all alcohol companies are expected to use labels. Among those that may take a pass are beer companies, which don’t want consumers counting calories, and winemakers, which don’t want to ruin the sleek look of their bottles.

The Wine Institute, which represents more than a thousand California wineries, said in a statement that it supports the ruling but “experience suggests that such information is not a key factor in consumer purchase decisions about wine.”

Spokeswoman Gladys Horiuchi said the group knows of no wine companies that plan to use the new labels.

The beer industry praised the agency for acknowledging that labels should take into account variations in the concentration of alcohol content in different products.

The industry has opposed the idea of defining serving size by fluid ounces of pure alcohol — or as 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor — on the grounds that you may get more than 1.5 ounces of liquor in a cocktail depending on what else is in the drink and the accuracy of the bartender.

The ruling would allow the labels to declare alcohol content as a percentage of alcohol by volume, the approach favored by the beer industry.

“We applaud the TTB’s conclusion that rules be based on how drinks are actually served and consumed,” said Joe McClain, president of the Beer Institute.

McClain said the beer industry is pleased that the ruling provides “substantial flexibility” in terms of the format and placement of the disclosure on packaging.

It is unclear whether beer companies will actually use the labels, however.

Consumer advocates criticized the regulation.

“It doesn’t reflect any concern about public health,” said Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. He said the rules are too close to what the alcohol companies had sought.

Consumer advocates have said that listing alcohol content should be mandatory so consumers know how much they are drinking. Jacobson and others also support having calorie counts on labels, but they said the labels should not include nutrients that make the alcohol seem more like a food.

“Including fat and carbohydrates on a label could imply that an alcoholic beverage is positively healthful, especially when the drink’s alcohol content isn’t prominently labeled,” Jacobson said.

Current labeling law is complicated.

Wines containing 14 percent or more alcohol by volume must list alcohol content. Wines that are 7 percent to 14 percent alcohol by volume may list alcohol content or put “light” or “table” wine on the label. “Light” beers must list calorie and carbohydrate content only. Liquor must list alcohol content by volume and may also list proof, a measure of alcoholic strength.

Wine, beer and liquor manufacturers don’t have to list ingredients but must list substances people might be sensitive to, such as sulfites, certain food colorings and aspartame.

Tom Hogue of the TTB said the aim of the ruling is to make sure alcohol labeling is more consistent. “The idea here is we are trying to make it easy for the industry to communicate this with consumers if they want to do so, and if their consumers want them to do it,” he said.

___

Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

___

Online:

Labeling guidance: http://www.ttb.gov/rulings/2013-2.pdf

Associated Press

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Business Headlines

Coming soon? Nutritional labels on alcohol drinks

Coming soon? Nutritional labels on alcohol drinks

WASHINGTON (AP) — Alcohol beverages soon could have nutritional labels like those on food packaging, but only if the producers want to put them there.

The Treasury Department, which regulates alcohol, said this past week that beer, wine and spirits companies can use labels that include serving size, servings per container, calories, carbohydrates, protein and fat per serving. Such package labels have never before been approved.

The labels are voluntary, so it will be up to beverage companies to decide whether to use them on their products.

The decision is a temporary, first step while the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade and Tax Bureau, or TTB, continues to consider final rules on alcohol labels. Rules proposed in 2007 would have made labels mandatory, but the agency never made the rules final.

The labeling regulation, issued May 28, comes after a decade of lobbying by hard liquor companies and consumer groups, with clearly different goals.

The liquor companies want to advertise low calories and low carbohydrates in their products. Consumer groups want alcoholic drinks to have the same transparency as packaged foods, which are required to be labeled.

“This is actually bringing alcoholic beverages into the modern era,” says Guy Smith, an executive vice president at Diageo, the world’s largest distiller and maker of such well-known brands as Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Jose Cuervo and Tanqueray.

Diageo asked the bureau in 2003 to allow the company to add that information to its products as low-carbohydrate diets were gaining in popularity.

Almost 10 years later, Smith said he expects Diageo gradually to put the new labels on all of its products, which include a small number of beer and wine companies.

“It’s something consumers have come to expect,” Smith said. “In time, it’s going to be, why isn’t it there?”

Not all alcohol companies are expected to use labels. Among those that may take a pass are beer companies, which don’t want consumers counting calories, and winemakers, which don’t want to ruin the sleek look of their bottles.

The Wine Institute, which represents more than a thousand California wineries, said in a statement that it supports the ruling but “experience suggests that such information is not a key factor in consumer purchase decisions about wine.”

Spokeswoman Gladys Horiuchi said the group knows of no wine companies that plan to use the new labels.

The beer industry praised the agency for acknowledging that labels should take into account variations in the concentration of alcohol content in different products.

The industry has opposed the idea of defining serving size by fluid ounces of pure alcohol — or as 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor — on the grounds that you may get more than 1.5 ounces of liquor in a cocktail depending on what else is in the drink and the accuracy of the bartender.

The ruling would allow the labels to declare alcohol content as a percentage of alcohol by volume, the approach favored by the beer industry.

“We applaud the TTB’s conclusion that rules be based on how drinks are actually served and consumed,” said Joe McClain, president of the Beer Institute.

McClain said the beer industry is pleased that the ruling provides “substantial flexibility” in terms of the format and placement of the disclosure on packaging.

It is unclear whether beer companies will actually use the labels, however.

Consumer advocates criticized the regulation.

“It doesn’t reflect any concern about public health,” said Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. He said the rules are too close to what the alcohol companies had sought.

Consumer advocates have said that listing alcohol content should be mandatory so consumers know how much they are drinking. Jacobson and others also support having calorie counts on labels, but they said the labels should not include nutrients that make the alcohol seem more like a food.

“Including fat and carbohydrates on a label could imply that an alcoholic beverage is positively healthful, especially when the drink’s alcohol content isn’t prominently labeled,” Jacobson said.

Current labeling law is complicated.

Wines containing 14 percent or more alcohol by volume must list alcohol content. Wines that are 7 percent to 14 percent alcohol by volume may list alcohol content or put “light” or “table” wine on the label. “Light” beers must list calorie and carbohydrate content only. Liquor must list alcohol content by volume and may also list proof, a measure of alcoholic strength.

Wine, beer and liquor manufacturers don’t have to list ingredients but must list substances people might be sensitive to, such as sulfites, certain food colorings and aspartame.

Tom Hogue of the TTB said the aim of the ruling is to make sure alcohol labeling is more consistent. “The idea here is we are trying to make it easy for the industry to communicate this with consumers if they want to do so, and if their consumers want them to do it,” he said.

___

Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

___

Online:

Labeling guidance: http://www.ttb.gov/rulings/2013-2.pdf

Associated Press

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Business Headlines

Coming soon? Nutritional labels on alcohol drinks