Author: Megan Poinski@meganpoinski
Dive Brief:
- The Food and Drug Administration will extend the compliance date for the updated Nutrition Facts panel by 18 months, according to a final rule published in the Federal Register on Friday. Manufacturers with at least $10 million in annual sales will need to have the new label by 2020, and smaller manufacturers will need to have it by 2021.
- The new rule also would make changes to what’s on the label. These include removing the declaration of calories from fat, requiring grams per serving of added sugars and adding a daily value declaration for sugars. It also would require updating the vitamins and minerals that could be included on the label, making calorie information more prominent, and making formatting and reference value changes.
- According to the document, the FDA received about 50,000 comments on its proposed rule and deadlines. “After careful consideration, we have determined that extending the compliance dates by approximately 1.5 years, until January 1, 2020, or January 1, 2021 (depending on annual sales), would help ensure that all manufacturers covered by the final rules have time to use guidance from FDA to address, for example, certain technical questions we received after publication of the final rules. …. Additional time will also help to ensure that manufacturers have time to coordinate with various parties to complete and print updated Nutrition Facts labels for their products before they are expected to be in compliance with the final rulessition period during which consumers will see both the old and the new versions of the label in the marketplace.”