“An almond doesn’t lactate, I will confess,” Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said. This wasn’t part of a comedy sketch, but instead part of a threat by the federal government to crack down on anyone who misuses the word “milk.”
Humor isn’t the FDA’s strong suit, but its definition of milk is comical. To the government, the only products that can be called milk are “the lacteal secretion, practically free from colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows.”
Set aside the ill-defined colostrum-to-lactose ratio and consider the rest of this definition. Goat’s milk? Not milk! What a nursing human baby consumes? Not milk!
The FDA isn’t taking aim at nanny goats or human moms, but at other white fluids sometimes referred to as “milk,” such as almond milk, soy milk, and even oat milk.
Our government apparently thinks that people are confused by all this variety. Thus Gottlieb, amid his many salutary efforts at FDA to protect and serve consumers, has launched another grand plan. To fulfill the mission of the FDA, “protecting the public health … by ensuring the safety of our nation’s food supply,” the government will protect consumers at risk of believing that a product labeled “almond milk” or “soy milk” came from an animal.
The proliferation of milk options doesn’t seem to have actually confused anyone. Nobody has been found to testify that they thought their soy milk was squeezed from the udder of a soy cow (or goat, for that matter) or that their almond milk was expressed from the nipples of one or more healthy almond trees. In fact, people buy these nondairy milks because they know that they didn’t come from a mammal’s mammaries.
Perhaps we’re being too flippant. Maybe millions of Americans really are deceived into thinking that almonds and soybeans are dairy products. If so, it would seem more a matter for the Department of Education than the FDA.
{More: Holy cow: Trump administration aims to censor ‘soy milk’ and similar terms}
If you want to know what this is really about, follow the money.
In 2017, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., introduced a bill with bipartisan sponsors entitled the DAIRY PRIDE Act, which aims to “protect the integrity of dairy products by enforcing existing labeling requirements.” That bill, clearly designed to benefit the dairy industry, also claims that consumers might be confused.
In the end, a majority of lawmakers decided the public would not confuse a nut with a cow, and the DAIRY PRIDE Act never passed. It’s said that fools rush in where angels fear to tread — not that we think lawmakers are angels — and Gottlieb’s FDA has rushed in to fix this pressing issue.
The FDA shouldn’t get involved in milk-policing business. It’s well outside the agency’s legitimate purpose, which is to make sure people aren’t poisoned. Playing name games to benefit dairy farmers over soy producers doesn’t help consumers or advance public health.
{More: Should we call it ‘Goat Fluid’?: The FDA’s ridiculous definition of milk}
The FDA’s definition of milk, for all of Gottlieb’s claims, is also decidedly unscientific. Cows are not the only animals that produce milk. Lactation is central to the entire class of vertebrates known as mammals.
Question: What do you get when you cross the FDA with an almond? Answer: A nut job.
