What is in this article?:
- Pizza operators support new menu labeling bill
- Strong voices on both sides
The American Pizza Community was formed last year and represents about 20,000 pizza locations around the country.
Strong voices on both sides
Scott DeFife, executive vice president of policy and government affairs for the NRA, maintained that the association does not oppose any of the provisions favored by the APC in H.R. 1249. “We agree with the need for flexibility, about standard builds [the finished version of a menu item], about not having to label every [menu] variation,” he said. “But, in fact, the proposed regulations don’t call for that. They don’t propose that you have to label every single pizza. We support [the APC] — but, in fact, [the provisions [they want] are already in the base bill.”
What the NRA objects to, DeFife continued, is the provision in H.R.1249 that would codify “a bad definition” of “similar retail establishments,” like convenience or grocery stores that also offer prepared restaurant-style food. The measure states that a retail food establishment that derives more than 50 percent of its total revenue from the sale of restaurant-type food would need to comply with all menu labeling requirements. However, DeFife said, that revenue test is completely unrealistic and would exempt many retail food purveyors, thereby preventing consumers from having ready access to the kind of nutritional information mandated in restaurant chains.
In a letter to lawmakers opposing H.R. 1249, the NRA stated the bill “would create an unlevel playing field between restaurants and other entities that serve restaurant food, casting different requirements depending on where you purchase the food.”
Meanwhile, DeFife said the issues supported by the APC can be addressed by the FDA through rulemaking rather than through legislation.
The FDA is currently in the process of crafting the final rules for menu labeling and is expected to present them sometime this year. However, FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg recently said in an interview with the Associated Press that the process “has gotten extremely thorny.
“There are very, very strong opinions and powerful voices both on the consumer and public health side and on the industry side, and we have worked very hard to sort of figure out what really makes sense and also what is implementable,” she said.
H.R. 1249 replaces an identical measure — the “Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act of 2012” — which was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate last year but expired.
The APC includes such members as CiCi’s Pizza, Domino’s Pizza, Godfather’s Pizza, Hungry Howie’s, Little Caesars, Papa John’s Pizza and the International Pizza Hut Franchise Holders Association.
Contact Paul Frumkin at paul.frumkin@penton.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @NRNPaul
