The FDA Will Let the Soy Boys Have Their Milk

The Biden administration will let the soy boys have their milk. On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released new draft regulatory guidance that would allow makers of almond, soy, pea, walnut, and more “plant-based milk alternative” (PBMA) products to keep calling their products milk.

The agency is, however, encouraging these milk alternative companies to voluntarily include information on their labels explaining the nutritional differences between their products and cow milk.

“The FDA determined that consumers generally understand that PBMA do not contain milk and choose to purchase PBMA because they are not milk,” reads the FDA’s draft guidance. “However, many consumers may not be aware of the nutritional differences between milk and PBMA products.”

In a more normal world, one would think consumers could be trusted to understand all on their own that almond milk comes from almonds and not cows.

But as nondairy milk products have grown more and more popular, the dairy industry and elected politicians from dairy-producing states have pushed for regulations that would ensure the words almond and milk don’t appear on the same label.

For a time, it seemed like the FDA might actually cow to their demands.

Back in 2018, the agency invited requests for information on how to label these products, with an eye toward cracking down on “misleading” product descriptions.

“An almond doesn’t lactate,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb quipped at the time.

In Congress, Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D–Wis.) and Jim Risch (R–Idaho) have pushed the DAIRY PRIDE Act to ban the use of milk, yogurt, and cheese on labels of nondairy products.

The FDA’s skepticism of consumers’ ability to understand the difference between dairy and nondairy milks seemingly spilled over into the Biden administration. This past summer, Wired reported that the agency appeared “poised” to issue stronger labeling rules.

Current FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in Senate testimony last year that consumers aren’t “very equipped to deal with what’s the nutritional value of non-dairy milk alternatives.”

Given this history, the new draft guidance released by the FDA is a lot less bad than it could have been. Soy milk can continue to be called soy milk, regardless of how much lactation went into making the product.

The dairy industry has expressed disappointment with the new guidance.

“It falls short of ending the decades-old problem of misleading plant-based labeling using dairy terminology,” said the National Milk Producers Federation in a statement. “The decision to permit such beverages to continue inappropriately using dairy terminology violates FDA’s own standards of identity, which clearly define dairy terms as animal-based products.”

The Good Food Institute, which advocates for the whole range of alt foods, likewise expressed some disappointment. It gave a statement to NPR saying that direct nutritional comparisons to cow milk are unnecessary, given that product labels already have to list nutritional facts.

The FDA suggested that alt-milk products come with labels saying things like “contains lower amounts of Vitamin D and calcium than milk.”

Defenders of oat and almond milk in Congress have noted i