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Washington, D.C.-- A coalition of public interest
groups today called for the federal government to end 30 years
of “deliberations and fact finding” by issuing a useful final
regulation to require standardized labeling information on beer,
wine and distilled spirits products.
At a news conference in
Washington, members of a broad-based coalition of public health
leaders and consumer advocacy organizations used the occasion of
Alcohol Awareness Month to release a white paper laying out the
need for an easy-to-read, standardized label that will provide
consumers with complete information about alcohol and calorie
content per serving. Issued as a nationwide call to action, the
white paper concludes that easily accessible alcohol labeling
can play an important role in reducing alcohol abuse, drunk
driving, and the many diseases attributable to excessive alcohol
intake, such as liver cirrhosis and cancers of the upper
gastrointestinal tract.
To highlight this issue for
federal policymakers, Shape Up America! -- the anti-obesity
crusade launched by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop --
also unveiled a newspaper advertising campaign featuring an open
letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson signed by 18
organizations and public health officials. The open letter cites
more than 30 years of delay by Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade
Bureau (TTB) and its predecessor agency, the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), in responding to public pressure,
several petitions, and court challenges, none of which has
produced a government rule requiring an easy-to-read,
standardized label on all alcoholic beverages.
“Today,
even the most basic information about alcohol beverages is not
provided on the labels of most alcohol beverage products,” said
Sally Greenberg, Executive Director of the National Consumers
League. “We are urging TTB to get it right by issuing a consumer
friendly final regulation that will provide the same helpful and
easily accessible labeling information on alcoholic beverages
that is now required for conventional foods, dietary
supplements, and nonprescription drugs.”
TTB’s most recent action
occurred in 2007 when the agency proposed a mandatory “Serving
Facts” panel on beer, wine and distilled spirits but left out
the requirement that manufacturers list information about the
alcohol content per standard serving. This resulted in a barrage
of letters from consumers and public health leaders, all calling
for complete information on the label.
Now that
TTB has heard from the public and other stakeholders, the open
letter ad declares it is time for Secretary Paulson and the TTB
to “do the right thing” by mandating a standardized alcohol
label with information about the alcohol content, the amount of
alcohol per serving, the definition of a standard drink, the
number of calories and facts about other ingredients. The ad
states, “Anything short of mandating this basic information
would be a failure of the regulatory process.”
Along with Shape Up America!,
17 prominent national public health, nutrition and consumers
organizations and officials signed onto the ad and support this
message: American Council on Science and Health, American
Institute for Cancer Research, American Public Health
Association, American Society for Nutrition, American Society of
Addiction Medicine, Black Women’s Health Imperative, Consumer
Federation of America, Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition,
National Association of Local Boards of Health, National
Consumers League, National Research Center for Women & Families,
Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, George Blackburn MD, PhD;
Associate Director of Nutrition, Division of Nutrition, David L.
Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP; Director, Prevention Research
Center, Yale University School of Medicine, C. Everett Koop, MD,
ScD; Senior Scholar, C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth
College and U.S. Surgeon General 1981-1989, Peter Rostenberg,
MD, FASAM; Private Practice, Internal Medicine and Addiction
Medicine and Attending Physician, Danbury Hospital Department of
Medicine and Judith S. Stern, ScD; Professor, University of
California at Davis.
“It’s
time to give consumers complete and detailed information about
the alcohol and calorie content per serving in all beverage
alcohol products so they can make informed and responsible
purchasing and consumption decisions,” said Barbara J. Moore,
Ph.D., president of Shape Up America!, “Anything less is a
setback for public health.”
Reinforcing these views, National Consumers League and Shape Up
America! released the findings of a new opinion poll, providing
further evidence that the public believes government policy must
change. Conducted by Opinion Research Corporation, the poll
surveyed 1,003
adult Americans aged 21 and over from
April 11-14,
2008 to identify the information consumers consider most
important on an alcohol label. The top priority cited by more
than three in four respondents (77 percent) is listing the
alcohol content followed by the amount of alcohol per serving
(73 percent) and the calories in each serving (65 percent). Of
less importance but considered valuable information is the
following: the number of servings in the bottle or can (57
percent), the carbohydrates in each serving (57 percent), the
amount of fat in each serving (52 percent), and the protein in
each serving (46 percent). When asked about TTB’s proposal that
fails to require information on the amount of alcohol in a
serving on the label, even more consumers -- 74 percent -- said
this information should be mandatory.
The new
poll also validates the usefulness of alcohol labels to educate
consumers about following the Dietary Guidelines’ advice
on moderate drinking, which is defined as up to one drink per
day for women and up to two drinks a day for men. When asked if
Americans should follow this advice, seven in ten respondents
(71 percent) agreed and almost six in ten (58 percent) said they
would use the alcohol label for this purpose. These findings
reinforce a previous online survey conducted for Shape Up
America! in December 2007, which reported that 79 percent of
consumers would support alcohol labeling that summarizes the
Dietary Guidelines’ advice.
“Those
consumers who choose to drink absolutely need alcohol and
calorie information per serving to help them comply with
recommendations in the Dietary Guidelines,” said Chris
Waldrop, Director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer
Federation of America. “Without it, alcohol consumers continue
to be left in the dark.”
The
online survey also asked respondents to review three alternative
labels that could be placed on alcohol beverage containers,
giving TTB a better idea of what information consumers find most
useful. When asked to compare the different options, the results
were dramatic: the vast majority (76 percent) opted for a label
that combines the information required under TTB’s proposed
rulemaking (the amount of calories, carbohydrates, fat and
protein) with the amount of alcohol per serving and the
statement “a standard drink contains 0.6 fluid ounces of
alcohol.” In contrast, only 7 percent chose the format proposed
under TTB’s rulemaking.
Besides
the general public, the coalition’s white paper summarized the
views of leading public health and nutrition experts, who
submitted comments to TTB about the health justifications for
issuing a useful rule on alcohol beverage labeling. A review of
the estimated 18,000 comments that TTB received in 2005
indicates that 96 percent supported giving consumers access to
standardized and complete labeling information on beer, wine and
distilled spirits.
This
issue has a long history. In 1972, consumer organizations asked
the federal government to require meaningful alcohol labeling.
In 2003, the National Consumers League joined with the Center
for Science in the Public Interest and 75 other public health
and consumer organizations to submit a formal petition to TTB.
This resulted in the agency issuing an “advanced notice of
proposed rulemaking” in April 2005, followed by a “proposed
rule” in 2007. That proposed rule, consumer advocates and public
health leaders believe, leaves a huge gap in the basic
nutritional facts consumers want and need when they consume
alcohol. |
