Menu Labeling Legislation Gets House Committee Nod

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee passed H.R. 2017, the Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act of 2015, in a bipartisan vote of 36 to 12 on Wednesday. Reps. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) introduced the bill.

"We thank committee members and their leadership for advancing legislation that truly meets the objectives of the menu-labeling law without burdening convenience store owners and adding to costs to their operations," stated Lyle Beckwith, senior vice president of government relations for NACS, the Association for Convenience & Fuel Retailing. "We look forward to expedited approval of this vital and common-sense legislation by the full House and the Senate."

The legislation would enable compliance for convenience store operators while increasing the availability of both nutrition information and choice for consumers, according to NACS. It maintains regulations approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but modifies them in order to provide nutritional information to customers in a more practical format and to protect small businesses from overly burdensome costs and penalties.

Current FDA menu-labeling regulations, which are scheduled to go into effect in December 2016, are "fundamentally impractical and unnecessarily expensive" and don't recognize the various foodservice business models, such as c-stores, McMorris-Rodgers said during the committee markup.

The bill is now cleared for consideration by the U.S. House of Representatives.