The Food and Drug Administration is likely to move ahead with wrongheaded and unconstitutional plans to prohibit producers of non-dairy milks—including almond milk and soy milk—from using the term “milk” to describe their milks, Tom Philpott of Mother Jones reported earlier this summer.
The FDA’s plans amount to a course incorrection of sorts. And, once again, protectionist regulations pushed by many of the world’s biggest food producers—food standards of identity (SOIs)—are largely to blame.
Government-mandated SOIs establish specific rules under which a number of foods may be labeled using a given name. These standards were first introduced before World War II, I explain in
