The new guidelines from the Agriculture Department encourage third-party assessments of environment-related claims, which have come under fire.
“Climate-smart.” “Regeneratively grown.” “Sustainable.”
If you’re wondering about all those labels on meat and poultry at the grocery store, so too, it turns out, is the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The agency, in an update to its industry guidelines published this week, signaled that it’s paying closer attention to how companies back up the new environmental buzzwords and said it “strongly encourages” meat and poultry purveyors to get those claims verified by independent third parties.
Food companies have long had to get U.S.D.A. approval for their labels. That has applied to terms like “cage free” eggs or “grass fed” beef. The last update to the guidelines was in 2019.
In this week’s update to the guidance, published Wednesday, the U.S.D.A. took note of some of the latest environment-related marketing claims, like “climate-friendly.” It said it “strongly encouraged” meat producers to provide the U.S.D.A.’s food safety arm with “data or studies to support environment-related claims on their label.”
The agency said third-party verification “helps ensure that such claims are truthful and not misleading,” though advocacy groups point out that these verification services are themselves of varying quality.
The agency’s guidance follows growing concern by environmental advocates and consumer protection groups about what’s often called greenwashing, or the practice of making misleading claims about a product’s environmental impact. And it reflects growing scrutiny by courts and regulators around the world on the labeling of products aimed at consumers concerned about the environment.