US: Lawsuits target Tropicana on 'natural' claims
In approximately 20 lawsuits, the first one filed in New Jersey, lawyers claim the company adds chemically engineered "flavor packs" to its juice, making it taste the same all year-round. Lawyers have now come together in Washington to argue before a panel of judges about where the lawsuits should be heard as a group.
Tropicana has insisted, via a company statement, that it is committed to complying with labelling legislation.
The Food and Drug Administration, the agency that oversees packaged food labeling in the United States, has perhaps an ambiguous definition of what is "natural." "As long as a food labeled "natural" doesn't contain added color, artificial flavor or synthetic substances, the agency doesn't object. Some lawyers say this is not enough guidance.
"The whole natural issue is a mess," said Michael Jacobson, the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based food safety and advocacy group that helped get the makers of 7UP and Capri Sun to stop making natural claims about their products.
The Tropicana lawsuits are partly the result of a 2009 book about the orange juice industry, Alissa Hamilton's "Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice." Hamilton, a doctoral student at Yale when she started researching orange juice, spent five years learning about the industry, interviewing Tropicana employees, growers, farmers, and others. Hamilton, who has consulted with one of the firms involved in a Tropicana lawsuit, said she would like to see Tropicana be clearer in its labeling and stop using words such as "fresh," ''natural" and "pure."
"It's not simply orange, it's complicated orange," she said. "I'm just trying to advocate for more honesty and more transparency."
Source: abcnews.go.com
