WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration, saying it wants to help consumers make more healthful choices, announced yesterday that it will allow food makers to list health claims on product labels before they have been scientifically proven.
FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan also said his agency will crack down on false health claims made by manufacturers of dietary supplements.
The two-pronged initiative, the first major policy action by the new FDA commissioner, moves the agency clearly in a direction favored by McClellan-providing more information to consumers while regulating industry less.
The FDA has required "significant scientific agreement" before it has allowed industry to make health and nutrition claims for food. By changing the standard to "the weight of scientific evidence," the government will make it easier for industry to give consumers more information, and that will promote improved public health, administration officials said.
The National Food Processors Association, the voice of the $500 billion food processing industry, praised what it called "a very positive move by the FDA," saying it would allow food makers to put more information about health benefits on labels.
Federal law exempts the $17-billion-a-year dietary supplement industry from most federal regulation. Unlike prescription drugs, for example, supplements do not have to pass FDA tests for safety and effectiveness before being put on the market.
The FDA's authority over the supplements is largely limited to ensuring the truthfulness of their labels and advertising claims. In rare cases, when it has proven that a supplement has caused numerous injuries or deaths, the FDA can take action to force a product off the market.
But the process can take years. It was 1994, for example, when the FDA began receiving complaints of health problems related to the use of ephedrine, the herbal stimulant used in the weight-loss product Metabolife 356.
Yet the product, whose annual sales topped $1 billion in 1999, remains on the market.
E-mail this story 
