The lobbyist for grocers including Kroger Co. (KR) and Safeway Inc. (SWY) is calling on President Barack Obama to curtail a U.S. health law provision that mandates the companies display the calorie content of all their foods.
The Food Marketing Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based trade group, said Obama should step in before the Food and Drug Administration puts the new rules into effect, intervening as he has with other provisions of the Affordable Care Act that carry unintended consequences.
The proposed rule is unpopular among some restaurant chains such as Domino’s Pizza Inc. (DPZ) that complain about the cost of new signage and grocers that say the diversity of their products creates a logistical nightmare. The industries have backed legislation that would limit the rules to only provide the data online in some cases, and apply the labeling only to stores with more than half their revenue from food prepared on site.
The mandate “was slipped into the ACA without debate and hearings,” said Erik Lieberman, regulatory counsel for the institute, in a phone interview yesterday. “There are options to minimize costs and to quantify the burden on industry.”
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