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...Department of Agriculture is also resisting some of the labeling reforms being pushed by the Food and Drug Administration. For instance, the FDA is insisting that manufacturers base their package labels and health claims on realistic-size servings, instead of impossibly small portions. But when it comes to some meat products, the USDA favors a serving size of just 1 oz., which would enable packagers to make low-fat claims. For the unwary shopper, the result could be that a can of USDA-regulated beef soup might falsely appear to have less fat than a can of FDA-regulated vegetable...
...Agriculture Department also prefers a looser definition of "low fat" than the one favored by the FDA. The tough FDA standard, charges Gary Wilson of the National Cattlemen's Association, would mean that "you won't have any meat items being able to meet the criteria." Such an impossible standard would destroy the incentive for the meat industry to produce reduced-fat beef and pork, says Wilson, and the USDA is inclined to agree. The American Heart Association plans to lobby Congress if the USDA regulations don't match the FDA...
...drugs were pitched only to doctors, primarily in medical journals. But as competition for market share intensifies, more drugmakers are doing as Upjohn did, crossing the once inviolable line and appealing directly to patients. This high-powered approach, combined with some questionable marketing practices, has provoked - the ire of FDA chief David Kessler. "Promotional practices, to be blunt, have got out of hand," he recently told drug-industry lobbyists...
Physicians are leerier about another of Kessler's campaigns: restricting the promotion of drugs for purposes other than those explicitly approved by the FDA. Such "off-label" prescribing is surprisingly common in the U.S. About one-quarter of the 1.6 billion prescriptions written each year are for unapproved purposes. In the mid-1980s some drug-company salespeople began encouraging such uses, a practice Kessler views as dangerous...
Clearly, the pharmaceutical industry is suffering from a bad case of hucksterism. But policing the complex world of drug promotion will be a tougher job for the FDA than wiping the FRESH label off a carton of orange juice...