McMorris Rodgers Statement on the FDA’s Final Rules on Menu Labeling

Eastern Washington Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05) released the following statement after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the publication of its final rules on menu labeling.

“The FDA’s menu-labeling requirements are, at their core, fundamentally unworkable,” said McMorris Rodgers. “The irony of this announcement coming during National Small Business Week is not lost. If we want nutrition information to be available to the greatest number of people in the most effective manner possible, then we need to make it easier for small business owners to display it where their customers are – including online, by phone, or through apps.”

The FDA’s menu-labeling regulations will require restaurants with 20 or more locations – tens of thousands of which are franchised locations operated by local small business owners – to display in-store all nutrition information for every possible combination on their menus. For some businesses, the combinations are in the tens of millions.

Note: On February 12, the House passed McMorris Rodgers’s bipartisan legislation, the Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act (H.R. 2017), which gives restaurants, grocers, and convenience stores the freedom to provide nutrition information in a way consistent with how they operate and how their customers order.