[kqvamxurcagg]

It's small relative to other industries but its still a multi-billion dollar industry. Each of the largest companies will have PR agencies, personal contacts within the FDA, revolving door of staff between the FDA and the corporates, positions on standards committees, board members who have spent a life time in food safety governance. I'm sure many of these manufacturers are the largest employers in some congressional districts so it wouldn't be a surprise if they managed to get a congressman to write the FDA to focus attention on this. The same complaint from a small company will never get the same attention.

My point is that their scale and resources gives them access. A competitor breached a pointless regulation [1] from the last century which has prevented their product from being sold for a year. If one of the large corporates breached that regulation, they would have been able to quickly agree corrective action with minimal supply chain disruption.

[1] Many of these food regs are designed to enrich staple foods that were the main source of nutrients for low income families. That's just not an issue anymore and just prevents (high quality) imports.

[sunpar]

This food regulation is not really based on health or nutrients or anything like that, nor is it pointless. It stems from an effort to define what can be marketed as a pasta noodle vs. other similar yet different products, like ramen noodles.

There are similar regulations that define, for example, what is a whiskey and what isn't.

Sure X amount of Y substance vs. X-epsilon amount will always look ridiculous on the face of it, but ultimately there needs to exist some line and some definition.

[veilrap]

I don't find this argument particularly convincing.

Am I drinking "sparkling wine" or "champagne"? Honestly, why should I care, I just care about how much I like the product and how much it costs.

I'm for regulation around areas about product safety, but this seems to not be what's going on here.

[JohnBooty]

    Am I drinking "sparkling wine" or "champagne"? 
    Honestly, why should I care, I just care about 
    how much I like the product and how much it costs.

I think you are seriously underestimating the utility of walking into a store, seeing a product labeled as XYZ, and being assured that it meets some reasonable definition of XYZ without having to do a bunch of research and/or testing on your own.

Packaged food is an extremely cost-sensitive product category to put it mildly. There is tremendous pressure on these companies to shave off every penny they can when it comes to production costs.

I strongly suggest that we do not want to see what might happen if the FDA didn't enforce some kind of minimum definitions for various categories.

For a sneak peek of the probable outcome, you can learn about the history of adulterated food products: https://www.google.com/search?q=history+of+adulterated+food

[milesvp]

I tend to agree with you but you might find this more common than you realize. I’ve noticed in my lifetime products I like change their recipes. I’ve also seen products once labeled as ice cream now labeled as frozen dairy dessert. I’ve seen this type of thing in lots of different products. Not just ice cream. And I’m not convinced anything changed legally in many cases. Usually I suspect it was to reduce costs.

It’s now something I actively look for on packaging when a product gets a new look.

[throwaway0a5e]

> but its still a multi-billion dollar industry

There's 330 million people in the US. Everything the average person spends six dollars a year on is a multi- billion dollar industry.

>Each of the largest companies will have PR agencies, personal contacts within the FDA, revolving door of staff between the FDA and the corporate, positions on standards committees, board members who have spent a life time in food safety governance

Think about how many people someone will work with and befriend over a lifetime. You're pretending that's a high bar when it's a low bar.

>The same complaint from a small company will never get the same attention.

You should go to the NPA's website (linked in TFA, you have exolymph's comment to thank for prompting me to look it up), go to the membership directory and start looking up these pasta companies before you run your mouth. While many of the companies are wholly owned subsidiaries or larger more mainstream food brands but none of them seem to exceed the BLS definition of medium sized. If the FDA enforcement action unfolded the way we are all assuming it is then that would seem to indicate medium-smallish companies do have their legislator's ear (or they just tipped off the FDA directly and then just kept following up until the FDA was annoyed enough to do something).

Edit:

Here's Medallion Foods, Virginia Park foods which seem to be among the biggest (ballpark estimate based on facility sized and value of what's in the parking lot) and one in Montana that I thought was cool because they had the street named after them. All these companies seem to have their office location the same as their manufacturing location so it's kind of hard to get a sense of scale.

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.0889449,-122.3631175,3a,75y,...

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0173065,-117.3829804,3a,75y,...

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5168777,-111.2619547,3a,75y,...

> A competitor breached a pointless regulation[1] from the last century which has prevented their product from being sold for a year.

>[1] Many of these food regs are designed to enrich staple foods that were the main source of nutrients for low income families. That's just not an issue anymore and just prevents (high quality) imports.

The last century was 20yr ago. HN would be out for blood if someone was caught importing completely functional catalytic converters or bicycle helmets that didn't meet some irrelevant to performance nuance of the law. HN is sympathetic in this case because the product in question is an upscale-ish pasta. If regulations on some ingredient were being manipulated in a way that was only affecting production of cheap lite beer we'd be reading through several hundred snarky comments about how this is a good thing.

[antiterra]

Chastising someone here for ‘running their mouth’ when they are commenting in good faith is not welcome.

No one was ‘out for blood,’ the poster simply made the claim that the inability to lobby effectively is a challenge to smaller companies. That’s exactly why the consortium you listed exists, and is based in DC.

I would guess that, usually, interests align and it most often helps a small manufacturer that ADM (16 bil revenue a year) is in the pasta business. However, if ADM wants to get a good deal on the majority stake of a gluten-free pasta up-and-comer, they likely have a few levers they can pull to create pressure.