Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 4/4/19


Two lawsuits have been filed against USDA over its decision to relax some of the rules on nutritional guidelines in the National School Lunch Program that were put in place during the Obama administration.

The Trump-era rule, announced in December, relaxes some requirements on milk, whole grains and sodium in response to challenges schools have faced serving meals that both appeal to students and meet the nutrition standards.

The update of standards championed by former first lady Michelle Obama is part of USDA’s regulatory reform agenda, developed in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order to eliminate unnecessary regulatory burdens, the agency said in a December press release.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Chesapeake Institute for Local Sustainable Food & Agriculture sued USDA in U.S. District Court in Maryland for having “eviscerated these [original] standards, delaying by five years the second phase of sodium reductions, eliminating altogether a final sodium reduction target needed to achieve the limits based on the [Dietary] Guidelines, and reducing by one-half the amount of whole grains required to be served by the [school lunch] Programs so that whole grain levels likewise no longer meet those in the Dietary Guidelines,” according to the complaint.

“In so doing," the complaint continued, "USDA unlawfully departed from Congress’s unambiguous directive that it determine school meal requirements based on nutrition science, and instead relied on impermissible and unsound extra-statutory factors such as students’ perceived taste preferences for less healthy foods and some schools’ desire for operational 'flexibility.’ ”

Similarly, New York Attorney General Letitia James led a multistate coalition in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York alleging that “the Trump USDA failed to explain how the changes to the sodium and whole grain nutrition standards for school meals were, as required by law, 'consistent with the goals of the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans’ and 'based on’ the Food and Nutrition Board study’s recommendations. Further, the 2018 rule was neither issued as a proposed rule nor was the public provided an opportunity to comment on it,” according to a release about the suit.


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