McDermott Will & Emery
Subscribe to McDermott Will & Emery's PostsSupreme Court of Ohio Clarifies Beer and Wine Franchise Law
By McDermott Will & Emery on Nov 8, 2013
Posted In Distribution
Last month the Supreme Court of Ohio helped clarify an oft-litigated feature of the state’s beer and wine “franchise” law. Like most such enactments, Ohio’s franchise law (the “Ohio Alcoholic Beverages Franchise Act”) generally requires a manufacturer or importer to show “cause” in order to terminate an Ohio distributor. But a provision of the law...
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FDA to Regulate Brewers and Distillers That Sell Waste Grain for Animal Feed
By McDermott Will & Emery on Oct 25, 2013
Posted In Food Safety and FDA, Non-Beverage Alcohol
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will publish its Preventive Control Rule for Feed next Tuesday, October 29, 2013. The FDA’s Fact Sheet about the proposed rule can be found here. The comment period is 120 days and comments accordingly should be due on or around February 26, 2014. More information is available on...
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Towards Liquor Control: A Critical Analysis
By McDermott Will & Emery on Oct 7, 2013
Posted In Advertising and Marketing, Alcohol Excise Taxes, Distribution, Trade Practices
First published in 1933, shortly before passage of the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition, Raymond Fosdick and Albert Scott’s Toward Liquor Control is still used by many in the industry to support various positions of current alcohol policy. In his September 19 presentation for CLE International’s Wine, Beer & Spirits Law Conference, Marc Sorini provides an...
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Fourth Circuit Holds that ABC Regulation Cannot Prohibit Advertising in All College Newspapers
By McDermott Will & Emery on Oct 4, 2013
Posted In Advertising and Marketing
Last week the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (based in Richmond, VA) handed down the attached decision in Educational Media v. Insley, No. 12-2183 (Sept. 25, 2013). The case underlines the trend to provide commercial speech, even speech about heavily-regulated products like alcohol beverages, with strong protection under the Constitution’s First...
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TTB Reiterates Position on Gluten-Free Claims
By McDermott Will & Emery on Aug 26, 2013
Posted In Advertising and Marketing, TTB COLAs and Formulas
On August 22, 2013, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) announced that, pending further study, it intends to adhere to the restrictive policy towards gluten-free labeling and advertising statements that it first announced in May 2012. Thus, although the Food & Drug Administration has finalized gluten-free regulations applicable to most foods on August...
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TTB Makes Daily COLA Information Available
By McDermott Will & Emery on Aug 23, 2013
Posted In TTB COLAs and Formulas
This week TTB announced that it will publish daily statistical information on Certificate of Label Approval (COLA) applications in addition to the weekly COLA statistics previously available. The statistics are available on TTB’s website at https://www.ttb.gov/labeling/processing-times.shtml.
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FDA Issues New Rules on Gluten Labeling
By Arthur J. DeCelle, Christopher M. Lahiff and McDermott Will & Emery on Aug 2, 2013
Posted In Advertising and Marketing, Food Safety and FDA, Non-Beverage Alcohol
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a final rule that defines what characteristics a food has to have to bear a label that proclaims it “gluten- free,” “without gluten,” “free of gluten” and “no gluten.” The rule applies to all FDA-regulated alcohol beverages, which include wines (and ciders) below 7 percent alcohol...
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FDA to Propose Rules to Address Foreign Supplier Verification Programs and Accreditation of Third-Party Auditors
By Christopher M. Lahiff and McDermott Will & Emery on Jul 26, 2013
Posted In Food Safety and FDA
On Monday, July 29, 2013, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will publish two proposed regulations to implement parts of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The proposed rules will address: (A) Foreign Supplier Verification Programs (FSVP); and (B) the accreditation of third-party auditors. The comment period for these proposed rules runs 120 days, putting...
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FDA “Action Level” for Arsenic in Apple Juice
By McDermott Will & Emery on Jul 23, 2013
Posted In Food Safety and FDA
On Friday, July 12, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed a new “action level” for arsenic in apple juice. The FDA’s Federal Register notice and other supporting documents that accompanied the announcement are linked below. An action level generally establishes the threshold at which FDA will consider a food or food ingredient “adulterated”...
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TTB Proposal on Industrial Alcohol
By McDermott Will & Emery on Jul 2, 2013
Posted In Distribution, Import/Export, Non-Beverage Alcohol, TTB COLAs and Formulas
On June 27, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on specially denatured alcohol (SDA), completely denatured alcohol (CDA) and related amendments to federal regulations governing non-beverage “industrial” alcohol. In the NPRM, the TTB makes a host of proposals to reduce regulatory burdens on the industrial...
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