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- BUSINESS, Page 49Business NotesLITIGATIONThe FDA Gets Fresh
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- What is the difference between a glass of orange juice
- straight from the fruit and a glass concocted from water and
- frozen concentrate? According to consumer-product giant Procter &
- Gamble, nothing. For a year, P&G has hyped its Citrus Hill
- orange juice by dubbing it "Fresh Choice" on containers that
- acknowledge in less splashy lettering that Citrus Hill is "from
- concentrate." The Food and Drug Administration, insisting that
- fresh means fresh, has spent the past four months seeking
- changes in the product's label that Cincinnati-based P&G refused
- to make without a guarantee that competitors would be required
- to meet the same standards.
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- Last week recently appointed FDA commissioner David
- Kessler made it plain that he intended to enforce the label
- laws: U.S. marshals descended on a warehouse outside Minneapolis
- and impounded 24,000 half-gallon cartons of Citrus Hill, an
- unusual action considering the prominence of the brand name and
- its manufacturer. P&G's response: a sudden agreement to remove
- the word fresh from the disputed orange juice containers. Notes
- a satisfied FDA official: "We've got a different commissioner.
- He is saying we're not a paper tiger."
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